Ecuador 3 - Chile 1

We picked a good time to be in Ecuador, yesterday it was their world cup qualifier against Chile which we watched in the Foch Plaza in the 'New Town' a short walk from where we're staying. 

It was a great game to watch as a neutral, the game opened with a superb strike by Ecuador... into Chile's goal, it was an excellent OG! 

Then there was a penalty, not a great one as the keeper saved it, but he should have caught it rather than batting it away as Ecuador scored from the rebound. 

There was a sending off in the final 15 minutes and a goal scored in the final minute of added time.

I'm told that the Chilleans will put their loss down to the altitude (they always do when they lose, never do when they win). 

Foch Plaza 5 minutes from the stadium

Some Quito highlights to follow.....

Raine x

The LGSO playing this weekend....

Not a trip update.....

If you're in London this Sunday and looking for a bit of culture the LGSO are playing on Sunday at:

St Sepulchre-without-Newgate

10 Giltspur St,

London

EC1 9DE

They are crazily talented and will be playing pieces by Delius, Strauss and Beethoven.

Sorry I can't be there John - I'll try and be back for the one on the 28th April 2013.

Lots of love,

Raine x

Providencia - population "five thousand and change"

After a short hop on a half full, fume filled plane we land on Providencia.

The pilot lands on an airstrip the length of a driveway at home and once nine locals have gone through and the three immigration officials have decided on which country we're from - after much discussion between the three of them but without asking us, they settle on 'Grande Brittain' - we get a cab to hotel Sirius.

View from Hotel Sirius

The locals speak Creole in preference to Spanish and pretty much everyone speaks English too - life is going to be easy for us on this island.

After selecting our room, like the two city girls we are we head off to the beach for sundowners only to find that all but one one of the bars is closed and that one is closing, we panic buy four bottles of beer with the help of the bar mans English speaking wife who also tells us about a 'Programme' on the beach on Saturday. The island has it's annual event on the beach, with horse racing, music, sack races (!) - not to be missed. When I ask Jadeth if all 6,000 islanders will be there she says no and corrects me in her beautiful lilting accent that the population of the island is "five thousand and change" - I loved that description.

The winner!

Old Providence, as it's known by the locals is a tiny island it has just one road (17k long) around the perimeter of the island and we hire a Kawasaki Mule (a golf buggy!) to go and explore.

We've done a boat trip around the island, visited Morgan's Head (named after the pirate Henry Morgan), met a man who smokes 15 joints a day (lots do) met a man with 15 brothers and sisters (it's a catholic island), eaten a fish called 'old wife', watched the most incredible storm descend on the island and learnt that a bottle of tanqueray lasts us four nights!

We're currently sat in a coffee shop on San Andres before flying to Bogota this afternoon then it's on to Ecuador.

See you in Quito!

Raine x

So far so amazing.....

Colombia has exceeded expectations on every level, particularly Cartagena and Providencia.

Casa villa colonial our hotel in Cartagena was a big step up from the hostel in Bogota and the cold shower here provided a welcome relief to the sweltering heat. Cartagena is an old walled city founded in 1533 (and raided by Francis Drake in 1586!) it has a very colonial feel to it. 

On our first day we walked without any real plans, the city is easily walked in an hour or two. Beer o'clock struck while we were in one of the old squares, a great vantage point to people watch from and to see the small horse drawn carriages called huelepedos (or farties!) take tourists on a romantic tour of the city.

We've seen very few European tourists, in fact the majority of tourists here are Colombian.

We have been treating this first part of our trip as a holiday and so have eaten well in some very nice restaurants - the first night we ate in Gaucha just over the road from our hotel - when we offered our card to pay the bill the owner apologised saying that he only accepted cash and asked if we would return the following day to pay, he wouldn't accept any kind of surety - I just can't imagine that happening in London.

Dinner at Gaucha

It was in the Cafe Lunatico next door to our hotel, where we breakfasted everyday that I perfected saying "Quisiero dos tinto americano con poco leche - mas negro, por favor".

On Tuesday after some exploring we went in search of El Bistro a restaurant that Abs had read some good reviews about - it was so hot and so we stopped for a diet coke and tried to work out where El Bistro was on a map, not far by the look of it. Then just as I'm finishing my drink I see a Trip Advisor award for excellence on the wall, presented to El Bistro - turns out it was closer than we thought.

