We're off again!!!

So I thought it would be a good time to get back on the blogging train!!


Before I begin with what we are up to right now, I'll give a brief overview of what we have been up to for the last nine months.


So last September we arrived at YWAM Pichilemu. YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission. (or in Spanish, JUCUM, Juventud con una mission), for those who dont know, they are a Christian missionary organisation that have been working all over the world for over 50 years, and have bases in over 200 countries. Before you can do anything in YWAM you must complete their flagship course called, "Discipleship Training School", or DTS. So that's what we did! It lasted until March this year, and we spent 3 months on the base in Pichilemu, Chile, and then we spent another 2 and a half months away on "Outreach" in Uruguay and the south of Brasil.


These 6 months were very impacting to us, in that we were able to really focus on our relationship with God, and really understand His character more. Rather than just base our faith on misconceptions on who God is. The God I connected with over this time was the true faithful God the Bible speaks about. We saw time and time again His faithfulness and love for us and others. We are looking forward to continue to seek after Him, and put more trust in Him each day.


After a quick 2 week visit home for Dez and Corey's wedding, we returned to Pichilemu to join the Counselling School. This had a focus on counselling ourselves, and looking at why we are the way we are. The course led us to take our own responsibility for our actions and attitudes, instead of blaming others and God for the way we are. The Course had some really solid teaching, and has helped us to improve our relationships with God and other people. We look forward to taking a lot of these principles home with us and developing them further as we step back into "real" life.


So we left the base earlier this month, and are now back on the backpackers scene for next few months!
It was funny because we had spent 6 months in Chile, yet hadn't seen any of the capital Santiago apart from the airport and bus terminal! So we decided to hit up Santiago for a few days, as some friends for Adelaide were also passing through!

"Coffee with legs"

One interesting thing happened while me and Jac were looking for a place to grab a coffee. We walked into this unassuming, normal-looking, coffee place. So we ordered our lattes and waiting by the benches (there were no seats). After about halfway through my sugary latte (I asked for no sugar! this had at least 3 teaspoons!), we noticed what the waitress was wearing. or should I say not wearing! This woman was in the tightest, smallest dress imaginable, and then we noticed something else, all the customers were business men. "Have we just stumbled into a gentlemen's club???" Our suspicions were further confirmed when Jac went for the toilet, only to be told that there are only male toilets here!


The next day, when we met up with Jazz and Dave, we went on a free tour of the city. One of the stops was in front of another one of these coffee shops. The guide went on to explain that there is a Chilean tradition of men going out for "coffee with legs", where they go and get served coffee by scantily clad women, sometimes in small dresses, sometimes in bikinis. Apparently there is also something called "happy hour" in these establishments. What happens here is that at certain places, at certain times, the shop locks the doors and draws the blinds of the windows and all the women get naked for about 5-10 minutes, and then go back to business as usual after this time. I guess we were lucky to just to escape with a small dress!


So after a couple days in Santiago, or Sants as Jacqui started calling it. (btw, Santiago is the Spanish name for James), we flew out to Rio de Janeiro in Brasil! For one whole week we did nothing but frequent the beautiful beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema! Although every time we go to these beaches we feel slightly overdressed. The boys here love the budgie smugglers at the beach, and the girls think that the more bum on show the better! Lots of staring at my feet here!

Copacabana at night

Ipanema

Geriba Beach in Buzios

Right now we are in the small town of Buzios doing more of the same, and next week we are back in Rio, but this time to do some sightseeing. Gee its tough!


Anyway, hope this isn't a once off, and I can keep up this blog!


Adiós!

And then there were three!

Greetings! Como estan!?

Sorry about the large delay in updating the blog. Due to the enormity of the gap between posts, and Jacqui constantly reminding me that long posts are boring, I'll keep this short and will skip a lot of our travels trough southern Peru!

In a nutshell, we flew from the amazon jungle in Iquitos to Lima, then bused it to Nazca, then Arequipa, and then to Cusco, where we will begin the telling of tales!

Cusco! What an amazing city! As you walk around the city that was once the capital of the Inca Empire, you constantly see buildings that were build by the Spanish invaders, but built on top of Inca foundations and walls, due to the fact that the Inca buildings were too strong to demolish! On the flip side, it is also the town of hundreds of offers of massages, countless offers of weed, and tour operators hassling you on the street so that they can try to rip you off!

