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Well, where do I start?
After our initial stay in Quito we headed to Puerto Lopez which was a sweet little beach town which we used as a base to visit the Cloud Forest and the ´poor man´s Galapagos island´.
The island was amazing - we saw some Boobies (these are birds, we were not on a nudist beach!). They were such comical little things with bright blue feet and funny expressions. I´ve been on a mission to get pictures of my bear all over South America and tried to position little Edward Bear next to the birds for a photo, when the bloody thing tried to fly away with it!!! We also saw the Albatross, which are apparently every bird watchers dream since they are so rare. We then got the opportunity to go snorkling off the boat and saw many different kinds of tropical fish - one of which took a great big bite out of my leg (I know, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around as well!) Stung me for days after. Bloody thing. On the boat trip back to Puerto Lopez we saw a pod of whales- four adults and a baby. The sight was truly amazing - they were dipping in and out of the water near our boat, spraying water and murmuring to one another.
On our visit to the cloud forest the next day we took horses along for our eight hour trek. Mine was a female who appeared to be called ´Mulo´(meaning horse) Or atleast that was what they shouted at the thing as they whipped it to make her move along. We had two tour guides for the trek and were also accompained by two of the local dogs who followed us around for the entire visit. We were a bit like a ´Noah´s Arc´tribe with 2 tour guides, 2 tourists, 2 horses and 2 dogs. It was certainly wet enough! There seemed to be some ongoing fued between the dogs and the horses- the dogs liked to tease the horses by biting and annoying them (which was oh so fun for us novice riders tring to keep ourselves steady on the bloody things!) And the horses liked to take any opportunity they could to kick the dogs in the stomach! The ground was really muddy and I didn´t feel particularly safe travelling horseback up and down steep slopes verging on angles of 90 degrees with the horses slipping everywhere or bolting every now and then to attack the Bloody dogs! Nethertheless, the trip turned out to be really interesting with great views over the forest from the top and sightings of lots of wildlife including snakes and a tarantula! After the trek, the guides took us to their house for tea served by his mother, which was a nice experience and gave us an insight into the life of the locals.
After Puerto Lopez, we headed back to Quito, then onto Tena in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. I don´t think it dawned on me that we were in such a tropical place until we arrived at our cabanas. We had to cross a little bridge and above it was the biggest nest of Bloody spiders (I know i´m saying Bloody a lot but it´s called for!) it was like ten different webs, ten sized as big as the ones in England with about ten spiders sat merrily inside which were about ten million sizes bigger than any of the spiders I had previously had the pleasure of meeting. Needless to say, I sprinted quickly across that Bloody bridge!
Arriving at the cabanas I was particularly reassured by Dean who informed me that scorpians and tarantulas often inhabit the rooms. I vowed never ever to leave anything on the floor and to dress head to toe in a chemical protection suit.
On our first day in the Amazon we hooked up with some American guys who were staying at the cabanas the same length of time as us and were great fun - kevin, a teacher like us, and Ricky, a scientist who tested birth control methods on monkeys... Anyway, the four of us were taken out daily by Alex who was like James Bond of the jungle. The first day we visited an animal rehabilitation centre which was really amazing. We saw many strange and wonderful creatures, many of which had been mistreated by people trying to keep them as pets. The aim of the centre was to try to rehabilitate creatures back into the wild. There were monkeys, an anaconda, parrots and a particularly cute little trumpet bird called ´Trumpy´ who was really sociable and followed us around during our entire trip. Perhaps the most amazing experience we had there was in the gift shop where I spotted a plate with a tarantua decoration on it. Pointing it out to the boys, we quickly realised that it wasn´t a decoration. Just a tarantula that had wandered in from outside. I was reminded once again just exactly where we were!
On the second day we took a trek to a local tribe then in the afternoon went tubing down the river which was great fun. In the evening we went on a night hike which was just sooooo impressive. We saw so many different types of spiders (I was thrilled as you can imagine! Especially since we were roaming around in the dark and there were so Blinking many of the things - plus Dean kept touching me on the back of the head with a twig which was so not cool Dean!) We saw red spiders, spiders with claws which were the size of your hand, beetles, cochroaches, grasshoppers, a frog, a scorpian, a stick insect and a snake. I was particularly distrurbed when Alex would say ´Mucho Toxico´meaning ´Very poisonous´, - he seemed to say this to describe every insect we Bloody saw which was particularly unsettling.
Anyway, on our last day in the Amazon (today) we went canyoning, which involved climbing waterfalls and squeezing through canyons which were inhabited by hundreds of bats which like to fly at your head!
Today we ventured back to Quito and i must say I am grateful to be sleeping in a bed I don´t have share with insects - Dean woke me at 3am last night screaming. some big beetle grasshopper thing had bitten him. Tomorrow we will fly to Peru to begin our overland tour and the begiining of our next adventure!
Bye for now, Claire xxx
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