Hotel El Relicario del Carmen Quito

... GPS (stored in a safe place) and follow the moving marker, until you show up at the thief´s hideout with the cops or an M60 machine gun and mow those mothers down. You´ll never lose your eyeglasses again. Simple.<br><br>#2 The other idea is to have a website, called something like www.stolenmemorycards.com (not taken by the way, buy the domain now!) or www.iwantmyphotosback.com or www.lostmemories.com if you want to give it ...

... staying with the owner of the school, Liz, in her house just behind the school building.<br><br>We have the nicest room we have had since arriving and that probably goes for the USA too! Liz is a small south american bundle of energy who loves playing the role of foster mum to us, she also speaks terrific english and has infinite patience when explaining that we are actually saying a rude word rather than the verb "to listen" that ...

... about. It didn&#8217;t feel unsafe so we kept walking past them and one called out something about gringos and heckled us a bit &#8211; it didn&#8217;t seem malicious though so we just laughed and kept walking. Maybe it&#8217;s a good thing that my Spanish wasn&#8217;t good enough to understand all of what she said&#8230;.<br><br>We weren&#8217;t back at the hostel very long when it began to pour with rain, so we ended up eating at the hostel restaurant on the terrace which was fun as ...

... had already been travelling at altitude, Otavalo was at 2560, and before that Ipiales was at 2950 metres, higher than Quito. In fact we had been climbing since Cali which is at a mere 1000 metres. <br><br>At Quito we grabbed a taxi and, armed with directions from my email, we headed to a road called Los Rios near to the old town of Quito, where we wanted to be. I had previously also identified the location of a popular hostel called the Secret Garden which was to ...

... might call his/her informants. Though I do not like the formal sound of that as I already feel my place in the family has become that of a high personal relation; I play cards with them, watch after little Martín, dine with them, hike with them, etc. Well, at least on my part it has.<br>This sudden &#8216;use&#8217; of my host family might evoke some ethical aspects, which will require me to position myself and my studies in relation to my host family. I shall certainly return to ...

... raptor I know of: bald eagle, condors, owls, hawks, and vultures. The Andean condor was gigantic and impressive, but extremely ugly - to put it nicely. It must have had some kind of a narcistic complex despite its looks because it bathed itself in a (large) bath about 5 times in the fifteen minutes we watched it. Some of the birds were tied down by the foot and allowed to walk around outside of a cage. With these birds you could get right up next to them - very cool. We were able to walk ...

... more colorful buildings, and so Gabe asked a woman where we should get off for La Plaza de Independencia. She said &#8220;ahora!&#8221; and so we scrambled to get ourselves within a few feet of the door. The timing couldn&#8217;t have been more perfect as we jumped off a block down from the square we wanted to go to. <br> <br> <br><br>As we came into the square a parade was happening ...

... dandelions there. What exactly do they cure? <br><br>After the gardens we went to a cooking class. It wasn&#8217;t really a class, but we watched a chef cook and then we got to sample what he made. The audience was mostly old women, who surprisingly made pretty raunchy jokes to the young, nerdy looking chef. I went to the class 2 days and both deserts were banana based. Not my idea of an ideal desert, but they have a lot of them here so it makes sense. With ...

... wander around the old town one day looking at the beautiful squares and little churches but when I stopped once at a public map an old man came up straight away. Luckily he was helpful and spoke English well and when he asked for money I was happy to give some to him. One girl at the hostel called Greta had the theory that being mugged is kind of like giving a charity donation as generally everyone is poor so those driven to muggings are the really needy. They don't look to attack ...

Four days of spanish classes with a non english speaking teacher and I can just about manage to ask where you live, how much you cost and where the bogs are. Im supposed to be learning my verbs, yet Im doing anything I can to avoid the horror of waking up again at 5:30 reciting Yo, Tu, Ustedes. Apart from the disasterous spanish lessons(changing teacher on Monday) everything is great. Im hanging ...