For the past couple of weeks I have been mainly continuing with my work with the organisation called FODI. Monday involved a mini medical brigade to a community called Stuntstunts, which was fairly developed. We went with a doctos form the Ministry Of Health here, and he gave lectures on TB and general parasites, which was really interesting. It seems that the biggest spread of TB out here is the Shuar´s custom of spitting! Having seen it myself for the past 2 months, I can fully understand as they do spit absolutely everywhere..nice. Aside from the lectures to the community, which he was very good at doing enthusiastically, he administered a few injections and taught me about calculating dose volumes for patients using their age, weight, action time of drug etc, which was really interesting.

On Tuesday, went to a community called Santa Maria, which was quite deep in the rainforest. We got the bus there, well most of the way, as some kind of road had been fashioned. I spent the whole day sitting in a little building drinking hot chocolate, whilst a tropical storm ripped parts of the corrugated roof off! Unfortunately we had to walk 2 hours back in the rainn but Milton raised the interesting topic of c*** fighting, which turns out to be the number one sport here in the Oriente. There are c*** fights every Saturday and Sunday night, and they have major competitions involving loads of cash. Milton´s dad was a breeder and had 70 in his house. He told us of the legend of El Español, a fierce white one, which one every fight. It became so well known that people would refuse to fight it as they knew it would win, so the dad painted it black so that people wouldn´t notice. He strapped a shard of bone to it´s beak so that it could inflict more damage and he told us all about it´s tough training regime. Being curious, I asked how this monstrous chicken had died... I wish I hadn´t asked. An emotional half hour story came out of that innocent question involving a tragic fight night, disability and eventually being eaten. An odd day indeed!

Wednesday and Thursday involved lazing about as the people we work with decided to sleep in, typical. Anyway it was 2 days off so I didn´t mind.

Friday was another monster of a day that absolutely nackered me. The idea was to take some furnitur to a community that we have already been to, called Playas de Macumas. However they all thought that a normal open back chevrolet would be more than enough for 3 huge cupboards, a cooker, a table, some chairs amongst various other items...and us. I have never seen such dodgy tying of furniture to the back of a vehicle. Not only did I have a very uncomfortable ride, sitting on the roof of the car for 2 hours, but the furniture, as I had predicted, almsot fell off on the road, causing mayhem. To makes matters worse, the heavens decided to open and I got soaking wet and freezing cold. Eventually we offloaded the furniture and headed off to another community to see some ´´traditional´´ dance. To my horror there was some American lady there, furiously pushing a video camera into everyone´s faces. I made the decision to grab some meat from the food table and run away from her. What followed was an hour and a half of football in the heat, wearing a woolen jumper and hiking boots...a really bad choice.

On Saturday Anna and I decided to travel Riobamba which involved a 5 hour bus journey through rivers, and a narrowly missed landslide. Riobamba is a beautiful town and the nightlife is huge. The streets were packed with people for about 3 days (being the weekend). I had a massive chinese, which went down a treat, and then went out to hit the Ecuadorian clubs. It was good fun being around some life, considering the traquility of Macas, but we soon tired and returned to the hotel as we had a 5 o´clock wake up on Sunday. We took a train called the Devil´s Nose Ride whick skirts rather precariously around some vertical rock faces. As I expected the train was full of tourists, which oddly make me really angry when I come across them. I have become so used to being one of the only foreigners for miles around (in Macas that is), that I almost feel like a local, hence seeing tourists is slightly annoying. Anyway, the train was good fun, alot of hanging about at first, but it soon got going, and I sat on the roof of the train going through the mountains. It was boiling hot and the countryside was laden with cacti, some beginning to flower. Soon after the train ride, we headed down to some Inca Ruins at a town called Ingapirca. We met some Japanese people on the bus and I thought I would, rather embarassingly, try out my very very limited Japanese. Luckily it went down well and the next two hours became a Japanese lesson from a girl called Keiko, who has now invited me to Tokyo in December. I really don´t understand how the world works, I never thought I woudl be learning Japanese in Ecuador! The ruins were interesting and the countryside was stunning, surrounded my llamas. That night we headed back to Riobamba and to my delight the bus had Rambo II, III and IV playing in a row, I was I heaven.

The next day, things took a turn for the worse and our trip had to be cut short. Anna fell ill and at one point her temperature hit 40! Monday turned into a hellish day of buses, taxis and general feeling ill. Unfortunately I soon contracted whatever she had, as has everyone else, and so the past two days have been relaxing in the house. The one benefit from all this was that I cleaned my room, the first time sicne I came to Ecuador!