A short 3 hour busride from Quito ( the centre of some amazing museums and churches) brought us to the green highlands of Otavalo. Every Saturday in Otavalo the entire town transforms into an ubermarket. I especially enjoyed the livestock market where mouth-foaming pigs could be purchased for bargain prices by any number of toothless vendors. It was here that I was also pursued by a large, spotted pig on a warpath and a little old lady in her prime at 96 years old who either wanted loose change, my ripe young loins.. or both.

For my birthday, we arranged a horseback tour through the beautiful green hills surrounding Otavalo and stopped for lunch at Cuiococha - a lagoon inside a semi- active volcano crater. Being my first attempt at any distance on horseback, the local kids thoroughly enjoyed slapping my horse on the arse and watching me hold on for my life as the horse galloped through the highlands..Fortunately my horses sole purpose on this earth appeared to be to eat everything and anything in its path, including other horses if they attempted any overtaking..so I was consoled in the knowledge that my horse would only gallop so far before stopping abruptly in order to feed itself ....I suppose one can never be sure when all the grass in the highlands may just die out..

Other highlights of the tour included a ride through one of the local communities where food had been substituted for booze and a massive set of speakers with only one volume frequency...loud.

Despite our best ongoing efforts to respect the cultures we visit, Nicki may well have unintentionally eroded the relations between travelling tourists and the local Indigenous population- Being quite a tall young lady, she has been witnessed accidentally hip and shouldering passing children and even sweet, old ladies who happen to escape her scope of vision. Although she apologises profusely at each involuntary collision, she has still earned the name "bulldozer Pearson" or among the locals "pretty girl with big wrath".

I must emphasise that all the South Americans we have met on our travels have been warm, helpful and entertaining people however, it is only the quirky stories and characters that I tend to mention...which brings me to our friendly, albeit highly eccentric hostel manager who somewhat resembled a jack russel on amphetamines whenever we emerged from our rooms. He would jump from one one foot to the next, clapping his hands in glee and greeting us with an excited "buenas dias, come estas,si, si.." Our English travelling friend, Steve was in fact so disturbed by the gentleman´s bizarrely excitable behaviour that he would send his wife to initiate conversation as a decoy  , while he slipped out the front door un-noticed.