Mindo and and the Amazon

As usual this blog is coming out the wrong way up.... read "new president" entry below first. Anyway in a brief update of the last few weeks... I have spent a weekend in Mindo which a beautiful area of cloud forest several hours north of Quito with some of my school friends. We stayed in a small wooden house on the edge of the village and the lady who owned it made us huge all-you-can-eat breakfasts every day, which we needed because we walked for miles. The area is renowned for its amazing array of butterflies and orchids as well as some spectacular natural cascades so we spent the days exploring and the evenings playing Ecuador´s favourite card game Cuarenta. Oh and I did a sort of cable abseiling thing through the clouds which was both terrifying and amazing. Everyone got on brilliantly but we had to head back to Quito much earlier than we would have liked because we had tickets to see Ecuador play Sweden in a friendly. It was of course necessary to get fully kitted out! (see above) Final score 1-1 and most of the match spent trying to explain to the American´s why real football is so much better than their "football". On this occasion the Aussies and the Brits were on the same side. The only other thing to add is my brilliant week in the jungle. Mornings spent in Spanish lessons with my new teacher (another Santiago) who is so laid back, until you get him in a game of Cuarenta and then he turns into some kind of monster. Anyway had a fab week sharing a log cabin with my fellow-student Katie and a hairy eight-legged friend. The worst thing was not knowing exactly where the tarantula had crawled to while you were out hiking through the jungle for hours. Although it was not the deep deep Amazon we were surrounded by monkeys, toucans, parrots, caymen, spiders as I said, and any kind of bug, mosquito, biting thing you can name. We had a great time and you get used the intense humidity and the fact that all your clothes are permanently damp once you´ve been there a few days.