Hello Everybody from Ecuador

Hi Everybody,
its been quite a while, so I hope, everybody is well! I know, I have to catch up on a lot of writing...
Well, back to the current journey:
At the end of our China trip we did get to meet some of my distant (not) relatives in Zhongshan, close to Hong Kong and Macau. There we met the very nice Jiazhi and his sweet daughter Winny, which whom we spen some wonderfull days. He showed us around where our ancestors were from, 100 year old houses and naturally took us out to eat! After that we spend a few nice days in Macau and on Lamma Island, Hong Kong, and celebrated our 5 year anniversary! Before we could leave I had a small incident with the HK police for throwing a cigarette but on the street, for which they wanted to charge me 150 Euro! And that after coming from China, where everybody throws stuff everywhere... Well, I got away because we were leaving the next day.
After that it was finally off to see Anna in SF. How great to see my little sister after such a long time. We really had a wonderfull time together, introducing Wiebke to all the cousins of mine in Sacaramento, celebrating Quentins and Jehs birthday, meeting Annas new boyfriend Rob (hes ok for brit;=), watching a great concert of The Fray in Palo Alto and (my personal high light) going sailing in the Bay Area with Anna and Rob. As I said, we had some great fun in these four days, son when we finally boarded the plane in SF after the day of Sailing, we were again ready for some vacation.
By now we have been almost four weeks in Ecuador and I can only say, we are having a great time. For one it is really nice to speak to the people a little bit more fluently than we were able to in China and its really nice to read the menu in a restaurant (provided they have one). When we finally got to Quito after stopping in El Salvador and Costa Rica on our way (We flew TACA, and their response to Wiebkes request for a vegetarian meal was: "We dont do that!") Christina picked us up at the airport and drove us to their home in beautiful Zuleta (http://www.zuleta.com). Christina and Thomas Ring are friends of Wiebkes, who left Germany for Ecuador 5 years ago. They have two little boys (Noah and Luca) and run the tourism branch of the Zuleta Hacienda. After China coming into this relatively cold climate and very relaxed if not sleepy atmosphere was just heaven. We spend our days with horse riding, watching Condores, hiking, biking and naturally with the lovely Ring family and a lot of their friends! Since I havent met them before, I can only say that I am very lucky to have met them and share some of their time. After spending around three weeks with them, which culminated in a magnificent party Christina and Thomas made, we got some clothes and our hang over to Quito to spend five days in the Amazonian Jungle in the Cuyabeno Reserve. This was a unique experience with lots of wild life (dolphins!, snakes, caimans, all sorts of spiders, piranhas and many more), swimming in the amazonas (despite the piranhas and other creepy stuff yo cant see) hiking through the jungle and driving around in a canoe. This place is close to the columbian border and it takes quite a while to get there, because it is in the middle of the jungle. The last leg after a tiring 3 hour gravel road bus ride is two hours in a canoe. No electric lights are available in the camp so at night you can really hear and smell the jungle coming in to the open cabins. It was a bit of a luxury treat for the two of us, and definitely worth it.
Well, thats it for right now, we are killing time by hanging out in the internet cafe, blogging and loading up pics (Check them out!) while waiting for the night bus to Quito.
Take care, lots a luv,
Tim and Wiebke