Coming to Cusco, coincided with the arrival of Jac's sister Alanah! In a weird way I was really looking forward to having Alanah visit! Not that I was sick of Jac's company (that happens a fair bit later on), it was just cool to see someone we knew and to hear about whats happening back home! (and boxes of cadbury chocolate and tim tams didn't hurt either!)

We introduced Alanah to the ways of Peruvian tours, with a "lovely" city tour! The ruins were cool and all, but the fun began at our first stop. Our group was mainly Spanish speaking, with three other English speaking tourists. After our "English speaking" guide talked about some part of a temple for 10mins, we were gifted with a 2 minute summary! Our crafty guide then cottoned on to the fact that one of our fellow tourists was a colombian married to an American. She then insisted that this poor Colombian tourist translate everything to us for the rest of the tour! However, this first impression of a tour didn't stop Alanah from wanting to go on a horse ride! I thought this was a perfect time for some sister bonding time, so I graciously allowed the girls to go on without me, while I bummed around town!

Throughout these first few days, Alanah was struggling big time with a healthy combination of jet lag and altitude sickness! So mush so that on the night before heading of to the inca trail, she woke up just before midnight and thought it was time to get up and proceeded by starting to get ready to leave! But to her credit, she ended up dominating the 4200m pass, called "dead woman's pass" not only in the face of altitude, but also with probably the biggest bag in the group (because all she had was her main big bag) not to mention the constant attack from bugs on her legs! Ouch!

The Inca Trail

So here it was, the 4 days I was never looking forward to! Did i want to see Machu Picchu? Yes. Did i want to walk over 50 km, up to 10hours a day, and ascending from 3000m to 4200m above sea level, only to then descend down to 2400m! No!

However, as I started the walk I started to strangely enjoy the challenge! With my mind prepared for the worst, I didn't find myself struggling too bad. Yes the climb to 4200m was really hard, but I never thought it was unachievable. As you walk you are also gifted with never-ending amazing views of mountains and ruins every time you stop for a breather. The hardest part for me was on the third day where we had to descend 1000m in one go over old rocky stairs! my knees and calves were shot by the end!

One of the very special things about this trip was that my birthday unintentionally fell on the last day of the trek, when we finally arrive at Machu Picchu! Without me or Jacqui knowing, the guide organised the cook to "bake" a cake on the night before my birthday! The cook, eddy, in camping conditions managed to make this amazing banana cake with icing and he even detailed it with a picture of the mountains of machu picchu! Unfortunately due to the surprise of it all, we didn't have a camera handy, but another bloke on the trek took a photo and will email it to me soon,

So on the last morning, started out well before sunrise in order to get to Machu Picchu early. After a couple hours, we arrived at the "sun gate", where we got our first glimpse of what we had been trekking towards! It was awesome! We then proceeded closer to the ruins, where we got a brief history lessons from our guide as well as a chance to take some pictures! We then had a close up tour of the ruins, through which the three of us were getting increasingly tired and giggly! Our guide would always interrupt his explanations with the same line, "WHAT!!! You got questions amigos!" after maybe three successful attempts of not laughing out loud, we couldn't help ourselves as he kept asking, "WHAT!!! You got questions amigos!!"

Well that's about all there is too our time in Cusco and the Inca Trail! Since then we have travelled through lake titicaca and into Bolivia! Hopefully soon I will write another post on all that!

Until then, adios!

Welcome to the Jungle!

I hope you all read the title of this post in Axl Roses shreil!

Anyway, we thought we'd better update you on what's been going on here in Peru! We started our long journey inland towards Iquitos, with our first stop in a small mountain town called Chachapoyas.

We arrived in Chachapoyas to find an amazing little city nestled in the mountains! It is clearly our favourite city so far! It is heavily influenced by the Spanish, with amazing colonial architecture and a nice central plaza. However our stay here was brief, as we needed to keep moving in order to reach Cusco by the time Jacqui's sister, Alanah, arrives! On our first day we visited the ruins of a pre inca city called Kuélap. Our tour had an "English" guide (or so they said as we booked) but when we met him, he told us he was just learning! As we went around the ruins his 10 minute descriptions he told people in Spanish, equated to a 2 minute broken English description. Luckily for us, a French guy started translating the Spanish later in the tour as the guide got over trying to speak English!

