A week ago we said goodbye to Quito and began the first of many long bus journeys to Tena, a city in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin, our base for a day's white-water rafting down the Rio Napo, one of the larger tribuatries that leads into the Amazon. How incredibly cool! We had a wicked day out. We took a couple of pick-up trucks right into the jungle and then split into two different rafts, one with an American called Dan who was wearing nothing but really tight speedos, and the other with a crazy Ecuadorian. And it was pretty much straight out into the rapids from the beginning - the first of which we handled particularly badly, being a bit too excited to do be able to do anything other than scream and laugh, but it didn't take us too long to get the hang of paddling into the biggest ones and then grabbing on so we didn't all fall out of the raft when we hit them. How much fun! And then inbetween the rapids we simply floated sedately down the river while admiring the scenery, and a few times we even jumped out of the raft to float down in our life jackets instead - and it was so surreal to be bobbing along down an Amazon tribuitary in the middle of the jungle.

We stopped once for lunch on a lovely little deserted beach beside the river, and again to walk into the jungle a bit and paint each other in yellow and brown mud. The crazy Ecuadorian got everyone in his raft to join in with white-water rafting games - which included trying to run around the rim of the raft without falling off, getting everyone to hold hands and stand up on the edge of the raft without falling off, and getting five people to paddle right at the back to lift the raft up at the front over the waves, where the sixth person was desperately clinging on. I have to admit, I've since completely fallen in love with the jungle and have now added 'going down the Amazon' to my list of travels that I want to do after this one. It's just so different, and so beautiful.

After Tena we went to Banos, which is back in the mountains. Banos is a really pretty little town, with a stunning setting (it's stuck in the bottom of a basin surrounded by fanatastic huge green mountains), but there's also something a little bit odd about it. I think it's because Banos is a complete Ecuadorian holiday resort, and so feels a little bit fake. It's particuarly known for it's hot springs (hence the name), with a highly active volcano perched just above the town, and those were the first things we checked out as soon as we got there. Mmm. The following day we went for a fun bike ride down the valley leading out of town, and the day after that Mel, Dave and I went for a seriously hardcore walk into the mountains surrounding Banos, which wasn't quite meant to take the five hours that it did, but was nonetheless gorgeous.

We weren't supposed to stay in Banos for two days but couldn't get out due to the indigenous strikes taking place all over the country. Apparently Ecuador is currently in a state of emergency, but that was the first we heard about it. Once the roads opened up on Friday we came to Cuenca, which is where I'm currently writing this entry from. Cuenca seems like a really nice city, all paved streets, very Spanish, lots of colonial buildings. I've eaten too much ice-cream here. Tomorrow we've got a NINE HOUR bus journey through the border to the coast of Peru - woohoo, a new country! Most exciting. Apparently the chocolate is supposed to be better there, among other things.