ideas for cheap stuff

First off I´d like to say big up to one of my favourite comedians David O´Doherty on winning the Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Can´t wait to see him live again! Also, just heard on Phantom FM that there´s going to be a sixth book written in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by an Irish author. Not too sure how to feel about that. Tonge has left for the Emerald Isle, but what a last week to send her off!
It was all go since I last updated. The train journey down and back up the Devil´s Nose sitting on top of the train was well worth the lengthy wait we´d to do that morning. I would suggest anyone else who wanted to do it to do it from Riobambe down and not return because we got stuck doing most of the beautiful journey from Alousi to Riobambe inside the train because rain usually sets in when evening falls, and then darkness fell because the train was delayed due to derailments, something you can rely on. I was suffering from a mild case of Deli belly too, so I slept extremely well that night. Morning of Thursday 4th September we made our way to Puerto Lopez to do the whale watching and tour of Isla del Plata on the Friday. It was a fantastic day and something I´d strongly recommend to everyone. Isla del Plata is another island known as poor man´s Galapogos. The name means Island of Silver, and this name is derived from the birds´ guano that covers the cliffs and shines in the sunlight. This shit isn´t as precious as silver, but near enough and is shipped to Peru quite a bit, as Ecuador doesn´t really need it, where its used as fertilizer, it can also be used as gun-powder. Powerful shit! Season for whale watching ends at the beginning of October so we were wondering if we´d see many. It took some patience, but we were extremely lucky and got to watch them leaping out of the water, diving, and generally mucking about. Course my camera was useless at getting pics, (nothing to do with my photography skills!) so we´re hoping to get copies from the French dudes we gave our e-mail address to. We got talking to a British girl and had dinner with her before hopping an overnight bus to Quito.
We got there early Saturday morning and promptly fell asleep in our hotel room. Then we went out to book our jungle trek. We researched all options that were community owned and run with the profits going back to the community that appealed to us on the internet, and went to book our 5 day, 4 night tour, with transfers, for Monday to Friday. Unfortunately, by the time we went out all the damn tour operator offices were closed! We hadn´t expected that at all, because, in our experience, tour operators never closed till 18:00 or much later in many cases. We were a bit shocked and starting to shit a brick when, luckily, we found that the Sani Lodge office was open, but this was only because the girl who works in the office was there giving a kid a private English lesson. Phew! We booked the camping option and decided to bus it there to save money and have a little more adventure by staying in the jungle without walls. We were so relieved we celebrated by vegging in front of the tv. Next morning we walked into the Old Town, having spent the previous day in the New Town, and were happy to find that the whole place pedestrianised more so than usual due to the fact that the bi-monthly ciclopaseo . This is an organised event on the second and last Sunday of each month, which closes one of the city´s main thoroughfares (Av Amazonas) and most of the Old Town to traffic allowing safe cycling/roller-blading/jogging. A really fantastic venture that I´d love to see repeated in Dublin, among other places. We listened to music in the main square, visited a gallery, had a Baileys coffee, collected our gear and went for a gorgeous Indian before boarding the bus to Coca, where we arrived 10 hours later and I fell asleep in a hammock with the tame monkeys, parrots and tucans mucking about. Our tour was late setting off in the boat downriver because the plane carrying the other 4 people on our tour was delayed. The journey down the River Napa was beautiful, and quite a fitting name cos I did nap (hah, got ye again!). After 3 hours we changed boats to head down a very shallow river with night falling all around us. It was a beautiful introduction to the area. The jungle sounds increased as darkness came, and we spotted the shining eyes of caimans in the lagoon that Sani Lodge is set in. We went straight to the lodge to have dinner as we were so late. Tonge and I were set to stay in the camping site with the French couple (who increasingly annoyed us, for ornithologists they were ridiculously loud, and rude to boot), but since we´d gotten in at night the Lodge manager said we´d all have one night in a lodge. Oh, we were so grateful for the late arrival then! The cabins were a good bit more than the camping site, so we wouldn´t have had the experience if there were more people on our tour. They were beautiful cabins, and the beds were ridiculously comfortable, with gorgeous mosquito nets around them. After dinner we sat on the porch listening to the sounds of the jungle, when Tonge headed in to bed I walked out to look at the stars, unfortunately where I stopped, in the dark with my torch off, was where the leaf-cutter ants crossed. Damned things bit me a bit on my sandaled toes, and when I got back to the porch and turned on my light there were damned tonnes of them on my trousers. Bloody big things too, though not as big as the bastard Conga ants I´d see the next day. Anyway, that made me decide that bed was in order.
