Team Canada has arrived in Ambato

Well ... we all made it to Ambato, but it wasn't without it's challenges.

The journey started on Tuesday afternoon in Miami where Tara, Samantha, Alex, Yvon, David and myself all made it to our plane on time, boarded without incident and waited, and waited and waited. We waited almost 2 hours for the plane to take off due to some mechanical issues with the plane. The flight itself was uneventful and featured a less than entertaining movie that no one other than David enjoyed. Upon arriving in Quito, late, we noticed that our shuttle to the airport was not waiting for us, likely it had come for our original landing time and left after we didn't show up. We managed to find a taxi van that could fit all of us and knew where the hotel was. We made it to the hotel safe and sound, had dinner and called it a night. Linda and Andrew made it to Quito around 12:00am local time and like us, did not have the shuttle waiting for them.

Thursday morning started with a nice breakfast in the hotel restuarant and a walk down the street to the market. You could buy pretty much anything you didn't need at the market, and everything was dirt cheap. Everyone refrained from buying anything (yet), but I am sure their bags will all be packed with stuff on the trip home. After the walk we packed up our stuff and prepared to get picked up for our trip to Ambato.

The shuttle showed up on time, but informed us that we had to go to the airport to pick up another team that was just arriving. The first issue with this was that the van was full with just us, the second issue with this was that when we arrived at the airport we learned that it was a 2 hour wait for the other team. Hearing this we took it upon ourselves to find an alternative route to Ambato. Yvon and Linda asked around and found a taxi van willing to drive us to Ambato for $100.00. Considering there were 9 of us and Ambato was 200 km away, this was a pretty good deal so we took it. The van was crowded and it struggled up most of the hills, but the scenery was fantastic and the team kept each other occupied with funny stories and jokes and the 2 hours seemed to fly by, not really, but its a nice thought. On that note, keep David away from cats and Tara away from shopping in airports (I guess you had to be there).

We arrived in Ambato to find out our hotel had been swtiched and the driver didn't know the way. We eventually found it, and were relieved to see that it was nice and close to the clubs. We checked in, had dinner and our now relaxing in our rooms before going over the check out the club.

The people in Ecuador are very kind and many speak English, which is good since none of us speak Spanish, although Linda seems to be able to get by.

The draw will be done tomorrow with matches starting on Saturday.

Below our some pictures from the last few days, most of from our trip from Quito to Ambato.