It's interesting how the days on the road vary, some are so mundane that there hardly seems to be anything to say, then others like today (and tomorrow - this is the hint that I wrote up two days at the same time) are so packed with sights, experiences and surprises that it seems impossible to capture even the basics.

Take today for example, we started out from our camp spot on relatively tame gravel roads, and then after a while it turned into a cobbled road covered in the most incredibly fine dust and sand, not long after the road basically disappeared and we found our selves in the middle of a road construction site that lasted off and on for 20 miles, at times we had to sound the horn to let the heavy equipment drivers know we were coming, and follow buses in order to know the detours. And all that happened before 10:30 in the morning on the northern and last leg of the Quilotoa Loop.

Continuing the saga we pulled into Latacunga looking for internet. Nina did a great job navigating us to the center of the town where the guide book said that we would find lots of internet cafes, but little did we know that it was market day, and that the streets in addition to being crowded were narrow. So once again we had the experience of negotiating between market stalls, and driving down streets where we could literally hit a pedestrian on each side of the vehicle with our left and right side mirrors at the same time.

Continuing south to Ambato we were looking for the turn off to the famous resort and spa town of Baños. Fortunately Ambato had a bypass road, and the route to Baños was well signposted - up to a point. The first signposted turn off, ran into another road construction gang, this one had closed the road completely. We finally found the correct alternate route, but suddenly the road turned into a dust bowl. About 3 miles of 20 yard wide dry mud, potholes and dust like you would not believe, plus buses driving like they were in the Paris-Dacca. But wait the story does not end there. The drive down into Baños is another of these spectacular roads that winds down along the valley wall and seems to go on forever, it was wonderful. But Baños is at the foot of a large and active volcano which has had bouts of activity in the last 20 years that has had the town evacuated and the road destroyed. And this activity shows, as we approached the town there were huge gullies running down the mountain side and across the road, and covered by temporary bridges. As we approached one of these the hill side started throwing 2 ft diameter boulders onto the road. What did we do? Exactly what the locals did, slow until there seemed to be a lull in the bombardment and accelerate through the danger zone. Phew!!

Baños is definitely a tourist town, lots of restaurants, hotels, and shops selling adventure tours, and tourists driving around town in off-road buggies. There are also a number of thermal baths. We will (probably) be back to this town so decided to leave the baths until next time.

We got ourselves a hotel/hostel room for the night in order to have a good shower. Finding a place for the Tiger was a bit more complicated as the hotel parking lot was not big enough, but the lot next door was just - once a man from the hotel lifted the electrical wires up for us with a broom handle.

Once settled into our hostel we sat in the common room and shared experiences with an Australian couple that are on a gap year as they termed it.