the gateway to the jungle!

We finally made it out of Quito. Yesterday´s bus ride was about six hours and it was stunning. What a beautiful country. Through the Andes, down into the cloud forest for hours and finally starting to be able to see the Amazon jungle. You know how the first time you drove accross Texas you realized that Texas was BIG? That you had known that intellectually, but actually KNOWING was totally different? That´s what driving for hours and hours and hours by rain forest for as far as the eye can see and realizing that we were only looking at the teeeeniest, tiiiiniest top corner of it was like. That chunk of land is BIG.
Last night was the first night we went out since we´ve been here. We are in the town of Tena which is pretty small and it was nice to walk around. We sat outside at one bar for quite some time and met lots of friends on the way by. We met some girls from London and then when the bars closed we ran into them again on the street and they knew a disco that would still be open so we went with them and danced and laughed until about 4am and then we all stood in the street for a long time laughing and talking with all our new Ecuadorian friends. It makes for a heck of a headache today, but it was super fun.
Now we´re trying to get ahold of the lodge we want to stay at for the next few night in the jungle - they rehab animals and try to get them back out into the jungle and it looks super fantastic. In typical Latin fashion, they´re not so big on emailing back and are only near the phone sometimes so we just keep trying. They have to send a canoe for us in order to get there so that´s why we aren´t just showing up like one normally would.
Don´t know if there will be internet out there so if I don´t write for a while, that is why. But hopefully there will be so that I can upload some photos without making people wait in line for the only computer longer than they already have.
love, mj