Tonge and I weren´t used to such a small group, but we, thankfully didn´t spend much of the 4 coming days with the French couple, only two Canadian ladies, Debbie and Reenie. After breakfast the next morning we went downriver to do a trek with Lorena, our guide from Quito who spoke English and has been there for a few months, and Elsabio, our local guide, who comes from the Sani Isla community who run the lodge, and Selva lodge. On our way we saw a caiman in daylight. It started to rain (totally unexpected, bloody rainforests!) on our way by canoe to start the trek, and continued for much of the time we were on our first walk. The sound of the rain in the forest was amazing, then it changed so quickly to silence when the rain stopped pounding, and bit by bit you could hear animals starting up, the first that you could hear, of course, was the damned mosquitos. We learned a lot about the medicinal properties of forest plants and trees. There was also one with a particularly spikey bark that apparently was used to motivate people who were lazy in the community. They were tied to it. Ouch! That´d get ya off your arse quick smart! The sap of a particular tree was used to help heal cuts and wounds, when the sap was dripping out it looked like the tree was bleeding, it was so red. There were walking palms, which can move up to a metre in a year in search of sunlight! They have long stilt like roots, and when it wants to move towards sunlight it grows new roots in that direction and lets the old roots die. I simply love trees, but ya just couldn´t make up a nomadic one! There was a beautiful huge tree, that locals believe little people, something like leprechauns, live in. When the rain had stopped and we were walking along I noticed that there were bugs in Tonge´s hair. When I got one out I noticed another one. Lorena shot back to us, in case the bugs were biters or egg layers (yuck!) and said they were honey bees. She took another one out, but Tonge kept saying she could feel another one, which Lorena finally got out. God, I wish I´d videoed that! We saw different types of frogs, lizards and insects, then the Howler Monkeys started up. Long time since I´ve heard them! After a tasty 3 course lunch we were paddled across to our campsite (yep, had to get a boat across all the time!), there were some beautiful turtles out lazing in the sun, but the French couple wouldn´t shut-up talking, though I asked, and the turtles slid back into the water. We rested for an hour or two before we headed to visit the tree tower to look out over the rainforest´s canopy. Our guides brought an excellent telescope and we watched out for birds and mammals, unfortunately, it was a very hot afternoon, so we didn´t get a fantastic view, but we saw beautiful toucans. We walked back to the lodge in the dark checking out all the interesting night-time bugs and Night Monkeys. After dinner we headed across to the campsite, on the way seeing lots of scary caiman eyes shining in the torchlight and settled in to the night sounds.
Wednesday morning we were up at 04:30 to head to Yasuni National Park to see Parrot clay licks. Parrots eat seeds and digest them, they don´t simply pass them through their systems as other birds and mammals do. Seeds that the parrots eat, when chewed and digested, would be poisonous and harm the birds´ digestive system, but the clay they eat counteracts the danger. We sat for 2 hours at the first clay lick, but unfortunately something kept scaring them off, then we went to another one, which was further into the jungle. First we watched a mother and baby, which looked somewhat like owls but with sharper beaks, sleeping in a tree, and then caught some other beautiful birds, and then we went to the clay lick. On our walk there we saw a beautiful red Amazonian squirrel and then some night monkeys sleeping in the hollow of a tree. We had to be patient yet again at this clay lick because something had scared them off, so I´d a bit of a snooze, but awoke to the birds starting to descend to the clay lick. It was funny how they all descended bit by bit together. When the first one set foot on the clay lick, suddenly tonnes followed. We watched for a half hour or so, with the telescope giving some great up close views. The sound was simply tremendous! After the clay lick we went to visit Elsabio´s house and family. The lodge had packed a gorgeous lunch for us, and we sat around the table chatting to the kids, and indulging in some local chicha made from yuca, a new one for us. The house was lovely, and it was great to see the way the family lived. Debbie decided to feed the dog, and give the sick pig some herbal medicine, and we were off on our way back to the lodge until nearer dinner time, where we were joined by an American couple who were on their honeymoon. Then we went out to see caimans´, it was a really clear night, so they weren´t out in droves, but we got to see a really massive one. Wouldn´t want him too near the canoe! Tonge and I stayed up chatting with Lorena, and got on really well. She´s a real free spirit.
