It has been a whole week since I last left a blog so there is, as per usual, a huge amount to catch up on. I´ll start with Saturday night which involved watching a really bad play in colloquial Latin American spanish about women. It was the national day of women, apparently, and so I was forced to endure what I can only describe as a nightmare:bad acting, bad storyline and uncomfortable theatre seats. The only excitement of the night was that the stage caught fire, unfortunately this was soon put out. We sneakily left the theatre, bought some beer and headd home, only to find that the bloody rat had taken all the cheese off the traps and not set them off, he had literally polished the metal! In my rage I set up 2 more traps with thick fruit attached, covered in nutella and with cheese juice on top. The next morning, having survived 2 weeks here, to my delight I discovered a rat..dead. We ended up leaving it in the kitchen for 3 days as a warning sign for all other rats.. Sunday was a very chilled day involving the usual internet cafe, listening to Ricky Gervais and buying a very strong spirit called Cristal (mandarin flavour). Tony and I siphoned our way through a bottle and a half, leaving me not entirely compus mentus. The Chilenan girls, as always, decided to play cards, which somehow develpoed into a drinking game involving foam and chilli powder- I didn´t know what was going on. I soon walked miles to Tropiburger to consume 2 greasy burgers, which didn´t really help any already sick feeling. I had a hellish night due to dehydration. Being idiots we had bought spirit but no water, and you can´t drink the water in the tap here, so I must have spent 2 hours that night desperately searching the house for any drop of non-alcoholic/non-contaminated liquids. On Monday morning I woke up half an hour late only to find that my phone was half an hour behind so I was actually an hour late. I didn´t get to work until 8:40, meaning to start at 7:30 and as I suspected no-one even noticed. It is so chilled out here that some of the doctor´s hadn´t even arrived yet. Nothing of interest happened that day. There was a convulsing boy, suspected to be due to domestic violence (brain damage): the harsh reality of indigenous tribes. I see a case of domestic violence in children almost everyday from broken arms to haemorrages. The other excitement of the day was the arrival of an American emergency doctor from Alabama, who was with his church group. I acted as his translator for a while but, like me, his work was limited, due to the lack of patients that day. The rest of my work consisted of watching Joga TV football clips with the doctors, playing computer games oh and more interestingly I felt a pregnant woman´s stomach and could feel the head of the baby and listened to it´s heart beat which was quite nice. At the Centro Cultural in the afternoon, Melissa asked me to help with her new english classes, which is slightly disconcerting as on of the classes conists of 25 kids my age. It was good fun though and after work I had to run through another hefty tropical storm getting soaked, as there were puddles that strecthed across whole roads. I quickly went to see a girl called Marielena who lives near by to wait for the rain to subside, before continuing with the usual routine for the evening. Joanne, or La Negra as we call her, whipped up some really nice pasta with tuna and put us all to bed, she is essentially the really chilled out mother of the house!

Tuesday was a morning of bad luck. When I woke up I somehow managed to knock a lightbulb onto the floor sending shards of glass everywhere, I still havn´t cleared it up and probably won´t. There was also no water so I couldn´t wash-this is a regular occurence here. Today at the hospital were the usual road accidents, a dog bite, appendicitis, plenty of pregnant women and the suturing of a man´s face, oh and an abcess in a woman´s breast as well, it looked really nasty. The afternoon consisted of English classes again: 3 until 4 is the little ones, and 4 until 5 the older ones. I helped with general pronunciation and learning of numbers etc. Melissa is a really good teacher and manages to lead the class pretty well, she even puts the cheeky students in their place-one of them being a really cocky 30yr old who is certain he is fluent in English, couldn´t be further from the truth. That night I went for my first session at the gym I found. It is called ´´It´s Time Gym´´-what a name. It is basically jsut someones garage kitted out and I have never been to such a cool gym. It is run by two guys, one who used to be a competitive bodybuilder and one who is training to be. There are vintage posters of Arnie, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Lou Ferrigno and Lee Priest everywhere (there are only a few people who will actually know who they are!). My 1st session was free and I have never had such a hard session in my life. I now have a personal trainer, for free, who has assured me in 3 months he can seriously increase my size-we will see about that. The gym only costs $15 a month!! That is so cheap, escpecially since it is such a good service. I did pecs and tris that day and they have never hurt so much in my life. Poor Mel was being pushed by a female PT and couldn´t even walk afterwards-the guys here are serious. Afterwards went and had some really nice pineapple juice and went to bed.

