Iris, a British lady of considerable character and pluck, is on a 23
\n week overland truck expedition from Quito in Ecuador to Caracas in Venezuela.
\n After this, she plans to do a 3-month voluntary placement in Ecuador,
\n and then visit Central America for another overland trip between Panama
\n City and Mexico City, ending up with perhaps another 2-month voluntary
\n placement somewhere in South America again. This amazing journey will
\n take Iris one year. Here is an extract from Iris’ journey notebook.\n <\/p>\n
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <\/p>\n
27th<\/sup> November 2002<\/b> <\/p>\n Arrived in Quito at 1730 local time. Met 4 people from Madrid, 4 more Pre-expedition meeting tonight – there are only 41 of us instead of Left Quito at 1100 hrs after a frenetic time trying to get everything Am sharing with an Australian lady, Judith – 3 yrs older than me but Weather here is changeable at the moment however as it is the rainy Activities here are walking (I’ll participate); canyoning (abseiling,
\n from the UK and 4 others at the hotel and today 7 of them plus me went
\n to the Equator. It was really hot, sun beating down and some had no hats
\n and were getting burnt up! On the way back, we had taxi race but my taxi
\n lost! All told good flight and meeting some great people. Hotel okay –
\n no spiders or cockroaches in sight! Everything very clean. <\/p>\n
\n 44 – I am on a truck with 20 others – does that mean I’m on my own
\n in a tent? Will have to see! (Beetle: we’ll hear a lot more
\n about this particular aspect of Iris’ trip!)<\/i><\/b> <\/p>\n
\n packed into that locker! 77cm x 40cm x 30cm seems a large space until
\n you find it is made of hard wood! Everyone had similar problems to me,
\n but I got mine in with little problems compared to others and some still
\n haven’t managed to transfer their stuff to their lockers!! It’s
\n 5 hours down to Baños, out first stop (still in Ecuador and we’ll
\n be here in Baños for 4 nights. <\/p>\n
\n a kindred spirit. We did our exercises together this morning! Everyone
\n on the trip is so friendly and we really enjoyed the trip down here together.
\n The hotel is fine. It appears we will be staying in hotels most of the
\n time at the moment. We’ve been given a programme for the next 8
\n weeks (54 nights) and are staying in hotels for 37 of those. Apparently
\n we start camping after we’ve dropped people off in Santiago in Chile.
\n We are all longing for the camping to start. <\/p>\n
\n season and today we had our first real rain, which lasted all morning,
\n but now the sun is out. However, Baños is nestled below an active
\n volcano, which as I write is spewing forth steam! We saw it from all sorts
\n of aspects as we approached Baños – I wrote in my journal that
\n it looks so “innocently menacing”! Black and brooding above
\n this small town. In the church there are countless paintings depicting
\n disasters in the past, and when one looked at the earth in the banks on
\n the way down to the town, it was black earth, obviously from previous
\n laval deposits. We are chilling out here – all of us, recovering from
\n the journey to South America and some of us had really fraught times getting
\n here – Judith, my room-mate came from Australia via London and took four
\n days of constant travel to get here hours before we were due to leave
\n Quito! She is really jet-lagged and needs this time to recover. <\/p>\n
\n sliding down ropes and swimming) planned for tomorrow (definitely not
\n for me – as Judith said, if it was the last week of the trip we might
\n risk it, but this early in? No way!); mountain bike riding (ditto for
\n canyoning!); rafting (ditto again). Most people, I think, just want to
\n chill out and renew energy for the remaining 22½ weeks! <\/p>\n