Jeannie and I said our final seeya laters to Minnie and Gilbert. For sure I want to see these humans again. And Seattle isn’t too far away from Vanderhoof! We’ll make this happen. Definitely.

We met our QuitoBikeTour guides Jonathan and Daniel and our driver Javier… Half an hour before we thought we were going to… But that’s fine, they turned out to be quite patient people. For this portion of the trip we will have three attendees all to ourselves. This has prompted a lot of giggling and hilarity between me and Jeannie, and which was compounded over the course of the day by a string of language goofups involving swear words and body parts.

We spent the morning cycle-sightseeing in the city, did a chocolate tasting, and also sampled some locally made candies. Jonathan gives a lot of information and it’s impossible to remember everything. We had a gigantic lunch out by the old airport that they’ve turned into a public park. Then we decided to skip the afternoon’s planned cycling because it was going to be in the city, and the weather turned raining and windy. So we drove to our accommodations. We stopped along the way to look at a valley of greenhouses and saw from afar (finally, I got some use out of the binoculars!) a bullfight. Which we only noticed because we could hear the music. Pretty darn cool.

The place we’re staying at tonight is absolutely the swishest place I’ve ever stayed at. We met Catalina, the owner/operator of the QuitoBikeTour company. After settling in, we had a game of ocho-locos and some wine and nibbles for supper.

This accomodation was my first experience of “glamping”… And I think I finally understand it. Swish swish! We had the choice of a gorgeous cabin too. Our guides seemed almost as stunned as us. What a crazy life!

F