Well today was the start of a mammoth 3 day stretch! I was off on my nect brigade to the rainforest. I had a massive breakfast followed by the usual lounging about at the airport waiting for the aeroplane. Rolando, some guy who works here, as put posion all over the house now so I hope the rats die soon. The plane this time had a 70´s feel to it, which made me slightly worried..lots of creme and brown and hilarious interior decoration. A guy from the Municipio came with us called Salvador and we headed off. I fell asleep in the aeroplane which was annoying as I wanted to look at the scenery. The village we flew to was called Uunt Suants and was really remote. It was less organised than the previous villaged and the houses pretty sporadic. We set up as normal and the first thing I noticed in the wire mesh, that forms the ´´window´´, was a huge but delicate tropical looking spider. It was really incredible-out of a nightmare. Before long I realised there was another one, this time yellow instead of green, then red, then silver...there were spiders in their hundreds and that is not an exaggeration. There were whole networks of web spanning 10-15 feet littered with the beasts. This was where I was sleeping! The villagers assured me that they are just normal house spiders, I beg to differ. I went ouside to the web mass to see the spiders and felt like Indiana Jones. However I quickly ran because as I carefully manouvered trhough the webs all the spiders started to abseil down to my head height, it was terrifying. We started our usual work of medicine giving anfçd injections. The villagers teeth are so bad as dental hygeine is non-existent. I think next time we are bringing a dentist to sort them out. I also love the way they wuite happily walk about in the mud abrefoot all day, sleep at night with their feet in that state and carry on the next day. By the time they reach 30 their feet are in a terrible state. I went for lunch at some woman´s hut, it still fascinates me how they construct these things, and recieved the dreaded chicha, whilst inhaling the smoke from the fire. Here the chicha is slightly different. It is more orange and they put sugar in it which is a definate improvement. It was quite different here, they had a cooker and a radio-pretty advanced as far as these villages go. I was handed a plate of rice with huge chunks of meat in. I spent a while trying to decipher the origin of this meat before discovering that it was attached to a shell. I asked what it was and the reply was armadillo! They said they shoot them at night in the rainforest and I spotted to guns hanging loosely by the radio. The best thing about the armadillo is that it tastes so nice-I couldn´t get enough. The rest of the day involved treating 52 patients, being bemused by the spanish man from Quito who was there (he had married a local-very rare), venturing into the rainforest a bit and then setting up my bed for the night. This was the worst part of the brigade as my bed inlvolved the hard wooden floor and not much else. I had a really think sleeping bag liner and constructed my first ,mosquito net which was exciting, but it was the most uncomfortbale night of my life- I though I was going to get pressure sores. Christian´s net and lantern are so useful so thankyou Christian! We had dinner in another hut that night, Salvador´s mother´s house. We ate the usual banana, yuca, really good tasting chicken and chica. I have become really accustomed to eating with my hands here, it is so much easier, I don´t know how I will ever return to cutlery! I had some Cristal that evening, read my book, saw a firefly and got furious at Anna for being a vegetarian-they just don´t exist out here. The villagers just don´t understand and get really offended when she refuses everything.

