Schindler's Lift

To the Check-Inn B&B hotel in Cuenca: a nice town, replete with the usual lovely Nouveau, Deco, French and Italian building styles.


It's very, very clean, with some great antique shops, lots of antique US expats flocking together (ironically, in an 'American' coffee shop which served the best coffee and cheesecake I have had in six months) and loads of churches, which we spent a pleasant day wandering around, map in hand.


We're spending another pleasant day here today, planning a tricky exit to Peru

Carry On Up The Jungle

A night bus out of town then two hours on a boat to our Caiman Lodge in the jungle for five days and four nights being motored on and around the waterways (with us rowing on day four) seeing birds, caiman, snakes, tarantulas, wolf spiders and lots of bugs and monkeys.

A swampy day trek through the jungle and a spooky night walk were possibly the highlights, but everything else was great, especially seeing a white-throated toucan!


It was another world, to understate things more than slightly.

The album is probably better to look at than reading this...

Young Americans

We stayed a couple of nights at the Colonial House hostel in the 'historic old town' part of Quito, having a scout around there to see the sights, then went off to the newer Mariscal area to spend two weeks at Cristobal Colon Spanish school.

Lessons were tougher than expected, and I don't think I will be the next Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but my lovely teacher Sol was very inspirational, and we met and spent time with some real nice people, mostly young Americans: Cody from Chicago, Alicia from Austin, Texas, Emma from Washington DC, Trey from Hunstville, Texas and Deirbhle, from Ireland!

It was a quietish fortnight, where we spent the rest of the World Cup going for drinks and Indian and Chinese meals, in between lots of homework.

The Virgen on her Panacillo.

At the equator 'museum' 

We also visited the Jardin Botanico where we saw beautiful roses, cacti and orchids, then the vivarium, where we saw beautiful snakes, iguanas, frogs and spiders.

After that, we decamped back to the old town, to the noisy and young Secret Garden hostel, to get ready for a week up the jungle...

View from the Secret Garden bar

When we came back we had another couple of days around Quito, going up the Teleferico cable car for some good views of the city.

Lots more churches, orchids and Quito virgens here...

After that, it was off down to Puerto Lopez with Emma, D and Cody, to see some whales, and a slightly rough boat trip to the Isla De Plata (the "poor man's Galapagos"), which was home to lots of blue-footed boobies and red-chested frigate birds.

Much more Puerto Lopez here...


From there, we headed to Guayaquil, with Emma heading back to Quito. I'm stopping in today and the others have gone into town, where there is some fiesta or another going on.