Gringo Blogo

¡Feliz Navidad y un prospero año nuevo! 

Tut mir leid, dass ich es nicht geschaftt habe, allen eine Karte zu Weihnachten zu schicken, aber zu was haben wir denn den GringoBlogo?!

Ich hoffe, dass alle eine gemütliche Weihnachtszeit mit ihrer Familie verbringen, mit ganz viel leckerem Essen und Schnee (davon können wir nur träumen) und Weihnachtsduft und Weihnachtsatmosphäre! Vermisse die Arbeit auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt mit all den leckren Süßigkeiten, dem Glühwein, den Plätzchen und allem was dazu gehört!

Aber noch mehr werde ich vermissen, Weihnachten mit meiner Familie und Freunden zu feiern… Ist das erste Mal Weihnachten weg von zu Hause und Familie für uns beide.

Aber wir werden es uns hier auch gut gehen lassen, wie Ciarán bereits geschrieben hat, in Vilcambamba, einem süßen Dorf im Süden Ecuadors!

Wir werden auf jeden Fall in Gedanken an Weihnachten bei euch allen sein!

Wärmste Grüße!

“So this is Christmas…….”

well at least thats what John Lennon said but it doesn’t feel like it here. We’re off to Vilcabamba which will hopefully be really chilled out and hot, all very nice but I’d much rather be eating dried peas, turkey, cranberry and drinking shloer at my aunt sheenas. Ahhh, its a hard life…

I’ll try and make a few calls on Christmas day but by all accounts Vilcabamba is in the middle of nowhere so the chances of finding a phone aren’t all that high.

Anyway from Marianne and me, we hope Santa has been good (especially to Anna on her first Christmas) and that Radio Cracker hasn’t made yous all insane yet. We’ll be thinkin of you all hopin that you have a great day.

An alle in Deutschland (beinhaltet selbst die dicken Katzen ) und an unsere österreichischen Freunde auf der Halbinsel - Fröhliche Weihnachten!

I finally finished the website of the spanish school in quito I was workin on - its a basic site on account of their reluctance to let me develop a database driven site so I used lots of SSI’s instead. I also redesigned their logo which was terrible. Now for a bit of shameless keyword linking

UPDATE: It looks like José has massacred my work so whatever you see now isn’t a what a designed, c’est la vie

Sprachkurse Spanisch Quito

Cheap Spanish Courses Quito

I got a call from the Consulate today - it seems my photos didn’t meet their biometric photo requirements. Its a total pain in the arse, now I have to get new photos and send them via DHL to Argentina. I told them to send the passport to Lima and I’ll get an emergency one to take me across the border to Peru. I’m now back in Quito trying to sort this out whilst Marianne is takin it easy in Baños. I’ve put more photos on flickr - our flickr address is now
www.flickr.com/photos/gringoblogo

Marianne and me eventually got out of Quito and have now started our long trip south. One of our first stops was the Volcanic crater at Quilatoa, which we decided to go to after being unsuccessfully trying to get to the worlds highest active volcano, Cotopaxi. Quilatoa is stunning its an extinct volcano with a massive emerald green lake in the middle.

The place is amazing and the 2.5 hour journey to it is also really cool climbing to our hostel on the rim at 3914m. We climbed down inside the crater and got a mule back up which was cool. The funniest thing though, is the little village on the edge of the rim which I’m pretty certain only exists for tourists. Its probably the poorest place I have ever been and its completely insane. It totally reminded me of when the fair arrived on Craigy Island.

Its the most half arsed attempt at tourism ever - no running water, toilets that dont work and a barrel of dirty water to wash yourself and your teeth. On top of that you get the feeling that everyone and anyone in the place just see’s you as a walking wallet ripe for the rip off. Anyway that said it is still one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been and we’re glad we went. At the minute we’re in Riobamba and we’re going to Baños tomorrow.

Quito’s foundation festival is on at the minute- things are going wild here, people dancing in the streets, loads of chivas (trucks with people and a band on the roof and on benches inside the open truck… good fun! :)) and festival music and bullfights! Watching a bullfight though only reforced our opinion that bullfights are disgusting and cruel. Once in a lifetime, and never again!

All in all, good fun here!

On the twelve of December we’ll be heading down to South Ecuador, hopefully without getting robbed on the way!

At Christmas time Quito’s supposed to be really boring and dead, so we wanna spend Christmas in a little village called Vilcabamba and get pampered there, there are jacuzzies and massages and loads of that sort…