Ho ho ho, and a merry crimble to all.

Sarah´s been a star and stuck all her photos up on flickr so if you want to take a look at what I´ve been doing for the past 10 weeks then click here. The sets that are from the expedition are:

Jungle
On the Napo
Sumak Allpa
Agua Santa Market
Yachana Colegio
Life in Camp
Quito

Enjoy trying to find my ugly mug amongst them. Here´s a taster:



I´m definitely in the Quito one being a dick as usual (and why do I still have my back pack on?). I´ve not checked the rest yet though so I might appear in a few.

Tip top how do.

Everyone all right? Good good. Just a quick post to let everyone know I´m still alive and well, well, not that well today but the Berocca´s fast sorting that out. So I´m out of the selva now (jungle for the non Spanish speaking population) and on the beach. Once the expedition ended 8 of us decided to leg it to the beach together. Bit of a mission to be honest. Spent about 30 hours on various buses and didn´t sleep for two days but we got here in the end. So the 8 of us are just going to chill here in Canoa for Crimble.

It´s a sleepy little surf town with no bank, roads made of sand and an abundance of hammocks. Perfecto. Still not been for a surf yet, mainly because I´m lazy but no doubt I´ll get in the water before long.

The kind folk at GVI also offered me the internship which I´ve taken up. That means another jungle expedition. Another 10 weeks. That puts me finishing up at the end of March. Then there´s some talk of Machu Pichu in April but that´s not a definite. The internship should give me good experience to maybe become a paid staff member too so I´ll need to see how I feel about that but it´s definitely an option. I´m sorry I won´t be home for Christmas... but.... errr... I´m on the beach and it´s minus 1 in England. Haha, sorry that was cruel. Seriously though, miss you all loads. Take care and have a class Christmas.

Where to begin?

First up this keyboard´s toss so excuse the lack of proper punctuation. How the hell is everyone? It´s been a while. This jungle lark is absolutely fantastic. I´m loving every minute of it. The group´s really sound and the work is hard when it isn´t raining. Thereçs so much I have to tell you but it´s not really possible to condense it down. I´ve learnt loads and can´t wait to get back. Içll write properly tomorrow when I´m not so knackered. As we are limited to three beers a week whilst on camp we had a bit of a blow out last night on the first night of the midphase break. I got in at about 4.30 this morning and then got up at 7 to go white water rafting today. The rafting was immense. class 3 and 4 rapids for 40 km. We got back about 30 minutes ago and now I really need to find a fillet steak... no meat in any camp meals as we have no electricity to store it... have one or two larger beers and then sleep like the dead. Içm covered in mozzy bites, tick bites god knows what bites. Packing up for midphase break I found a wandering spider in my rucksack that had laid it´s egg sack under a shirt collar. Lucky not to get bitten really.

I´ve also applied for the internship to do another phase after this one. I should find out about that quite soon so Içll keep you all posted.

Mmmmmmmmm, meat.

Okay, not got much time so I{ll be quick. In Tena now, a little jungle town and about to set off. The address to send me any letters / red cross parcels is

Global Vision International
Casilla Postal 17-07-8832
Quito Ecuador

Cheers!

Hello All

I arrived in Quito last night at about 8 local time. I successfully collared a cabbie and about 20 minutes later I arrived at the hostel. GVI had given us details of how to make a reservation etc but I figured that was a bit over cautious of them... so I didn't bother. Turns out I should have really. The guy who owns the hostel reckons I'll be fine for 4 nights but then it might get a bit sticky. No problem as there's plenty of other gaffs to stay in around here.

Looking back on what I've just written you may think Mario and I sat down and had a good old chin wag about the pros and cons of reserving a bed. Unfortunately it wasn't quite like that. Despite my best efforts with those CDs before I left, actually listening and understanding a native speaker is nigh on impossible. As is making myself understood. My chat with Mario left me feeling woefully stupid and there's only so much grinning and nodding you can get away with. In addition everyone else at the hostel appears to be Swiss or Spanish. Having checked the notice board I've discovered that a lady will kindly come to the hostel and give intensive one on one lessons for the bargain rate of $5 an hour. I just hope she's not busy, but even if she is then there's plenty of other Spanish schools in Quito that I can investigate.

Our man in... Miami

Ow do. It's my second day in Miami now and I have to say that jet lag is a pain in the arse. True to form though (harkening back to the Atlanta escapade) I've done my best to beat it. I just spent a bit of time working it out and yesterday I was up for 29 hours straight. Brilliant. The flight was delayed by an hour or so and but wnet smoothly apart from that. Got to the hotel alright and then got changed and went out to find some food. The old travel habit of talking to complete strangers kicked in and I got chatting to this bloke called Karl. He'd just finished a tour in Belize with the army and is trained in all things jungle so got a few tips off him. The night progressed and we got talking to some German ladies (for some reason Miami is awash with our European friends) and before we new it it was 5 am. They like to stay up late here. Up at 9.30 this morning and now I'm so tired I can hardly type. It's been a nice day though. Just ligging by the pool, the odd swim in the sea. I met up with the German contingent again for a couple of beers but I've had to head home now to put the jet lag to bed. I've been invited to a night on a casino boat tomorrow so we'll see how that pans out. Should be good.

I'm off to bed... I'm shatt e r e dzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Two Weeks to Go

Man, two weeks to go... I can't believe it! Pretty scary to be honest but I am really excited. I've got most of my kit together now and am in the process of packing all my worldly goods to put into storage. I'm moving out on the 23rd (Saturday). Matty H is coming down to drive the hire van up to Yorkshire. Bang me stuff in the garage and then hop it to Manchester for final farewells. I'm only finishing work on Friday so it's all a bit stressful at the moment. Still, it's keeping life interesting as I'm desperately trying to learn Spanish, sharpening my bird identifying skills (sorry, sharpening? More like blagging) and in an intense fitness program of... erm... trying not to smoke as much. Looks like I'll be set then! As for what it is I'm going to be doing in Ecuador you can visit the company's website here and the specific project I'll be working on can be found here. If you're interested the website is pretty good but in a constant state of change so the link might not work for long.

Probably my two best pieces of kit so far are my bins (binoculars for Bill Oddie ing) and my new camera... Pentax istDL. Here's a shot I took the other day before boarding the London Eye:

Taking a digital camera to a rainforest might not be the best idea. Hmm. Got to try it though. If anyone's got any tips on keeping it dry etc, please feel free to share them.

Incidentally, watch this, it's unblievable!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ol7XJJlz9E

It never rains it pours.

What a dismal picture. Life is what you take from it. If you sit back and accept the norm then there you go... you get the norm. That makes plenty of people happy and I respect them for that choice. Unfortunately I tried it and it hasn't worked for me. So I'm off again. Is it a knee jerk reaction??? I couldn't possibly say. I'll tell you again three weeks in. Right now it feels like the rightest thing I ever did do. Av it. I'm off to the Amazon for a 10 week expedition. Bugs, spiders and all other disease ridden foul creatures are welcome but I envisage little room for passengers. Wish me luck and give you loads of tropical disease.

Love and kisses,

An idiot.