After another near miss with a bus, we continued our journey inland towards the amazon basin! Our final destination by road was a town called Yurimaguas situated on the river! From there we organised to do a four day juggle tour in the amazon basin! After getting ripped off by the guy who sold us the tour, we boarded a boat heading to a town called Lagunas, from where we would leave for our jungle tour. This boat was a cargo boat that took 12 hours to get to this town. Basically all roads end in Yurimaguas so if you want to get to the Peruvian Amazon, you have to fly to Iquitos or take one of these cargo boats. On the boat you need to bring a hammock to tie up in order to have somewhere to sit or sleep. As you can see from the photos, there is not much room to breathe! Our 12 hour trip was made somewhat entertaining by listening to a group of Americans panicking over the security of their stuff, when they would get lunch, and complaining every time this CARGO boat stopped at small villages to drop of supplies! What made it funnier was that one was living in Peru for 8 years, yet he was the loudest of them all! And to top it off, within an hour of the trip, his food bag was "stolen"! For at least 30 minutes he would not shut up about it, meanwhile me and jac were trying our hardest to keep it together and not burst out laughing! At the end of the boat ride, it turned out that his friend had accidentally mistaken the bag for his own food, and was eating his food all day! Brilliant!

The day after we got to Lagunas we met with our guides and jumped on a canoe for our tour! The tour took us through the Pacaya-Samiria national reserve which is only accessible by canoe. As we paddled, we saw lots of different wild animals, from colourful parrots and other exotic birds, to many different types of monkeys. And one place we witnessed about 40 odd monkeys jumping from tree to tree! We also saw a couple sloths from a distance. At one point, our guide Cesar stopped the canoe to point out something in the water. It was a 4 metre anaconda! We also went croc hunting at night and saw a few crocs, as well as another anaconda! One morning we went for a 3 hour walk into the jungle and came across some very large Jaguar footprints! Cesar said that the Jaguar would have heard us coming and ran off! Our tour was really cool, however after 4 days in a canoe and getting molested by mozzies we happy to return to Lagunas.

A few people have asked us how our spanish is coming along so I'll give a small example of how it's going. As we arrived in Lagunas, a guy from the tour agency was talking to us in our hostel. He then asked us (well we thought he asked us) what we had for lunch on the boat. I then said in spanish that we had chicken and rice for lunch, to which his co worker started leave at other guys order. We then realised he was asking if wanted some dinner (or so we thought). We made sure he knew we didn't need any dinner and then went to bed. The next morning he picks us up and takes us to get breakfast. As we arrived two massive plates of chicken and rice are put out in front of us! Whoops!Anyway back to the blog

The guy who organised our tour told us that on the Wednesday we returned from the jungle we could get a boat to Iquitos. This boat did not exist! We went to the dock to work out when the next bus would arrive, and they told us it would be at midnight the next day! We passed on this news to three French blokes we met in the jungle who were also wanting to head to Iquitos. They were livid and one of them went on a mission to find us a boat, as they had booked flights from Iquitos to Lima that they would miss if they couldn't get an earlier boat. His Spanish was very fluent so we were happy to follow him as he hassled numerous small boat owners, to even trying to hire the mayors boat. We found a small boat that could get us to Iquitos however the price was about triple that of a cargo boat, however it could get us there in a third of the time. We left the boat owner while we discussed our options, and then me and jac grabbed some tea. The French guys found us to tell us that a cargo boat was coming that night after all, and that the people at the dock gave us dodgy info! The boat was due to arrive at 4am that night! The boat ended up coming at around 9am, much to relief of our French compatriots!

The boat trip last for 2 full days this time. The length could have been shorter if it wasn't for the wing nut of a captain who kept getting us grounded in obviously shallow parts of the river. At one time we spent 4 hours trying to get free while another cargo boat tried to pull as free or ram into us! The captain of this other boat wasn't too bright either it seemed! He kept trying to pull us out at right angles to our boat! He tried that tactic for 3 hours, even though it was only getting us swivel on the ground! He finally went directly in front of our boat and pulled. We immediate got free! We decided to get off at a town called Nauta which is situated where the marañon river and the river ucayali meet to form the amazon river! From Nauta it was a 2 hour bus ride to Iquitos!

It was so good to get to Iquitos! We were truly looking forward to chilling out in Iquitos for a few days after the marathon journey to get here! I'll talk about Iquitos in our next post, as we have only just left and this post is looking intimidating already! Check out our web photo album for more pics too!

Hope you're all well back home and look forward to hearing how Lifewell conference went!

¡Hasta Luego!

Bye Bye Ecuador!

¡Hola!

