Ambato

Friday the 27th I arrived late at night in Ambato, a town two hours under Quito. De hours don't correspond with the milage. You can imagine that the roads here are not as well paved as in our "fancy Europe". So 30 kilometers is probably an hour of driving, in the mountains, that is. Anyway, I met my new family, who live about 30 minutes walking outside the centre of Ambato; la Señora Fanny, el Señor George and the daughter Soledad (29). First they stalled me in sort of a cellar below the house, very big but without windows and kind of smelly, and after my encounter with this very big spider I decided to ask for a room in the house. This seemed to be no problem, so now I'm safe from anything with more than 4 legs...The next day I had a meeting at 8.00 'o clock in the morning (on a saturday!) with the main sister (moeder overste - non) from the streetchildrens centre to which I will refer to as Don Bosco, because this is the name of the centre. She wasn't there but another non was and we went through my schedule and my tasks. Later I walked a bit in the center and Fanny and Soledad showed me around. Ambato is a town without any tourists therefore no late night sessions....Everything is dead after 22.00 hours. I don't know how I'll manage after Cusco but I will. Sunday we went to Puyo, a town near the rainforrest, so a bit warmer then it is here in the mountains. I really have traveled through all the temperaturezones this journey, seen all kinds of countrysides, from 12 degrees till 45 degrees, from cold and high mountains till hot and dry desserts, sometimes in one day and this is a very akward feeling. Puyo has a few nice sites but I'm not completely smitten by Ecuador yet. Maybe I'm still full of Peru which is an amazing country. But it was a nice day. The other daughter of the family lives here and we barbecued and laughed and I tried to settle in like before in Peru with the family. On the way back to Ambato we got this horrible news about the cousin dying in the car accident in Quito (previous message) and everybody was very upset and sad. Later that evening mother and daughter went to Quito for the funeral the next morning and at the same time there were like 15 members of the family who were visiting the family that night (had nothing to do with the accident), so it was a very strange and straining day, especially for the family. So I tried to console the daughter and helped a bit in the only way that you can when you just know somebody. By beeing understanding and helpfull. Well so far for that weekend....