Finding oases

Tuesday we did very little, essentially moving from café to café, ending up in a chocolate café run by a nice indigenous couple. They sell coffee, but their specialty is chocolate. Once the owner said he could make me hot chocolate with almond milk, I was sold! He, in turn, was impressed that we were all the way from Canada, and had his wife take a picture of us together!

Wednesday we took a bus from Otavalo to Ambato. We had originally planned to go through Quito, but Diego, the manager of the hostel we usually stay at (hot showers!) told us about the bus, which saved us hours of lugging our suitcases from the north bus terminal of Quito to the south one. Of course, the 5 hour trip ended up being more like 6½ because of rush hour traffic, but we did eventually arrive to the most modern guest house we have ever stayed at. In fact we had to argue with the taxi driver to let us off, because he was convinced that it was a condo complex! Fortunately Andreas, who was expecting us, opened the gate at that point, which quickly settled the discussion.

Well, to give the taxi driver some credit, the guest house does resemble a 4 story building of 3 bedroom apartments, meaning that each floor had communal access to a kitchen and living room, and everything was beautifully put together in a quiet neighborhood very close to the Ambato technical university. This means that even though the area is not geared to tourism, there are many restaurants nearby. We had dinner at the 'Chilaquile' which has completely redefined my expectations for high end mexican dining!

To get to the restaurant area, you walk down one long city block with a display of Very Important Men, all done by mosaic.  Even the advertisements, (or sponsors?) were done in mosaic!

One of the benefits of a long bus ride is that it forced Serge to re-evaluate the rest of our vacation. He had been fixated on getting to Cuenca, but the prospect of a second long bus ride in as many days (I had flatly refused to do a 12 hour overnight bus ride with no toilets ever again) did not seem nearly as enticing as he had first thought. So we stayed an extra day in Ambato, even though it is not a tourist destination. Not a bad thing, that also means that there is not someone trying to sell (or steal) something every time you stop to look around! There is a lot of public art, usually in spots that were almost inaccessible to pedestrians (Canadian ones at least. The locals have much more sang froid when it comes to crossing major roads)

After we had dutifully gone to look at the new city clock (a bit of a surprise, the pictures indicated that it was high, but as it turned out, we were already on top of the escarpment, so it was at ground level!), we

then went looking for a park to sit in as it was quite hot in the sun. We found this delightful topiary garden, where we could wander around looking at the sculptures, and then sit in the shade and look over the city.

Wandering back via the side streets was much more pleasant than the way we had gone out (straight down the main road, a hot, unpleasant, ugly, and occasionally chancy walk). Then discovered that there was an outdoor concert happening around the corner from where we ate dinner. (University neighborhood after all!) We toyed with the idea of going to check it out, but even at 7pm, there were already people who had clearly had one too many, with no intentions of stopping, and the police check points were looking for weapons, not booze, so we decided not. 

Not sure when this will get posted, as the internet is a bit spotty here, but after walking most of today, I'm going to bed!