Just a quick update on whats going on here in Ecuador! I'm writing this from the beach side town of montañita sitting in a hammock getting some cloud! let me make a correction, I started writing it here. I am finishing it Trujillo in Peru

Our week in Baños was a lot less action packed than our first few weeks. For starters Baños is a very small town nestled in the mountains. Right next to the town is a big volcano that caused the town to be fully evacuated a few years back.

On our first day here we did the one thing I really wanted to do again! That's right, another horse ride! This time up one of the mountains to get a good look at the volcano. These horses were not that great. We didn't actually ride them, rather the guide directed them by his voice and whip. Yay, heaps fun! However, he did show us some water from a spring that naturally carbonated the water. We tasted it and it tasted like sparkling water. A bit of ball crushing later, and we stopped by a cool cafe hidden in a valley across the river. We had to use a dodgy flying fox type cart to get to the other sides (without horses) that was a fair way above the river! (Jac reckons it was 30m high but I reckon it was half that)

Our week mainly consisted of Spanish school, however we managed to fit in a few more activities.

On the Saturday arvo, we went to the local thermal springs! We were really looking forward to this, since the weather had been rubbish and raining everyday. However our view of this place was changed very quickly. May I ask you all one question? Have you ever filled your backyard swimming pool with half water, and half urine and then heated it to a high enough temperature to create urine steam? No? Well ur missing out! The pool was choc full of kids and the water was actually yellow! But we had already paid our entry fee, so we hopped straight in! Although we only lasted about 10 minutes before the urine condensation began to fill our nostrils! A few days later our Spanish teacher told us that you shouldn't go on Saturday's, and that there is an adults only bath, however it was shut when we were there.

We also did some whitewater rafting in a nearby river! It was really cool and heaps of fun! I was put up the front with another guy (who turned out to be a collingwood supporter), and copped the brunt of all the waves, but we loved every minute!

Our spanish teacher was really good! Jacqui loved her soooooo much!!! After every lesson, Jacqui would ramble on about how lovely she was on the walk back to the hostel! We also got the unexpected experience of her telling us her testimony in Spanish! And little bits in English! She told us how she had an unbelievable encounter with God when she was 40 which saw her whole life transform so much that all her friends couldn't believe she was the same person! It was a very special moment that we hope to remember for a long time! It was so good to hear first hand how God is working all over the world! It was seriously amazing! Jacqui started crying, and then another teacher walked in and was wondering what was going on!

On the Friday night we took a night bus to montañita. This was our first "big" bus trip, it took us 10 hours to get to the coast! Oh the excitement of getting the a hot sunny beach! Surely a beach this close to the equator will be scorching hot and humid! Nope! Hello cloud and rain city! It was the biggest let down of our trip! The town was real small and had maybe 3 streets, which were filled by expat hippies trying flog cheap jewelry! But we were stuck here for the week because we had Spanish lessons booked in! We finally learned how to talk in the past tense, which is cool! After 2 days, we were so sick of walking past the same streets and the same dirty hippies every time we had to eat! At least our hostel was nice, it was on the beach and out of town a little bit. There, we met a really interesting American businessman. He would have been in his 40s, married no kids, and was in Ecuador for 6 month on business. We had a long convo about his work and how he travels 125,000km a year and then a hole lot more other boring stuff. Then the convo took a random turn! Somehow, somehow he started talking about weed! (ps. Due to jac's dreads, we have been offered weed numerous times!) the dude started telling us that it's legal in his home state for medical use. It's apparently so loose, that all HE did was go to the doctor and complain about not sleeping! He then proceeded to show me a website of the store that sells him the stuff! The store sold all different kinds of weed and cookies and other stuff on the "menu". Crazy!

Needless to say that as soon as our Spanish lessons finished we jumped on the first bus out of town!

We then started a horror bus trip! Montañita - Guayaquil (4 hours), Guayaquil - Piura (13 hours), Piura - Chiclayo (4 hours)

In the middle of the 13 hour leg was the border crossing into Peru. As my passport was about to be scanned the computer system went down, and our bus was stranded on the border for almost 2 hours!

As we entered Peru, it was amazing! It is so hard to believe how different everything is here compared to Ecuador! The streets look different, the driving feels more like a crazy Asian streets, taxis everywhere and all of them trying to rip you off! Our first taxi in Peru, had an agreed price of 4. As we arrived we handed him 4 soles, but he then said "4 dollars" What?! Your currency is soles here mate!!! Even as I was fumbling for cash he started saying 5 dollars! After 21 hours on buses I couldn't be bothered, so I handed him 4 US dollars and left!

