Hola from Ecuador

It's been awhile since we wrote. Unfortunately our last few days in Quito were busy as we were trying to make travel arrangements. We had school for half of every day and stuck around home for meals or for Lukas's sake a lot so didn't have a lot of time to go off and use the internet.

Bernd also broke a salad bowl and it took him [no joke[ two days to buy a new one - he tramped from one store to the next, but market stalls and shops here are not quite like at home,especially when you don't know your way around.

We went to the jungle for four days after Quito and stayed at a pretty upscale lodge. It was right out of Gilligan'sIsland / lots of rustic, homemade furniture and fixtures; no windows, just screens and lots of jungle noises, especially at night. It was semi-jungly, I'd say - we learned a lot about the medicinal use of local plants and had some great experiences but the only really exciting to see animals were in an animal rescue centre - except the wild monkeys we saw at our lodge.

To that end, we have written a list of LUkas's firsts that captures our experiences to date. We are now in Banos, in the hills between the jungle and the Andes. It is the Banff of Ecuador / muchos gringos and souvenir shops, but it's fun. Our hostal is quiet, has a pool, looks onto a mountain and waterfall and is only 22$ per night / after our all/inclusive jungle lodge splurge this is our kind of place!

I will attempt to post some pictures, the two I did before were an accident - I had file names but couldn't see the pictures, so randomly chose two, which were the worst! Hope all is well back in Canada. I haven't seen or heard the news since we left. I'm sure Bernd will check it online and let me know if anything drastic happens. All the best to everyone. Tia

p.s. as I edit this there are no line spaces so I'm adding some - hope it won't be double now.

LUKAS'S LIST OF FIRSTS being in cars that ignore red lights

/ never wearing seatbelts / darting half way across traffice, then the next half / sitting in Spanish classes for four hours per day - how the teacher succeeded I have no idea- Lukas hasn't been too outgoing in his Spanish use / being left at home to put himself to bed [in Quito we went out and left the boys with the dad - who is the most uninvolved parent. He slept while the kids watched TV 'til 11 and then put themselves to bed - clothes and all(. We actually had many opportunities to leave LUkas in the triple-gated home. The dad's store is attached to the house and in the day there is a house-keeper/cook so there was always someone to watch over the kids. THey just watched cartoons in Spanish anyway. / drinking freshly squeezed juice every day / picking oranges from a tree / helping pick banana, cocoa, coffee, papaya plants / tubing on a river - we tubed on the Rio Nap, a fairly quickly flowing river in the jungle / sleeping under a mosquito net / living at 10 000 feet / driving across the highest highway in Ecuador at 14 000 feet / sitting at the bar ordering pop and charging it to our room - no mom or dad with him - this was at the Gilligan's Island lodge / ordering take out beer at the bar for mom and dad and delivering it to their cabana / seeing monkeys in the wild / seeing tarantulas the size of an adult's palm. we had a resident tarantula on the outside post of our cabin and Bernd even let a tarantula walk up his arm / swimming in a waterfall pool- we hiked up to some falls and swam and sat under the falls / using kerosene lanterns at night - our lodge had no power in the cabins

That about sums things up for now. Hasta luego!