I really should get a little faster on these updates, but with much to distract I don’t think it will improve. Anyhow, tomorrow (Tuesday here) will be my final day in Loja and my 2nd last full day in Ecuador. This time tomorrow I will be on a bus on a 13 hour drive back to Quito. On Thursday I will be in Peru, on Friday I will be in Cuzco and this time next week I will be walking the Inca Trail. It’s hard to believe it’s already been 4 weeks since I left Australia. Please pray for safety as I travel over the next couple of days. I will miss Loja and Ecuador. I have really enjoyed my time here. Stopping in the one place for a few weeks with people I know and who live here has been the best way to see and experience the culture. I have been able to meet and get to know some locals and foreigners and spend time with them over the course of my stay here. I have been able to take part in various activities that no tour group would ever be able to organise. I have been able to eat many strange foods, including Guinea Pig (which tastes much better than the soup). Being in the one place for a little while means that you have time to consider the differences between here and home and observe some interesting things about our world. So I’ll try and list as many as I can think of… ...

Well it’s been a little longer than I would have liked since my last post. We had some internet issues here, so we were without internet for a couple of days. But it’s back up, and we’re using the ISP’s modem on the ISP’s account - which makes it free. (For those who are interested the Internet in Loja is mostly over the mobile telephone network. EDGE and CDMA I think). Much has happened in the the week and a half since I wrote last. I left Cuenca on a road similar to before, with a driver just as insane as the last. I arrived in Loja mid arvo and was picked up by the entire Bakon family (Colin, Jill and their sons Matthew and Nicholas) who had been at lunch nearby… ...

Well I’m a week down in Ecuador and what a week it has been! At present I’m sitting in a net café in Cuenca, Ecuador. Cuenca is considered one of Ecuador’s most beautiful cities and I’m inclined to agree. So I’m a little disapointed I’m only staying tonight and leaving for Loja in the morning. If I was to return to Ecuador it would be on my list of things to explore (amongst other things). The last time I wrote I believe it was before the ‘Cry for Independence’ celebrations… ...

more photos

Welcome and thankyou for joining me as I travel around South America. Presently I am in the hostel in Quito feeling a little dizzy from the altitude (Quito is about 2800m above sea level) and very tired after a very strange few days of travel. The journey started with a flight out of Sydney at 11 on Tuesday. We stopped in Auckland for an hour or so before flying to Santiago. I then went from the aeropuerto to a hotel in Santiago to burn up time during a 15 hour stop before my 3am flight to Quito via Panama. With so many hours of flights and only getting patchy sleep here and there on them has made the concept of time very transient. I feel a little like Edward Norton´s character in Fight Club. The other rather amusing feat is that my last 7 out of 8 meals have been airplane food. The other meal was at a small quaint cafe in Santiago opposite Plaza Brazil. As I walked too and from the Plaza I felt very different. Mostly ‘cause I was the only person wearing shorts in the chilly weather. Other than that I’ve discovered that knowing a little bit of Spanish helps a lot. I feel a little more relaxed knowing that I can kinda read signs and kinda talk to people (it’s more me talking and then not understanding what they say back). Anyhow, tonight I´m planning on sleeping and getting used to this altitude. Tomorrow I will probably explore a bit of Old Town and then join in the fiesta that starts there at 8pm. I will probably check out a bit more of Quito for a few more days before starting the trek down to Loja (via Riobamba and the Nariz del Diablo hopefully). There I will spend 3 weeks with the Bakon´s who are some missos associated with my old church. I hope things are going well back in sunny Australia. Feel free to drop me a line - I’d love to hear from you.

It’s been 4 days since our church group landed back in Australia after our short, 2 week, mission to South East Asia. We learnt lots of things, had lots of fun and came back exhausted. Some highlights were: Preaching in a church on a Sunday through a translator. I felt very privileged because I don’t think many Christians will ever have the chance to do what I did. The team of Christians we worked with while over there....

Today’s Lesson: In Safari (Apple’s browser), don’t hit refresh after you’ve almost finished typing up a big blog post before you’ve submitted it. The back button won’t save you. I think I’ll go to sleep now and start again tomorrow.

Pictured here is my 3 month old niece, Imogen, looking inquisitively at the camera in the cute way only babies can. Prior to her birth there was much speculation as to what her name would be. And as usual no one who guessed was right. I didn’t compete, but I wouldn’t have got it anyway. But I think Deb and Pete made the right choice with Imogen. Anyhow, all this talk about names got me thinking about how people go about deciding what to call their children. Often a family name may be adopted according to tradition, or one significant to either parent. The sound of the name, how it rolls off the tongue, may be important to some too. The ways the name can be changed, shortened and distorted should also be considered. Children at high school are ruthless, and adults aren’t much better, so it pays to ensure they won’t face needless ridicule, torment and possible psychological damage. Another factor that seems to be socially important is uniqueness. Probably because people think there are already enough Michaels, Andrews and Davids. But it’s getting to a ridiculous level now where people will deliberately misspell a name so that it’s different to the other people with the same name. The existence of the Internet seems to exacerbate this problem further. I’ve heard that people will choose names based on the availability of the internet domain name, or on how many results show up in Google (the fewer the better). Which is amusing since the usefulness of any domain will stay limited until they’re a teenager, by which time your carefully chosen name, with only 10 results in Google, will have been swamped by every other parent who thought the same as you. With this trend in mind, I have devised another criteria for choosing names: how easy the name is to type on a computer keyboard. With the proliferation of computers it would seem pertinent to pick a name that can be typed efficiently. With all the typing your child will have to do, think of all the hours they will save across the course of their lifetime by choosing a good, typable, name. Good names would avoid anything that slows down your typing. Things such as repeated letters, consecutive letters that require the same finger to press the key or having all the letters on one side of the keyboard. Some examples of bad names to type are Aaron, Lloyd, Edward, Jill, Phillip or Fredrick. Perhaps it will get to the stage where people’s names will be shortened and mangled on the internet just as the English language has. No longer will someone’s name be ‘Eugene’, but ‘Ujyn’; and ‘Michael’ would become ‘Mykl’. Either way I’m sure it’s going to get weirder.