Flavia & Gregory go LA

We left Mancora last Friday, crossing into Ecuador on June 22nd, just on time to avoid a passport fine for Gregory - the Peruvians decided to give me 90 days but only 30 to Gregory...
This means that we spent the whole of 31 days in Peru, when the plan was to cross it in 2 weeks and disappear. Strange feelings about Peru... they are very tourist-oriented and this sometimes feels rather annoying, but generally I think we quite liked it. It certainly is very beautiful, especially the Andes part.
Paradoxically, in the Andean country with the most culinary culture, I got food poisoning and ended up sick for 3 weeks!! So I could not quite enjoy the cuisine here, and neither could Gregory, poor thing, who had to skip several meals as a result of things or eat roast chicken several times a week to stay on the safe side together with me. Exception was Mancora, where things went back to normal and we stuffed ourselves with the unmissable seafood. I think I would have eaten it even if I was still sick...

Anyways, back to Ecuador.
We had a bit of a traumatic border crossing, where I lost my temper with a greedy taxi driver and had to rush out of a frontier toilet while still closing my trousers in order to catch the bus to Cuenca which we were about to miss. There is one every hour except at the time when we were there, when the next would have been in 3.5 hours. Anyways, hopped on and five hours later we arrived in Cuenca, our designated spot for Spanish lessons. The weather was terrible: it was raining, the second rain in 5 months! We asked the taxi driver how long it had rained for: 2 MONTHS!! So we asked when does the rainy season ends? How is he supposed to know?!? It´s not supposed to be raining at the moment... So it emerges that it has been freak weather for a while, some parts of Cuenca have been flooded and it´s bloody cold. AND IT SHOULDN´T BE!! Delighted to stay here 8 weeks to learn Spanish.... Well, Gregory is having none of it and is very decided and eager to start his lessons, so I have had to give in and accept that this is where we are going to stay for a while. I will buy myself a hot water bottle.

We have spent the last few days checking out all the Spanish schools and hostels in town. Finally, we have decided to study at the Sampere School and stay in this shared flat just across the school which will only cost us $200 a month - which we found completely by chance while buying rum from a shop. The original plan was to stay with a local family, but they want $15 a day EACH and this is not affordable. Plus, I will only be doing an hour class a day, so I will have a lot of free time and I quite like the idea to buy my own food and cook it, for a while.
So we have found a roof and a school for when we are back from the Galapagos - we are GALAPAGOING THIS SATURDAY!

We are off to Guayaquil tomorrow so to have a day to spend in town before we fly off to the magic islands. Once on the boat, we won´t have access to the Internet till we are back - July 7th.

Will provide a full update with pictures as soon as feasible.

Cuenca