Heya

Sitting in an internet cafe in the Mariscal area at the minute, its in the new town and is quite touristy which hasn´t been a bad thing because we managed to have a really nice lunch which was catered towards tourists.

This morning we met with the people from the galapagos project who gave us air tickets etc and information on how to get to Isla Isabella in the Galapagos. We get picked up at 6 tomorrow morning and should be in the galapagos by 12 tomorrow, that is the main island. We stay there tomorrow and then take several boats to our island the next day, wednesday. We were given student i.ds to use at the airport to get cheaper flights, and they spelt matthew´s name wrong, gave us both the same birthday and passport number and put our nationality as british - its as well we have our normal student cards with us.

It´s strange here, so different to home. It´s pretty warm at the minute - matthews sitting to the left of me with a face like a tomato from not wearing suncream. It´s really interesting the difference between the indigenous ecuadorians and the spanish ecuadorians - they even look different facially aswell as dressing differently. We´ve found the people quite nice so far, the two girls that run the hostal we´re at are lovely though its hard to communicate. If we were staying in the mariscal area of quito instead of the floresta neighbourhood we probably wouldn´t have this problem.

One of the funniest things we´ve notice is that most of the number plates on cars are ´POO....´and then a number. There´s people on the edge of roads selling strings of oranges and melons, and between this and the bus drivers everywhere is really really noisy. The cities surrounded by loads of big mountains and from the air it looks amazing. Going to try and get some photos.

May not update for a few days because the internets apparently bad on galapagos. Its pretty bad here so i´m just assuming it doesn´t work at all. Have to head now and get a load of money to do us a few weeks because theres no banks on any of the galapagos islands.

Miss yous and talk soon

Lisa xox

p.s thanks for the strawberry laces mum and dad