Today was my day off and waking up to some sun light was a rare treat here in Otavalo. I had heard of a waterfall just outside of town called Peguche Cascadas. I read it was only an hour walk so after breakfast I packed a few things and set off for the waterfalls. On the way I stopped to watch a parade that was happening through the main streets - this week is festival week for Otavalo and there are all kinds of things happening around the city. Lots of people ar...

Today I woke up with a full blown cold, eyes watering and sneezing repetitively. I did my best to get warm but my body would not warm up. At about I continued painting and did the finishing touches on my Charlie Chaplin piece - it came out really nice in the end. The second piece I started today was a coat hanger silhouette with two hats and an umbrella hanging off it. This piece took a lot of measuring and lining up and by the end of the day I had just managed t...

Today I woke ready for a day of work - haha well what could be considered work in very laymen terms. Today I was to draw and hopefully start painting an image of Charlie Chaplin in one of the hostel rooms. After a walk around the town I started at about 10am and marked everything up and got dimensions sorted before stopping for lunch. After a long lunch I started sketching the image of Charlie Chaplin - it is here I realized how much I used to love drawing and ar...

Today I had to be up early again as a group of the students had promised to walk me to a famous church here in Ipiales. We were to meet at 7:30am and I arrived on time but unfortunately no one else did - arghh Spanish Time. At 8am we started the 8km walk out to La Vayus, the walk was quite long and we didn't arrive until nearly 10am - the time when the students were supposed to be back at class. It was a steep walk down the hill and into the Valley where the chur...

Today it was back to school for me so I was up early and readying myself for a day of teaching at the English Institute. Classes started at 8am and the kids in the morning were mostly between the ages of 14 and 19, their English level was reasonable and they could understand a small amount of what I was saying. We talked about Australia, Colombia and things of interest. At morning break Alvaro cooked up eggs and sausages for us which was a very nice treat. The ne...