Adventures en un bosque nublo

hola chicos. This weekend has been cloud forest time, and very nice it was too. Unfortunately had an unpromising weekend when we turned up at the bus station half an hour before the bus left to be told it was full (no other buses that day!) .... ooops, maybe guidebooks dont lie all the time after all ...... However, we were luckily travelling with a quitanean (someone from Quito, anyway) who sorted us out on another bus which got us vaguely close and then we got to ride in the back of a pick up truck through this amazingly lush mountain to Mindo. Those of you lucky enough to have read my last trip blog will know how much i love riding in the back of pick ups so you can imagine how big my smile was. And this has to be some of the best scenery i have ridden in said stylee through.

Mindo itself is somewhat (read a lot) smaller than i imagined, but that was quite nice, and meant it was easy to get out in the countryside, which we managed quite well. So Sat was spent on the back of another pick up to some waterfall and swimming hole (this time the journey was made more adventurous by the presence of lots of low hanging branches and an Ecuadorean guy shouting cuidado every 2 seconds) And after a suitable length of time splashing around in ice cold water watching rachel jump off very high diving boards or come down water slides, we pottered off back down the side of cloud forest covered hill, supposdedly following a group from our spanish school (plus teacher - was an organised trip). however, somewhere along the wy said teacher managed to lose half his students (plus us), but turned out for the best as we got to cross the river on this bizarre hand pulled cable car thing and then all 12 of us hitched a ride back on some contraption which looked a bit like a metal windsurf and was pulled by a small car. then after that adventure treated ourselves to one of the best ice lollies ever made (lots of real squashed strawberries).

Sat eve was of course spent salsa dancing, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that we were with 2 salsa teachers and another ecuadorean who could dance, so we all looked super cool whilst all teh other tourists sat there and watched!

And so on to today, which was spent in much more leisurely fashion, with all morning taken up with breakfast, and then the afternoon devoted to a butterfly house and more eating (have discovered churrascos...meat, rice, chips, salad, eggs and avocado all for a barginous $3.50 ish - not great for cholesterol levels, but lurvely!)

Now safely back in quito and trying to psyche myself up to go out and say goddbye to a friend who is leaving tommorrow

oooh, and now have to start avoiding my corner shop....young owner has just asked me out whilst reeking of alcohol.....rather annoying as cheapest source of chocolate around here!