Next morning was our last full day so we didn´t get up too early, but we did do a 4 hour walk along the way seeing spider monkeys swinging through the trees, getting stuck in the mud, seeing the horrid bugs that lay eggs under your skin, which start eating you straight away, encountering a nest of ants that you would not like to fall on your head because they immediately go for you ears to make home and eating lemon ants, that taste surprisingly of lemon! We were all quite shattered after that! I was really happy that day because I got to see turtles sunning themselves. One had butterflies buzzing around it, and because they must´ve gotten to him he ducked his head into his shell and then emerged slowly. Then there were some on the campsite deck that I watched for a bit before hanging in a hammock. It was a particularly hot day, so we had to protect ourselves from the sun in the canoe. Hot sun isn´t the best for coaxing mammals and birds out, but it was a gorgeous afternoon paddling about. After dinner Lorena, Tonge and I got down to some serious drinking and chatting. It was a great evening but we were up until 02:30, and poor Lorena must´ve been wrecked the next day when we boarded the boat back to Coca. I was so dying to go to the toilet on the boat journey, and they kept stopping to beg petrol from people. Lorena had told us that they never seem to buy petrol for themselves from Coca, they only buy it off others along the river. It was very annoying though with the pain in my bladder growing, so when we had to stop on a spit of sand waiting for someone to take pity on us only 5 minutes boat journey from Coca I just had to jump out to pee. Luckily I´d my big poncho, so I held it for the French girl, who was also in pain, and she in turn held it for me. Tonge told me when I got back that loads of tourists had taken pictures of us! We reached Quito on Friday night, and went straight to bed. Saturday Tonge had to get lots of last minute stuff done, and that night we went out on the town. It was a great night. Sunday morning we were a bit worse for wear, and that afternoon I went out to the airport with Tonge. Unfortunately, I forgot to take one of her bags out of the taxi, and some her presents were lost. Feel real bad, but if I get the opportunity I´ll replace them. After she left I went back into town and started researching what to do next and contacting CouchSurfers who I´ve been been meeting up with over the last few days. I´ve done a city tour, and visited the Middle of the World, standing either side of the equator, but my damn camera didn´t work, someone else took a photo for me, if I ever get it. The line that´s made in the park there to denote the equator is apparently 270 metres off. Amazingly you weigh less on the equator due to something science can explain but my eyes would glaze over if I tried to explain. Its only about 0.3% less, but sure a girl will take what she can get! Doesn´t look like I´ll be able to get a volunteer opportunity around here, as every company that has replied to me requires a month´s pledge to stay and I need time to make my way to Lima for my flight. Oh wait, yeah! Just checked my e-mail and I can volunteer with a re-building effort in Pisco, Peru run by Without Borders/Sin Fronteras that I heard about through CS for however long I want, so I think I´ll just take an enjoyable 2 weeks, divide the time between Ecuador and getting down to Lima, then leave my big bag in Lima and go down to Pisco for 2 weeks or so before my flight to Montevideo, Uruguay on 24th October to meet up with Lucia and Jonathan. Yeah! I got the makings of a plan! I was planning on heading to Baños today but I just read that QuitoFest is starting Friday for the weekend, and there´s a party going on at the Magic Roundabout in Las Palmas, which is about 3 hours from Quito, plus tonight there´s an outdoor jazz concert in the Teatro Plaza. They have a direct bus leaving Saturday morning from a hostel in the Old Town, so may go along to that or stay in Quito for the festival…I´ll let ye know how it pans out. I´ll probably be back in Quito again for 2 or 3 days to meet up with Lorena, a really great chica who was our tour guide in the jungle. Its her birthday, and this week and it´d be great to spend some time with her again. Then it´ll be off to Baños where I hope to visit a little town outside of it that my mate Dan Song directed me to before making my way back into Peru and making my way down to Pisco. Right now I´m off to enjoy the sun here in Quito. I´m really loving this city. Its beautiful, easy to get around, there´s tonnes to do and the people are simply gorgeous. Old Town has fantastic architecture.

Ahoy mehearties, don´t forget that that thar Talk Like A Pirate Day is upon us again this Friday 19th September. And for those buccanneers out thar then the next day (20th September) be Walk Like A Pirate Day. Join in or you´ll be walkin´ the plank to Davy Jones´ Locker! We´ll be having none of that thar parlay!