After a very long night, the most uncomfortable one of my life, I went for breakfast at Salvador´s mum´s house again: more chicken in soup mixed with our own supplied of bread with nutella. I think I went slightly delirious during the night as I found myself in boxers and socks standing in the mud outside watching the sky and pissing into the entrance of our house-the rainforest does wonders for the mind! After breakfast we packed our stuff and started our 8km walk through the rainforest to a small remote village called San Martin. The walk took an hour and was really good fun, plenty of streams to cross, alot of mud and large butterflies and plenty of steep inclines and declines. Wellington boots, I have discovered, are the best footwear one could possibly wear in the jungle. Anna didn´t bring any and needless to say was b*****ed. The rainforest is full of hidden spikes, thorns and stones which makes like difficult and sometimes I woudl sink in mud up to my knees. We even saw a vampire bat which was absolutely huge. We eventually arrived and marched through a small deforested area where cattle were grazing and entered what was a really beautiful village. At one river crossing I had to carry Anna across and to the locals amusement(the ones who were carrying our medicines-how I do not know, they are absolute troopers) I slipped over sending both of us flying. The village was full of ducklings and chicks and even a little parrot who sat in one of the huts. There were also loads of little puppies, who all look rather malnourished. We got to work and at lunch I had 6 caracha fish (I am finally working out how to eat them efficiently and remove the bones) and some banana as well as a delicious fruit called sapote which looks like a really large apple from the outside, dark green, but bright orange pulp on the inside. I went outside and suddenly sapote started falling from this 150ft tree, like cannonballs. I looked up and their was a child up there, right at the top perched on a branch knocking them off-I couldn´t believe it! It was one of the little girls I has spent most of the morning with and somehow she managed to scale this monster of a tree. To get up the first 20 feet she placed a bamboo pole against the trunk and used the spikes like rungs on a ladder, she wasn´t remotely scrared or tired for that matter. We carried on work as per usual that afternoon until we ran out of provisions which seems a bit unfair for those who come last but I guess they will get in first next time round. We soon headed back though pouring rain which my jacket kept off me nicely, althoug the amount I sweated easily compensated for it. It was much slippier on the way back and the mud alot more dangerous but we eventually made it back and had 2 tuna sandwiches and 2 nutella ones. We treated more patients and by the end of the day ahd treated 126 collectively. For dinner we had a really nice boneless fish called bagre amongst the usual other condiments. I saw loads of guniea pigs scuttling around in the corner, they are all for the slaughter! That evening we sat through what seemed like an eternity of a meeting, all in their language Shuar which makes it even harder to sit there. It was all saying thanks but they really do drag things out here.

Another ´´comfortable´´ night later, it was a freezing morning, and I found myself completely wrapped up in my liner, head as well, trying to circulate my breath as somekind of heating system. I had breakfast in a hut anf then got to work. By the 10 o´clock we had treated 146 patients collectively and had even started using the smae needle on different family members! The plane arrived and we hurriedly got on and zoomed away bac to Macas. Salvador stayed behind as we were transferring a man from the village by air to the hospital as he had been paralysed from the waist down, they think a cerebral haemorrahge. We chilled at the airport for ages and I asked some guy if there are any truly isolated tribes in Ecuador like in Venezuela and Brazil to which he replied that there are some tribes who are voluntarily isolated furthee north-east. Last year a group of missionaries travelled there and found crucified bodies everywhere, they were dealt the same fate as well! They are an incredibly violent tribe and the whole area is cordoned off as any travellers will be killed.

Suddenly everyone started to run out to the runway. Wondering what the commotion was I went out and someone told me the president (Rafael Correa) was arriving! We waited for ages and 4 planes came but no president, they were large planes as well. There were hundreds of soldiers with machine guns and lots of additional security. Finally a 5th plane arrived and it was indeed the president. It was virtually impossible to take a photograph as the security was so tight. He jumped in a car and went through the streets waving at everyone. All the roads were closed for him causing chaos in Macas, and I managed to get a very abd video of him! There was a point when I was 20ft away from him and there was noone between us, needless to say I waved. Once all the commotion had died down we took the patient, who had arrived ages before, but in the commotion forgotten, on a strecther in a Red Cross ambulance to the hospital.

Later that day, having not showered as there was no water, great 4 days without, Tony, Mel, Anna and I went in the back of Rolando´s chevrolet to a wildlife reserve 10 minutes away. It only cost $1 to get in and there were no perimeter fences or wardens and you could go right up to the animals. Monkeys were clambering around everywhere, forest pigs, little rodents, toucan, parrots, tortoises (which we picked up and took photos of pretending to eat them-bloody tourists we are) and a tapir (whom i stroked lots and gave some coke). The tapir´s hide was so thick and it had a really cool mini trunk. The best part by far though was the jaguar, it was beautiful. I timidly approached it through the wire and strokes its ear. To my surprise it loved it and started purring and stretching like a cat. I ended up kissing the jaguar, rubbing it´s belly (very soft fur) and generally having a great time. I eventually got pulled away to go and see the spider monkey who was an absolute mentalist, showing off and copying everything you do. The final excitement was a little boa whom I stroked but soon walked away as according to the guy who owned the place, their massive one had escaped and was somewhere in the garden!

I have almost completely caught up now, finally! Last nigth I went out with the Chilenan girls but the clubs are rubbish here so we headed back, all got into bed and watched The Specialist with Sylvester Stallone-that was mcuh more fun. I think we will watch Rambo 4 tonight. Anyway speak to you soon.