Buses galore to get to Riobamba, then football with the Ecuadorean streetkids!
So who wants to wake up at 5:15 a.m., c´mon put your hands up, I know you're out there. The scary thing is that this is one of the better times to leave Black Sheep Inn, it's only on Fridays that they have a 6 a.m. bus, most other days you have to be at the end of the driveway at 3 or 4 a.m. (ouch!) Of course you can throw money at the problem and get one of the locals to bring a truck along at a sensible time, which I might of considered at 3 a.m. but 6 a.m. seemed bearable.
So I joined the American Phil for a crazy morning of buses galore, first a cramped few hours on bumpy roads with both my backpacks crammed on to my lap somehow, which took us to Zumbahua. Fortunately a bus was just leaving for Latacunga so we got on that one for another hour.
After a quick glimpse of the plumes of smoke from the nearby active volcano (have I metioned that a few kilometres away near Banos Mt Tunguhrua erupted a few days ago) we began to accumulate friends we'd already met on the trail and lined up a dinner.
Before dinner we headed up to a lookout to see if we could get any more views of the volcano, however on the way we see some streetkids playing football, that's like a red rag to a bull for me! After we watched for a little while we managed to get invited to play in it was just brilliant. These kids were damn good for their age too, so we had to foul them quite a bit (just kidding, just kidding).
