'Nights Out In Club Amazonia'

Dear All, I dont have time to write too much today as I am still with GVI and travelling back to their camp but I will update the blog in more detail later. For the meantime here is a blog I wrote for the GVI website last week:

'Nights Out In Club Amazonia'

During the week most of us are in bed by 9pm to rise early for survey work in the morning. However my favourite times are when a few of us get to go 'off camp' and into the forest for 'nights out'.

Frog asnd insect DJ's spin their tunes whilst DJ Thunder controls the beats and the duo 'Moon' and 'Lightening' take care of the lighting and strobes illuminating the otherwise dark and damp understorey / basement of the jungle. We catch the occasional eye shine of the shy, secretive mammals watching from the sidelines and a glimpse of a bird perched on it's podium as we stroll across the dancefloor. As we clumsily happen upon a group of bamboo rats dancing around the DJ booth, they scatter in all directions sqauwking and squeeling their abuse at us.
Occasionally we stop our own dance to take a look around, wipe the sweat from our brow and take a sip of our beverage 'agua cloro'. We observe the clubbers in bright flourescent attire whilst keeping an eye out for the occasional slippery snake character giving us the eye.
The terrain is misleading at times, extremely undulating and slippery, dependant on the influence of Mr Vegatation, the lighting duo and how many drinks have been shed from their vessels. It can be particularly bad in the Primary Forest where few have been before, although we favor these spots as they are less chavvy and we get to roll with the specialists, the old time clubbers who really know how to rock. We still have to dodge the mirriad of moth charcaters flying towards the light of our third eyes though.
As we party the ants of course are busily working the doors and the bar, keeping things in order with the occasional 'telling off' should you be in a restricted area / doing something you shouldn't be doing........only their rules apply!!!!
So as you can see, 'Club Amazonia' has a lot of things to offer even the urbanites amongst us in this dance of life x x

Arrival into Quito

The Flight to Quito was short and I slept deeply.
Waiting in the queue at immigration we watched the clock flip to Sat 2nd October...... Security were thorough but annoyingly they did not ask me for an onward ticket to proove I was leaving Ecuador within the allowed 90 days! Some of you know how I aggonised over this whe preparing for this trip! Actually I aggonised over many things and was quite fearful but even despite all the changes to the plan so far and confusions, it´s not nearly as stressful!
GVI staff met us at the airport and as we entered the Taxi we were advised on the poor road and driving etiquette in Ecuador. It wasn´t that bad though.
At breakfast today we met the rest of the GVI volunteers and staff, did official stuff and were given a health and safety rundown.
All is ok in Quito at the moment as all the fuss has calmed down and life has gone back to normal, although we have been advised to be especially vigalent. Quito is a long thin city surrounded by Mountains. It is very big, taking 2.5 hours to drive it´s length. The weather is sunny with some occassional cloud cover. Its sunny and hot in the sun as we are so near to the ecuator. I do have a mild alltitude sickness, mainly a headache and dehydration. I am drinking loads.
Tomorrow (Sunday) lunchtime we start our journey to the rainforest starting with a 5 hour bus ride which takes us up to 4000m before a descent to Tena where we will spend the night and stock up on wellies and snacks for the 5 weeks. On Monday we will be taking a less comfortable local bus over bumpy roads, then a canoe to the GVI base camp. On arrival we have 267 steps to climb. With my rucsack weighing almost 20 kilos I am not looking forward to this! Once in the rainforest I will not be able to update the blog. When I come out in November I shall give you all the news and hopefully some wicked pictures!
Very excited now:-) x

Not gone quite to plan!

Hola familia y amigos,

ok so it hasn´t gone quite to plan........The flight to Quito was diverted to Columbia due to the political unrest in Quito and all the airways in Ecuador being closed! Yes I was dropped off in the only South American country I wanted to avoid, ironic I know.
There was lots of confusion at baggage collection due to all baggage from all diverted flights being unloaded onto one baggage belt! Luckily I had met some lovely english people who were supposed to be flying into Quito on an an Amazon cruise holiday who took me under their wing. I liked their positivity and sense of humour which helped whilst they attempted to help me to casually find other 2 girls who were on the flight and booked on the same GVI programme as myself. Eventually all 250 of us on my Quito flight had collected our baggage and were bussed to a really nice hotel in Bagota, compliments of Iberia airlines which is just aswell as it an expensive hotel! Although the armed guards surrounding the hotel were slightly disconcerting, the hotel staff were extremely helpful.
The good thing was that on boarding one of the many busses I happened upon the two other GVI members Laura and Hayley. After a very long day travelling we finally went to bed but was woken up at 4.45am by an early morning wake up call by the hotel which I did not order.
Little did I know that whilst reading and dozeing all other passengers (accept us 3) had been informed of another flight to Quito and were on their way to the airport!
After leisurely eating breakfast we suddenñy became aware that we hadn´t seen anyone else from our flight. On asking at reception we were made aware of the situation and infomed we had to get to the airport in 20 minurçtes as they were waiting for us. I rushed to pack my bag (which took an hour and a half to pack in the UK) and were were driven at speed to the airport (40 minutes drive away)! Needless to say we didn´t make it in time.
Luckily the airline arranged for us to get on another flight, unluckily it wasnt for another 11 hours! We resigned ourselves to a day in the airport where we knew it was safe!
We had no Columbian Peso´s but we managed to change up some dollars and we whittled away the hours with laughable irony moments, eating, playing cards, reading, failed attempts to phone the UK, emailing home and generally getting to know each other. I haveto say though, we improved on our Castellano, use of the South American keyboard and discussed the cause of yellow urine!
We eventually decided to move to the deparure lounge, having a few laughs in the security queue about pistachios and despachio. When handing over our documents to officials Laura and I were asked ´´Quito?¨in a way that suggested ¨ Do you really want to go to Quito?¨ Fealing reassured (ha) we smiled naively replying ¨Si¨!