We are also noticing that there isn't as many tourists in the north of Peru. I feel SO white! In Latin America, the word "gringo" is used for white tourists. The other day as we were walking down a street in Chiclayo, a random guy in a car just yelled out, "GRINGO" and then kept going! And then the next day a guy just yelled it out again as he walked past us! May I ask you all another question? Have you ever yelled out "ASIAN TOURIST" as you saw Japanese tourists get out of tour bus in some part of Australia? If not, give it a go, as it seems to be all the rage over here!

We saw some ruins of an old pre-colonial civilisation just out of chiclayo, of which we will post photos later. It hasn't be preserved too well, and most of the "pyramids" looked like piles of sand! We did see a museum that showcased the finding of an old tomb of a king! It was very Egyptian-like in the way they buried their kings, only they weren't mummified. The tomb was full of gold and lots of pottery and sacrificial offerings. We only spent 2 nights in chiclayo, and are now in Trujillo. There is some ruins of another city called "chan chan" that we will see tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow night we start heading inland towards the amazon river and jungle! We don't know if we'll have power let alone internet at some of those places, so we may not be contactable for a week or two. Our end goal is to get to Iquitos, which is a town that you can only get to by boat or air! We will be taking a 3 day boat ride to get there! Should be a cool experience, yet hell at the same time! Sorry I haven't put any photos up, they take ages to upload at this place! Will try to eventually post them to our picasa album!

¡Hasta luego!

Mountains and more mountains!

¡Hola! Como estas! Nosotros estamos bien!

Just updating you all here from baños! Thought we'd better give you the rundown on our last week!
Last Sunday we left Quito for a farmhouse just out of Machachi! This was part of our travelling Spanish program, so our teacher Sofia came with us for the week!

On the Sunday we were booked in to climb volcano Cotopaxi (the largest active volcano in the world at 5890m!!!) it's a 2 day walk to the top so we only climbed to the refuge at 4810m! As we arrived by bus, we got a glimpse of the snow capped volcano, however within minutes it was swallowed by clouds! It was so cold, it was hard to believe we were only a few hundred kilometers from the equator! As you can see we had to hike through some snow! This was my first time seeing and touching snow so I was pretty stoked! Once we reached the refuge and had some warm soup and hot chocolate, we returned to the bus to pick up our mountain bikes in order to ride the rest of the way down! Our bikes were rubbish! The brakes were back to front, and the rear brake was basically non-existent! And then it decided to snow in our faces, so for a while we were without vision and brakes, two important attributes to riding a bike! We got down in the end through a really shite road with lots of corrugation so my headache from the altitude loved it!!! Overall, it was really cool and I think the I am getting a little more acclimatised to the altitude!

On Tuesday we went on a horse ride around the farmland, which gave us some stunning views of the highlands around Machachi. Jacqui couldn't contain her excitement about going on a horse, and I tolerated the activity! Well, let's just say I liked it until the horse started trotting! I think the main reason why the worlds population exploded after the industrial revolution was because the men didn't ride horses anymore! My balls copped a flogging!!! Each trot was equivalent to a kick square in the nuts! Towards the end of the ride, I started to work out a way for it to be bearable, but my technique was far from graceful and required to much energy, so I resorted to pleading that we go slow!

On the Thursday we went on a tour of some of the local Indian markets out of town. The first market was a local animal market! It was where the farmers buy and sell their pigs, sheep, cows and llamas. In scenes reminiscent of four corners, we decided to move through these fairly quickly! We then went to another Indian market that sold clothes and crafts. It was ok, but they all sold pretty much the same llama jumper. After the the markets we visited a volcano crater called quilatoa. It was similar to the blue lake in mt gambier, except it was MASSIVE!!! We walked down to the beach to check it out, and then had lunch back up the top.

We were meant to return to Quito that night, however in a couple days we were due to head south to Baños. So we decided that we would stay in Machachi for the night and head to Baños in the morning. Two Israeli guys were thinking of heading there that night, so we made the hasty decision to head to Baños that night with them, as the hostel in Machachi was full apart from a room that costs $45 a night. So we got the tour bus to drop us off at the bus stop so we can get to Baños. I use the term "bus stop" rather loosely, instead they dropped us off at a toll booth on the main highway and told us that a bus to Baños would drive through soon. We would have stopped about 10 buses before we found one that went to Baños! All in all we were on the side of the highway for almost an hour waiting for our bus!



