Another Day in Ambato

*This was written last night (Monday October 19), but published today (Tuesday October 20), so everything refers to Monday.

Although it was another day at the office for the athletes, either getting a hit in, playing a match, or getting ready for tonight's semi finals, some of us managed to get out of town on a little excursion into the mountains. The hotel was nice enough to arrange a transportation for Shauna, Yvon, Andrew and I to take a trip to a little town about 25 minutes outside of Ambato. We were told the village was a market, but upon arrival we noticed it was less market and more little shops. At first this seemed not that bad, but then we realized the entire village was full of leather shops, nothing else, and on top of that each shop sold the exact same thing as the next. It was quite amazing that no one had the idea to open up something other than a leather shop. In the end it was a nice little get away with a very scenic drive. I have taken some pictures, but the internet is too slow to upload anything right now.

After our trip up the mountains, Andrew and I took a walk around the hotels block to see what we found and came across an open air market, kind of what we had expected to find in the village we took the trip to. We had a walk around, Andrew bought some gifts for home and we stumbled on our find of the day ... snickers bars. Although we paid $1.50 per bar it was well worth it to have a little taste of home. We were out for about an hour after which we returned to the hotel to prepare to leave for the semi final matches that evening.

The evenings matches started out with us being informed that Tara had won her semi final match be default as Catelina Pelaz of Colombia had withdrew due to injury. Next up was David vs Eric Galvez, the stands were packed for this one and neither player dissapointed with a hard fought back and forth match that unfortunately Galvez pulled out in the end with a 3-1 win over David. I have video of this match, but once again the internet is not fast enough for me to upload it at this time. I will try to get it up tomorrow. We finished the evening off with dinner at the pizza place we have been frequenting daily. After 3 days of pizza I believe it is time we find a new place to eat.

The other happening of the day was the team technical meeting where we found out that both the men and women would be seeded 4th. The men have Colombia, Barbados and Venezuela in their pool and the women have Mexico and Guatemala.

Tomorrow is the finals ... go Tara

That's all for now

Aaron