Football anyone?

When you travel with Europeans, you spend a lot of time talking about ¨football¨. We get mocked when we call it soccer. We have converted now- it´s easier. Today we are with a group of 7 others, including 2 Swiss, and 2 Irish. There happens to be a Switz. vs Ireland match on today- a qualifier for the World Cup. We have spent ALL DAY looking for somewhere to watch it. Not easy to do in South America. Lots of matches on TV, but Switz vs Ire isn´t exactly top priority... The poor guys have resorted to getting updates via internet.

Anyway, we have arrived in Tena today. We left Quito on Sunday and bussed it to a tiny place called Las Palmas, just past Baeza. The bus ride was about 3.5 hours long, and cost $3.50. The hostel is called The Magic Roundabout (British run) and is in the middle of nowhere. Nothing to do there but eat, sleep, and hike in the cloud forest. We did all three. Oh, and the guys took machetes up into the bamboo and spent a few hours being ¨men¨. I slept in the hammock on the porch :)

Tena is the rafting epicentre of Ecuador- tomorrow we (9 of us) are booked in for a day trip. Should be great, since it´s very hot here. We are coming down out of the mountains, so it´s the hottest we´ve been. We actually met the British rafting/kayaking team at the hostel the other night. The World Cup (for rafting and kayaking) starts today just outside Baeza, so the owner of the hostel (British) invited them over for dinner. Well, when they showed up they were all women! You should have seen the guys jump :)

We´ll be leaving for Baños on Friday, at which point I suspect our group of 9 will part ways. It´s kind of an intersection point, and travelling with nine is a bit tough (although fun)!

Still trying to find an internet cafe that is fast enough to deal with uploading pictures. We´ve managed to get 6 done in 45 minutes... Baños is bigger so we´ll try there.

Hello to everyone!
Hasta luego!

Kristin and Cam.