Hotel Montecarlo Ibarra

... I chose the first room at the top of the stairs. Back downstairs to give Bud the good news about the three flights, get the key, and let the two macho men carry the bags up. El Arbolito is a brand-new hostal, slightly above spartan, spotlessly clean with locally made wooden furnishings, and inexpensive. If one wants to read after dark one needs one's book light, and if one wishes to watch TV one needs to bring one's Spanish. Since we were equipped with both, we ...

... anyone to help fix it. Now its Monday morning and our first order of business was to find someone to repair the tire. It didnt take long, we found a "vulcanizador" less than a mile from the hotel and pulled over to have it fixed. This place was run by three generations - all working on tires and very friendly. <br><br>We have gotten some feedback, from a segment of our blog audience, that there ...

... s say we&#8217;re going to Quito and not tell them about going to Ibarra&#8230;Maybe we can tell the guards&#8230;.They do have strong security and burn robbers alive in Otavalo.&#8221; We tried to forget about the two men and enjoy the view of the mountains and valleys outside of the window. The bus eventually reached Otavalo, and I held my breath as we stepped off the bus...surprisingly, both of the men got off and departed on their own ways. Phew! So ...

... up and were hailing a cab in front of us, so I guess it worked out. That aside the neighborhood we were staying in was really bohemian and young with lots of café&#8217;s, bars and restaurants and seemed fun. After dropping our stuff we went out to explore. We had dinner in a Mexican place and sat in a corner talking quietly. Tvs were showing all of Madonna&#8217;s videos and then eventually all of Michael Jackson&#8217;s videos. Pretty random.

... us a legend about the knomb which lived in the forest, pretty scary stuff. We came back to our rooms and we had our fires lit and it was oh so warm. We all thought we were going to sleep amazingly but because of the altitude, which was about as high as mt cook, we all slept terribly and woke up with headaches. Sucks.<br><br>Have a look at the Lodge: http://www.polylepislodge.com/

... we skipped to watch movies in the hostel. Better safe than sorry!) After getting the hell out of Quito we high-tailed it to nearby Mindo, a fantastic little rain forest town recommended by our cousin Ethan, who lived in Ecuador for a time. Here we kept up our extreme sports with a great ziplining tour through the cloud forest. Weeeeeee! We also tubed down a raging ...

Friday 12 December - Otavalo Just 2.5 hours north of Quito is Otavalo, a town famous for its Saturday market. We travelled on another local bus which we caught at the Terminus in the dodgy part of Old Town. It was only about ¼ mile from our hotel but we were advised to take a taxi for safety. We stayed in a hostel in Otavalo recommended by Lonely Planet. We met up with a group organised by the "Dragoman ...

... eith**, was tired, headache. S* we g* int* t*wn and he's picking up dudes, *ne *f them with military fatigue and a big gun. We are all packed in the car, like eight *f us. L**ked like a cl*wn car and ****. We g* back th**e and they get *ut and have s*me w*rds with the *wn** *f the h*use and pr*ceed t* take the truck. Anyway, he's ****** and driving like a madman. We are c*ming d*wn the m*untain, and th**e is this d*g in the street. I say, "watch *ut f*r the d ...

... then it is the mountains, green and painted with farms. I will rewrite this at some stage and try get it right but this is the rough idea for now. But Ibarra is lovely and we didn`t even do anything there. Just ate ice cream beans and little sweet bananas in the plaza, drank too many cocktails while listening to live music and watching the locals celebrating some kind of festivity, drunk and dancing. Oh...and the blackberry syrup...with fresh cheese on bread....mmmmm.

... new life in the foreign land. Our stupid ambassadorial smiles hiding a somewhat guilty conscience. I so wanted to fold them up in my back pack, between the newly bought Ecuadorian rugs and bottles of mora syrup, only to neatly unflod them 6 months later to their new lives, so much more prosperous and financially secure. I told them how much we need their services. Our environment going to ****, our rivers drying up, our a/c machines cranked, our ever so ...