From Murals to Volcanoes and Pirrranha's

Written by Ella Fisher - Ecuador GapBreak Volunteer 2008

I have been having a great time in Quito lately, I absolutely love working at my placement. I have been working in two classes lately, the one i wrote about and a year 1 class which is an absolute ball. It is completely different work from my other class as their mental abilities are extremely more advanced learning about the rain cycle and the life cycle and parts of a plant. They are gorgeous kids I am swarmed when I enter the room with hugs and kisses and about three different kids trying to crawl into my arms.

I help some of the children write and attempt to read/translate the possum magic book that a past volunteer had brought over etc. At the moment we are thinking of painting a mural on a really long boring wall behind the play equipment to make it look less like a prison with the gray wall and barbed wire, the school wants cartoons so i think we are going to try to make it as colourful as possible to brighten the place up a bit.

I have done a few weekend trips since I wrote last, I dont´know whether i have written about Laguna Quilotoa, so I will tell you again if I have. We went on a tour which took us to a country sunday farmers market, a traditional highlander family´s home where we got to go into their pitch black home made from grass with guinea pigs living in the corner. We then got to the extinct volcano, which when it erupted created a canyon in the surrounding area and a lake in the middle of the crater. We hiked down to the laguna, which was basically me sliding down on my butt, lol. It took about 40 min’s and the views were incredible. Instead of hiking back up the crater, we got mule rides. I had this young energetic mule who basically found it entertaining to overtake everyone else and go cross country but Sarah´s was really old and it sounded as though it was going to die as it slowly plodded up the crater.

Last weekend Annabel, Jo, Sibella and I decided to have a look at Volcan Cotopaxi which is the highest active volcano in the world. Dressed in our thermals we hiked up to the refuge and then the glacier, over 5000m above sea level, I swear I was about to have a heart attack, after 10 steps I was out of breath. The glacier is too dangerous to walk on in the day so we took some pictures and then walked back to the refuge for lunch. We got to see Andean foxes running around and as we descended it began to snow. It was loads of fun pretending to ski down the volcano in the sand with our crazy tour guide who ran down backwards. From the car park we road mountain bikes to the base of the volcano and a laguna, which we couldn´t see because of a fog but looked really spooky.

I'm heading off for the Oreint (Ecuador´s part of the Amazon) on Wednesday night, we get to fish for pirranha and look for Anacondas, tralantulas and Crocodiles on night walks. I’m heaps excited.