Back to School

We spent the past 5 days here in Quito in Vida Verde language school.  We quickly got into a routine here.  Wake up at 6:30 or 7:00 AM.  Breakfast at the pastry shop in the hotel - great chocolate pastries - and then off to school.  School was 1:1 instruction at $6.50 an hour and would go till 12:30.  Then it was lunch at a tasty pizza place.  Some days we'd go over to Parque La Carolina and Deborah would walk while Arn ran around the park.  Running at over 9000 feet is painful.  If you start running too quickly, you pay for it.

We had the good fortune of finding some very good restaurants here in Quito.  Sadly, one of the keys to finding great food in Ecuador is to go to a restaurant with a Peruvian chef!  Our favorite place by far is a restaurant called Zazu.  It is easily the best food we've had in South America and one of our top five meals of the past year.  Other good places include Mare Nostrum, Astrid y Gaston and Noe.

On Thursday, as we were wandering around Gringo-landia (an area with lots of foreigners), we heard someone call "ARN."  Imagine our surprise when we saw our friend Becky in the internet cafe there.  We knew she would be in Ecuador but were very surprised to run into her by accident in Quito.  We were hoping to see her and another friend in Tena next week.  Small world!

Tomorrow we head off for a week of kayaking in the cloud forest (Baeza) and in the jungle (Tena).  It will be a repeat of the trip we did here last year.  After that, it is off to Chile on the 18th.