At Beer O'clock we head back to our hotel and start talking to Marta from Holland who is travelling alone, she's here to visit the children's home where she was put up for adoption 33 years ago, she'd like to trace some family members but she isn't hopeful as there were very few records kept and no paperwork. We leave for Providencia in the morning so have cocktails and dinner with Marta - very brave of her to have made this trip alone, I hope she is able to trace some members of her family. See you in Providencia! Raine x

Cartagena is a beautiful colourful city and I love it....

Arriving in Cartagena is like stepping into a tumble dryer, hot and very humid.

The pace of life here is slow, it has a chilled out Caribbean feel, the people walk slowly and sit, a lot. 

A crazy juxtaposition to this is that the little yellow taxis hurtle around not giving way to cars or pedestrians - crossing the road takes some time.

Just sitting.....

Does a picture paint a thousand words?

Earlier in the week Abs and I spoke about how hard it is to capture the feel of a place on camera and it really is. 

Not one of my photo's adequately captures the beautifully sunlit narrow streets (calle) with their array of wonderfully coloured buildings of rose pink, sage green, primrose yellow and aqua, with bougainvillea covered balconies; some of them really looking their age with flakey paintwork and others having succomed to the draw of cosmetic surgery that is so popular  in Latin America, making them look so much younger than their years and taking away a little of their charm. 

But this is a unesco world heritage site and it's heavily dependant on tourism so what harm can the odd 'filler' do?

What do you mean no beer?

So the journey has started.

We flew with Iberia and after a very short delay while 2 passengers were off loaded (I've never understood how you can check-in and drop off your luggage and then not actually board the plane....) we were on our way to Madrid, a short and uneventful flight.

The two hours we had in Madrid were adequately filled with us having lunch and a couple of pints of San Miguel.

Iberia's inflight entertainment is poor and there was a collective groan when we had it confirmed that there were no individual screens - with the option of watching one film on a grainy screen about six rows in front of me I opted to read my magazines. 

Lunch was a pasta salad, followed by a larger hot version of the same dish and a sickly sweet square of cake, washed down with a Fanta Limon.

Having traveled with Abby a number of times before she is used to me falling asleep at will on flights and leaving her to entertain herself, I however am not used to her doing it and so when she did when left with limited entertainment opportunities I was forced to people watch (I've made it sound like a chore, I actually love it). 

Three of the rows next to us were occupied by 12 Dutch travellers, all dressed in their hiking gear - for a 10 hour flight an interesting choice. Four of them had started on the cute little bottles of red wine you get on flights at the earliest opportunity and by the time that Abs (Abby) was in the land of nod they were beginning to lose their hand eye coordination and half way through the flight the man closest to me was wearing two bottles of wine on his clearly absorbent and not particularly waterproof walking trousers.

iPads really are the most incredible invention; I'm able to update my blog, Skype my Dad and when flying with Iberia watch TV programmes - Abs introduced me to Private Practice - I will be introducing her to The Thick of It on our next entertainment free flight.

We arrived at our hotel at about 8pm, Apartasuite Nuevo Dorado, it's clearly a converted office and very basic but it's clean and they serve very good scrambled eggs for breakfast.

At 10:00 Rodrigo arrived to take us on a tour of Bogota however as we had no idea what he looked like nor he us we walked straight past each other at reception!

The old part of the city was my favourite with an old square filled with families making the most of the 'family day' and outside the library there was an impromptu Tango class, so Latin American.

Coffee in Juan Valdez - the Starbucks of Colombia (but with much better coffee) where we saw an 'Indios' an indigenous person which Rodrigo said was quite rare, it looked really surreal but as I'm not yet able to ask for a coffee confidently I was never going to be able to ask if he would be happy for me to take a photograph - so that's one for the memory bank.

For lunch we had churrasco (a steak) and then while we were eating Abby was crowned the queen of Colombia by the in house entertainment - I have photo's which will follow. It was over lunch that we found out that there was a city wide alcohol ban something that Rodrigo wasn't aware of but said wasn't uncommon; it was because of a local election. Clearly we looked pitiful or alcohol dependent as our hotel very kindly sourced 4 cans of beer for us - so whilst the hotel may be basic it has rocketed up in our estimations because of that small act of kindness.

So, today we fly to Cartagena at 2:15 -  where it looks as though it is hot and wet (in a tropical way I hope).

See you in Cartagena!

Rains x