ECUADOR, Banos, Tena and on to Quito (written in Guayaquil Monday 18th November

I think it might be safe to say that, in my attempt to relax and just stay still, I failed totally. This might or might not come as a surprise to some of you. Since my last entry I have been scampering around Ecuador like a crazy thing.

In Banos I attached myself to a nice group of solo female travellers who had joined forces in Quito and Banos. Some of them had been rafting the previous day and, through their guide Eduardo, got wind of a fiesta in Tena, a town deep in the jungle. This sounded too good to pass up so I delayed my departure from Banos in order to tag along.
That night, Eduardo took us to a local salsa club where we were all whirled around at high speeds by sweet, and very patient, local boys who did their best to teach us the steps and had us spinning about in a manner that made it look like we knew what we were doing. After Ecuador I think I'll be a master...
With my extra day in Banos we hired bikes and cycled down to the impressive Pailón del Diablo waterfall on the road to Puyo. We wound our way through valleys surrounded by lush, green hills of fields and jungle, over rivers, through tunnels and stopping to take a heart-stopping ride on a cable car over a wide, deep canyon dangling precariously over a river. The waterfall was a short hike through pretty jungle and turned out to be the deafening, thundering, crashing tumble of water that I had been promised. Most satisfactory.
On Thursday my new travel companion Rachael, Eduardo and I took a bus to Tena for the fiesta which celebrates the town's anniversary. Tena only attracts tourists who are on their way to the jungle or on a rafting expedition and is otherwise just a functional little town set around the banks of a river, surrounded by dense jungle. It was once an important colonial trading post in the Amazon and is now the commercial centre of the Napo Province. It was a-buzz with activity when we arrived as people prepared for the night's revels, food stalls were setting up and people were milling about with beers.
Rachael and I ventured out later on in search of Eduardo and dinner. We settled ourselves in the concrete football pitch, which was the main focal point of the event with plenty of make-shift bars and a huge stage where people kept appearing to do blaring sound checks. We sipped peach wine and watched events unfolding. Children were having a very energetic game of football with a plastic bottle, young men sauntered about in search of young women and old men sat around drinking beer, people caught up over beef kebabs with plantains and there was a general sense of festivity and anticipation. During our hunt for dinner we were discovered by Eduardo and his friends who scooped us up and took us to a little outdoor bar where they were all drinking and making merry. They were a lovely bunch, most of them jungle tour guides and professional rafters like Eduardo and spoke good English.
Eduardo wanted to introduce us to his family so, with him and his friend Julio, we headed back out of town standing in the back of a pick-up/taxi.
We found Eduardo's family standing around a dance floor in front of a stage where a Mexican band were crooning. They greeted us warmly and commenced with the beer drinking. I am becoming rather familiar with the Ecuadorian way of drinking now: They half fill small cups with beer and with a "salute!" its bottoms up and all down at once. This is repeated, the cups rotating, until the bottle is empty. The beers went round and round, kebabs were devoured and finally the Mexicans left the stage to be followed by a salsa band and we all spun onto the dance floor where we stayed until we were all dripping with sweat and in need of more cold beer.
One man swirled me around in such a manic dash across the dance floor that we began to attract attention. People watched, laughed and took pictures of this crazy man whirling around a Gringa who was struggling to hold her own (but not doing too badly). I returned to the side of the dance floor, gasping and giggling to find that they were all pointing at the stage. "You have won a prize," Eduardo explained. "They are calling you over." Very bemused I shuffled across the now empty dance floor to the stage where I was given a Tshirt and a round of applause. By now a fetching shade of beetroot, I returned to my group, the music started again and we were swept up again and proceeded to wiggle around the dance floor...
Having exhausted ourselves and the music there we said goodbye to the family and the 4 of us went back into town to join the heaving throng of people that had packed out the football court and danced some more until we could barley stand and had to go to bed. A great night, lucky us to have been part of that.

On Friday we bussed it to Quito and on the bus a remarkable thing happened:
I was sitting in the window seat with Rachael next to me and my bag wedged between my feet and the side of the bus, the strap hooked over my knee. When I went to leave the bus I discovered that my camera (yes, I know again) was gone, as was the $10 that had been in my wallet. Someone, very small, had got into my bag, fished out the plastic bag that held my camera and passport, taken the camera and then folded up the plastic bag and put it back, taken out my wallet, removed the cash and put that back (cards and all) all while the bag was right with me, on my person. There was a little girl behind me so it must have been her but how and when I have no idea. Very annoying, as you can imagine, so close to my return home too! But I am very grateful that she did not take the passport or bank cards.

With that little cloud hanging over me we arrived in Quito and checked into the Secret Garden Hostel in the heart of the Old Town.
Quito is a rather beautiful city surrounded by green hills, rivers and waterfalls, with neat, clean streets, elegant plazas and cobbled streets of well maintained colonial houses painted in pastel colours. The streets are not as dirty or chaotic as those of Lima and the whole place feels a good deal more loved and better organised. Secret Garden has a roof terrace providing stunning views of the city both day and night as well as strong cocktails, large communal dinners and a great little social scene. Rachael and I had a wader about the Old Town in search of cash machines, down busy little shopping streets with teams of police everywhere. I have heard plenty of horror stories from Quito so that was a comforting sight. The Old Town used to be notoriously dangerous but has cleaned up its act recently shifting the reputation to the New Town which is the main backpacker hang out, providing banana pancakes, clubs, pubs and muggings with equal fervour.
Being Friday night the hostel was in full party mode and after a lively dinner we all struck out en masse to the New Town and its nightclubs and danced the night away with the Quito youth. A perfect place for my last weekend in South America...