Mansion Real - Ecuador Quito

... and are convinced that Mark, another volunteer and I are in love, every day when I enter the classroom the board is full of hearts that say lorena y marco. Everynight I play games with the kids, and one night a girl named Nayome came up to me and asked me to dance, I picked her up and we started waltzing, we twirrled, dipped, and spun in so many directions. Its moments like this that make life worth living. They are simple ...

Ecuador or at least I should say Quito was my first stop in what will most likely be an intimate relationship in the coming weeks with the Andes. Jagged peakes of brown and green dotted with the occasional snow-capped mountain is the norm in these parts. I was able to break from the hostel crowd again and stay with Marco Monteros who I met on the boat to Colombia. Marco began his trip in Miami on motorcycle and was one day behind me when I arrived ...

... until he started playing with all my things: ´¿Que hiciste?´ he kept asking (which I took to mean ´what does this do?´ although that is not the direct translation...) and I found it very difficult to describe most things. Even after demonstrating he took my alarm clock for a toy car and drank the hydrating mist i had left over from the flight :)

Anyhow, its about time for my afternoon siesta... will update again soon

V

... the bell tower and then higher up on wood ladders to see the highest point.

Another highlight was the little watch fixer who for $3.00 fixed Gabe watch. We almost had it done before we left but just replacing the battery was going to cost $40, so to fix it I imagine it would have been ridiculous. Oh, and I had the best drink at a little café in the courtyard of the church at ...

... dandelions there. What exactly do they cure?

After the gardens we went to a cooking class. It wasn’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 ...

... much taller than her. Shane is Papa of course. Callum's sister Jenny used to work at the hostel so he unfortunately gets called Jenny. Mama is not so bad! It is weird just going up and getting your own beer or making a Cuba Libre (addicted to them at the moment) and walking off. I could get used to it...

We have found that the hostel is not that organised and this really causes problems sometimes. I guess it's the same everywhere, so much has to come together to make it work ...

... with his daughter and i actually went him to go see the voting process. it was in a school. all by paper. and a few people were assigned to count the votes. it was cool to see. and of course there were military personal everywhere. (you see them everywhere, i don´t notice as much anymore). (i will take photos of everyone and house and post it soon!)

... Absolutely stunning views, but not what we would recognise as a volcano. Down the bottom there were farms, and apparently just round the corner (like a few hours walk) there were hot thermals indicating the volcano was still active. But there wasnt much more of interest. So back to the ecuator then! We hadnt really had time to explore the ecuator part before our tours, so when we arrived back we pretty much ran (except it was really really hot, so all we managed was a kind ...

... America, where the police have a reputation for zero tolerance when it comes to street marching!

Most of the buildings in the square were government buildings, but they were still pretty impressive.

Quito, Ecuador al_fey

... and walked and went out on a few pedestrian photographic trips. People told me not to wear my camera whilst in the Old Town. But this was a bit too much to ask as the Old Town was so photogenic. We investigated the possibility of a tour to the Galapagos (too expensive) or working on an environmental project in a rainforest village (no time for that now). But eventually the traffic got too much for us and we took the bus south. We were, after all, supposed to heading towards Peru in time ...