Engine light came on but seems to run fine

[naossoan]

Hi guys got a question for you.

I was out teaching my cousin how to drive stick on my 07 yaris 3dr hatch when I noticed the engine light came on for apparently no reason. The engine seemed to be running fine. So I got her to pop the hood so I could take a quick look.

Once opening it up I could feel a fair bit of heat coming off the engine and the coolant was actually bubbling out of the coolant reservoir like the overflow one. So I was like well shit that's not so good and shut the engine down to cool off.

I waited about 20 minutes for it to cool down then started it back up a and drove home. It seemed to drive just fine.

Then when I got home I looked online and found there should be a coolant temperature light that comes on if it's too hot, but that didn't come on. it was the orange engine light on the left side of the cluster that came on.

Now, when we were driving it was very stop and go ina parking lot with quite a bit of idling for maybe an hour and a half.

Should the fan not come on to keep it from over heating? Why would the engine light come on if it was indeed overheating but not coolant light?

What should I do? My dad knows a guy that works ata local garage that can probably run that diagnostic tool for me for free so I'm going to do that Monday to see what the code actually is... but what else?

It wasn't even hot out, like 20 Celsius.