Our school term culminated in taking the children and most of the parents for a day trip to the botanical gardens and the water park of Puyo. Although it seemed a logistically impossible task made trickier by Ecuadorian organisation and the unpredicatble weather of the rainforest, the day was a great success and the children loved it.

We took each school (km35 and km22) separately on different days. We began by squeezing a huge volume of children, parents and volunteers into both Nick's car and public transport and miraculously managed to arrived at roughly the same time at the botanical gardens to start our tour. The children were surprisingly enthusiastic and eager to learn about the various plants native to their homeland and the ecosystems destroyed by deforestation. The guide gave the children leaves to smell and eat and captured their imagination with stories of snakes, bugs and food chains. Unfortunately for km22 it poured with rain the entire time but the children kept their spirits up and although completely drenched, managed to enjoy themselves, learn something and see something new.

We then shipped everyone to a restaurant for lunch where the owners served industrial amounts of delicious food to around 40 hungry people which was very much appreciated all round.

Next came the highlight of the trip; "El Parque Aquatico"! Children running in every direction, volunteers desparately attempting head counts with children diving, bombing and sliding; absolute mayhem! The water park is probably Puyo's best asset and is surprisingly well equipt with slides, diving boards and a wave machine which provided endless entertainment for 20 children under 15 as well as for the volunteers and some of the braver parents. Km35 had beautiful weather but again unfortunately for km22 it was cold and rainy but the ever resourceful children made the most out of it and had a great time.

We arrived home after piling everyone into various forms of transport and the volunteers crashed out totally exhausted; definitely the sign of a successful day!