We arrived in Baños at about 11 at night, and the two Israelis took us to the hostel they stayed at a few weeks ago when they were here. As we checked in we noticed something peculiar about this hostel. Whilest it was clean and cheap ($7.50 a night incl breakfast) we realised it was a hostel run by Israelis for Israelis! Every sign was in Hebrew, and most travelers staying there were speaking Hebrew! It's hard enough trying to learn Spanish, or finding English speakers, let alone try to communicate in Hebrew! They didn't have any vacancies the next night, so we happily moved on and are now staying in a cool little hostel for $6 a night with our own bathroom!



I'll eventually update you on what we're doing in Baños and how our Spanish is going, but right now I want to sleep so hope you're enjoying our posts and keep commenting so we know what's happening over there, like who should be coaching the crows now that craigy's quit!

¡Hasta luego!

One week down!!!

One week complete of Spanish school!!! We are slowly getting bits of the language, and are able to kind of communicate with the hostel staff and restaurant staff!

We know how to ask for certain things like scrambled eggs, and how I like my coffee! We can ask how much something is, and if they have change for a $20 note. However, we can ask questions, but when they speak back to us we have no idea what they say! Well, we are starting to pick up certain words and work out the gist of the sentence. I'm struggling to hear the numbers, when they tell me the price! It's really hard for my brain to adjust to a new number system, after 26 years of English numbers! I normally turn to jac to know how much they say something is!So we haven't been able to do heaps this week because of Spanish lessons from 9 till 1pm, and it's been raining heaps over the last couple of days. However, on Wednesday we took a bus down to "centro historico", which is the old town centre from the colonial days. It was amazing! We thought we'd transported ourselves to Europe! The streets were beautiful, all the buildings had awesome architecture and we got to see some cool churches!
One of these churches, "La Compañia", was breathtaking! Try and google it if you have a chance! The entire inside if the church is covered in gold! The detail in the gold carvings are brilliant, and all the handcrafted wooden confession booths in amazing detail. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the church, so you'll have to rely on google to see it!
Another church that we saw was huge! It is apparently an exact replica of Notre Dame! It was ridiculously big, but seemed boring after seeing the gold church.The people here in Quito are so kind it's not funny! We have had so many instances of people going above and beyond to make us feel welcomed!

In centro historico an old man helped us find the churches. In front of one the churches he started trying to tell us something in Spanish and some broken English. We had no idea what he was on about, but he kept trying to tell us! He then started to point at his member, and then at this statue of a baby! What is this guy on about?! . But then on closer inspection, this statue of a baby had a massive wang stuck onto it!!! There were 4 of these statues, but just one of then had a shlong attached! We were on the floor laughing!!!
And then another guy at our hostel drove us to the market, while telling us all about ecuadorian politics! Ps the markets are so good! We bought 3 big bananas for 25cents! So we'll be in touch, and will write again soon!

Hasta pronto!!

¡Yo estoy aprendiendo español!

Hola! ¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo estás? Yo estoy muy bien!

We have just had our first Spanish lesson here in Quito, and our brains are very sore! Talk about información overload! (I just used a Spanish word, guess where).

We had an intense 4 hr lesson with our teacher Sofia, and get the feeling that learning Spanish isn't going to be as easy as we hoped! Our first lesson was basically a lecture where she went through words upon words in Spanish, and we where busy writing everything down!

So for those who haven't rushed to google translate, the title of this post means, "I am learning Spanish!", followed by, "hello, what's up? How are you? I am very well"

So as you can see, we've got a few basics, but need to memorize them better! At the moment, we are just saying sí (yes) and gracias (thank you) to everyone!

I'll update you on our Spanish conquests in a week, so hopefully we know a bit by then!

On the language front, only one worker at our hostel speaks English, and he was nice enough to walk us down to the markets on Sunday. At these markets Jacqui's dreads got the attention of a local street vendor, and then he went on to offer her weed! Haha

We also found a big public park, where there were heaps of markets, and also a street performer! The crowd loved the street performer, but we had no idea what he was on about! We also tried our luck on some street food. We saw some meat, sausage and banana on skewers for a buck, so we gave it a go. They were pretty nice, but I would have liked to know what I had eaten!

Food is ridiculously cheap here! Most meals cost $2, and often include an entree and small dessert and drink!

In other news, we had to change rooms because our toilet got blocked after una grande Jacqui poo!



¡Hasta luego!

Location:Quito