Amazon,

After an emotional farewell to our schoolmates, we leave early and fly via Quito for 3 nights to the Amazon region where we celebrate the New Year. The great lodge is situated 2 hours down the river by motorboat at a black moor lake. By motorboat, canoe and on foot we make many exciting excursions mostly around the lodge before we fly back to Quito.

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Galápagos

We treat ourselves to a whole week of cruising on a small ship with just under 20 passengers, cruising from island to island, doing many shore excursions and sometimes going snorkeling. The landscape and the animal encounters are spectacular,  the landings and walks across the volcanic islands adventurous.

Mountain cloud forest

The last highlight is 2 nights in the luxurious Mashpi Lodge at an altitude of 1,000 m, where we can already communicate quite well in Spanish with the rangers. These lead us over winding muddy paths, through water and through the air, through the wild, steep forest landscape and to refuges for butterflies and hummingbirds

After these 6 weeks in Equador, our Spanish - although still deficient in grammar and vocabulary - is sufficient to get us by and we are ready for our independent tour of the Dominican Republic.