WHEN Lancashire Evening Telegraph photographer HELEN BROWN booked a holiday in Ecuador, she was looking forward to 10 days in the Amazon jungle and the chance to capture exotic animals on film.

But, as she tells us below, she got more than she bargained for, thanks to severe weather at the airport, a scare with sinking mud and a terrorist attack on her hotel

WHEN I heard the explosions, my first thought was that it might have been thunder.

But my mother said "That's a bomb" and when I looked out of the window, and saw people running away, I realised what had happened.

We had just returned to our hotel room in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, to from a trip to the market and wereget ready for dinner when it happened.

I grabbed my camera and ran out to discover that the American Airlines office in the hotel complex had been bombed. Ninety police were on the scene, along with Red Cross workers, a bomb disposal unit and firefighters, and the street was cordoned off.

There had been two explosions, the second bigger than the first. It blew out 18 windows in the hotel and shattered the glass of a passing bus. Four people were hurt -- two secretaries inside the hotel and two bus passengers were treated for cuts and bruises.

Officials combed the area for more than two hours while a crowd of around 200 people gathered to watch.

The terrorists used two dynamite bombs with long fuses which they left in the office with hundreds of leaflets everywhere, identifying themselves as the "Milicias Revolucionalias del Pueblo" -- a band of revolutionaries -- and stating that their campaign was against the new government and its economic policies.

The government had only come into power two weeks earlier, but in this time the price of petrol and oil increased by 25 per cent. Ecuador has its own supply of oil from the Amazon, but it sells this and buys refined oil, chiefly from Venezuela. A general strike there has caused a petrol shortage in Ecuador -- one of the main reasons for civil unrest and terrorism.

We had experienced the effects of the petrol shortage directly, when we got stuck in the jungle after travelling a few days up river.

The minibus which was supposed to take us back to Quito ran out of fuel and all the petrol pumps were empty. As a result, our driver had to go on a hunt for black-market petrol, much of which is smuggled in from Columbia.

I should have known the holiday wasn't going to go smoothly by events earlier in our stay.

Indeed, the trouble started before our plane had even landed, as thick fog in a narrow valley at the top of the Andes held us up.

After circling for an hour, the captain announced that he would watch another plane descend and then try to follow its path.

A nervous few minutes was followed by touchdown and a loud round of applause from the relieved passengers.

Things got even more "interesting" a few days later on the jungle expedition.

As our party walked single file along a narrow path, one careless step left me being sucked waist deep into mud.

I would have been dragged under further if I hadn't grabbed onto a tree. Two Amazon Indian villagers held on to me and were eventually able to pull me out.

That obstacle overcome, we proceeded to board a canoe for what should have been a 20-minute journey on the river.

Due to extremely low water levels, however, the trip took over four hours as I had to continually jump into the river to dislodge the canoe.

A speedboat was sent to rescue us, but it too got stuck and, as night closed in, we got back into the original canoe and somehow made our way to safety.

After this, we felt sure the excitement must be over -- but we hadn't reckoned on terrorist bombs. You could say it was a true adventure holiday!