Finally, my camera arrived and I am ready to move on. However, while waiting around in Quito, I made many new Ecuadorian friends and it's not so easy to just up and leave. The result is an invitation to visit Puyo, close to where the jungle begins in Ecuador. I am kind of going that way anyway so I figured why not.

I arrived in Puyo with my friend Maria, whose mother and father are a nurse and doctor respectively and own a pharmacy. They put me up for free in one the nicest places I've stayed while traveling. It was a private thatch-roofed cabin surrounded by streams and jungle with monkeys yelling at each other in the distance. As the Brits would say, "this place is posh". I spent the next several days getting the guided tour of Puyo and entertaining Maria's mother, who speaks no english, with my mispronunciations in spanish. I know the words I want to use, usually, but I just say them wrong sometimes. Instead of calling Maria's mom a nurse(enfermera), I called her an "enferma" or basically a sick old lady. My worst blunder by far, however, was at breakfast one morning when ordering my juice and I asked for penis flavor instead of pine-apple. Oops! The words are similar... really! Fortunately, they find this endearing and said having me around was fun; like educating a small child.

Unfortunately, during a hike through the jungle, I twisted my ankle pretty bad. But this was no problem when in the company of a doctor and nurse with their own pharmacy. They even insisted I get an X-ray which was a free service from the military hospital nearby. In the end, the x-ray showed nothing and I got an Ace bandage and some anti-inflammatory meds for the low low price of nothing. But now I am stuck limping around and I need to decide on the best way for me to get to Peru.... do I take the river boat, which is going to be difficult... or just use buses and follow the well worn gringo trail to the border crossing?????

No pix til later... I need a computer with Windows XP to play nice with my camera and only Windows 98 is available.