Hi All,

Well sorry it´s been a while. We´ve been in some isolated places.

Well we´re now in Banos in southern ecuador, famous for it thermal springs and toffee that you can see being ade by hand on poles. It´s a really beautiful town surrounded by mountains and an active volcano which feeds it´s hot thermal springs, we´re about to go for a 4 hour horse ride so I think some lazing in them afterwards will be needed.

well last time we wrote we were on our way to Villa De Leyva. It ended up being a really pretty town and was nice and relaxing after the hussle and bussle of bogota. we spent a couple of days there relaxing and having a lok at the local sites, which included a fully intact fossil of a prehistoric beast resembling a Crocodile and some stone phallic monoliths, not unlike stone henge only smaller.

Opps, we forgot to mention a fantastic trip to an underground salt cathedral! Well this place was incredible, it was 100 metres or so underground in a salt mine, carved out naves big enough for 5000 people. It was truely amazing, what's more amazing though is it is the second one they have built the first one was closed down as part of it collapsed. (see phoots attached) Got back to Bogota and sorted out our tickets to fly to quito. To cut a long stroy short we had a bit of nightmare and it took them two days to reissue our tickets. We flew out on the Saturday, after having our bags xrayed twice, through one metal detector and a hand search of our person and our day packs. Our arival in quito involved alot less fanfare and we were through customs and out the door of the airport in a matter of minutes.

Got to the secret Garden hostel, which had been recomended by Duncan and Darcy, the couple we had spent a bit of time with in Bogota and on the coast. It had a great roof top terrace with a fantastic view of the old town. When we got upstairs who did we find but Duncan and Darcy, we ended up having a few to many that night.

Sunday we had a lazy day and got prepared for our spanish lessons that were to start on the Monday.

Got up Monday morning bright and early and vamos we set off for the first of our spanish lessons. We decided to have four hours of lessons a day for a week. Well our spanish is still terrible but we now know how to say "I don´t understand!" Hopefully the basics we´ve picked up will help us as we travel but it takes alot longer than a week to speak the language.

Following our week of lessons we decided to head up to Otavalo a few hours north of Quito. Otavalo is famous for its market which is the largest indigenous market in Ecuador. Our hostel was a few km away from the town so we had a pleasant stroll, (All down hill!) passing several farms and saying Hola to the locals along the way. The market was huge and what impressed Ian and I the most, after getting lost and doing over the whole market not just the tourist part, was that the locals were all up for buying jeans and t-shirts and anything western they could lay their hands on while the tourists enjoyed wandering around buying all the goods the "locals wear!"

That night in the hostel we had a local band come in and play. They were very good, a bit different to the one we had at the secret garden, a trio all dressed in ponchos etc, This appeared to be a whole family (males only of course) all dressed again the local wear of jeans and t-shirts!!!

Sunday we had arranged to go horse riding but awoke to find it had been cancelled. so instead we headed off for a leisurely stroll around some crater lakes. We got a cab up to them and what started out as leisurely turned into a mad scramble to get to the top of a bluff, we had managed to lose the path, or as I beileve, there was no more path and most sane people turn around when the path ends. once atop the bluff though we had beautiful views in all directions. On the way back it decided to start pissing it down so for the last 45 inutes or so we plodded along in torrential down pour.

Monday we caught the bus back to Quito, as Tuesday we were off to the cloud forest, and a hostel called the Magic Roundabout. Well that bus trip turned into a mini disaster. The place is in the middle of nowhere and most bus drivers know where to let the gringos off, unfortunately ours didn't, not that we found this out till afterwards, after telling the guy Las palmas we sat back and expected to be told where to get off, after quite a while Ian and I began thinking that we may have passed the place, Ian went up and spoke to them and it appeared that we had plassed it about an hour ago. Aftger frantically stopping a bus headed in the other direction we did a quick changeover in the middle of nowhere and headed back to the hostel, this time our driver had been informed where to let us off and finally we managed to drag ourselves into the hostel about 6 and a half hours after we had set off.

It was well worth it though and we spent the next few days doing nothing much but relaxing. Ian managed to go on a 3 hour walk up to some waterfalls, I managed about an hours walk to the first waterfall but that was about it for the three days.

Then off back to quito for the night and then another bus ride down here to Banos, where I think we´ll be staying for a couple more days before attempting, a spectacular train journey called "The Devils Nose", that is know for accidents and derailments , it´s meant to be incredible though.

We´ve managed to get some photos sorted and if all goes well you should be able to see them in a few days.

Hope your all well, and we´d love to hear whats going on Ian and Megs