The day my blog started we were on our way to the Schnell’s cottage in Windimere for a nice relaxing day on the lake, taking our mind off squash and worlds. It was our day of fun, which included a second ping pong tourney, late night high stakes poker games which had very tough competition for me (sarcasm), water sports, and great food cooked by the host Schnell family and guest chef Jonathan “fatty” Hill. The ping pong tourney was dominated by the (always) underrated Tyler Osborne of Kingston, Ontario. The quarters held a classic match up between Graeme Schnell and me. As usual, I got unlucky with some bad calls by the reff late in the game and brutal frames by Graeme that caught me off guard. I ended up losing first round for the second time straight but I basically feel like I should have won the tournament. After the ping pong tournament finally ended, we had a great dinner - wings and ribs. Later that night we decided to go hunting for caribou, elk, fawn, and grizzly bears. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any to hunt down so we called it a night.
The next morning was our day of water sports and getting sweet tans on the beach. I was really excited to get an unreal tan, as was the rest of the team. Our first task for the day was water skiing, which I’ve never done before but thought I’d be a natural because of my ridiculous leg and core strength. Nick was the first to try (apparently “never having tried it either”), and was pretty solid after a few tries of getting up and looked like he could be on a water skiing poster in Andrew’s room or something. Tyler decided to try as well, having done it before he looked like he had some skills with his wide stance approach. Finally, after waiting for a while and warming up with chin-ups on the boat because the water was probably below zero degrees Celsius, it was my turn. I felt kind of nervous, but at the same time pumped to do it because I didn’t want to be showed up by my team mates. I jumped in the freezing water, acting like I wasn’t cold at all. After my thumbs up sign, to signal I was ready for the boat to pull me out of the water and on to the two skis, I immediately regretted going in. I ended up almost getting up but on the way managing to fill my eyes (which had contacts in them), nose, ears, and lungs with liters of water so I decided I’ve had my fun in this sport and quit. Obviously the rest of the team didn’t understand the severity of my situation so just laughed it off while I thought I was pretty seriously injured and would need quite a bit of recovery time. After that we went to the beach for our tan, and made mud balls that we all threw at Tyler from a secret vantage point.
DAY 2
The next day I was the most tired I’ve ever been. This is because we had to wake up at 7:45am to run up Sulfur Mountain, a huge mountain in Banff Springs. The purpose was to get fit and see how it feels to train at high altitude, around 9000ft above sea level at the top of the mountain. To run up the mountain it is 5.6km total, all up hill, which Andrew was confident about breaking the 26 minute record made by a cross country skier.
It was a race up to the top with me, Nick, Andrew, and Tyler… Jon as well, but he decided to take the gondola up – to nobodies surprise. In the first few minutes of the race, I was winded and fell behind of our wolf pack. Andrew was pretty far ahead it seemed, out of sight, while Nick and Tyler were in the middle. Throughout the run up the mountain, we all had to take breaks and walk, because it was pretty tough to keep a good pace going up hill for almost 6km straight. There was no sign of Andrew however. While I was running up the mountain there were numerous people, mostly young females, who would yell words of encouragement or offer water in their French accents. At one point I got way too tired so decided to take a 5 minute break to stop and admire the gorgeous view from near the top of the mountain. After envisioning Rocky IV when Rocky runs up the mountain for training in Russia for a huge fight against Ivan Drago, I got the courage to keep going up the winding path to the top. Finally, after almost an hour long, I reached the top of the mountain where the rest of the team and Jon were waiting. Andrew broke the record time of getting to the top, beating every athlete to ever run up, doing it in only 24 minutes. However, after more investigation at this suspicious feat, we noticed blood on the back of his shirt, and cuts on his leg, which nobody else seemed to have. The truth of the story then slowly started to come undone, and he broke down and admitted that he cheated – instead of going on the normal winding trail that everyone goes up, he found a dangerous shortcut that goes straight up “by accident”. We think he studied the mountain and its intricacies long before the race took place. After that, our amazing coach took us to an UNREAL brunch at the Fairmont in Banff Springs. He had to book the restaurant two weeks in advance, and it was truly unreal having everything from elk and buffalo meat to amazing waffles and tarimasu. It had a mouth dropping view at the top of the mountain and was a beautiful sight. After that meal with our stomachs stuffed, and our legs filled with lactic acid, we had to go play squash at high altitude in Banff. We then relaxed in the hot tub and loosened up for the drive back to the Schnell’s house in Calgary to pack up for our flight to Quito.
DAY 3
My alarm was set for 4am at the Schnell residence that morning to get ready to go to the airport. We had a long day ahead of us with a stop in Dallas, then Miami, and then finally reaching Quito. At the airport we all decided to nap, but after hearing frightening tiger sounds, we all sprung up. Sadly but also humorously it was a schizophrenic man beside us with tourettes who had a nervous tick of making sounds of animals that are found in the African Lion Safari. For example, repeated “RAWWWR” very loud every few seconds. Jonathan woke up, with an instinct defense making other jungle noises to successfully scare him off. We finally reached Quito late at night, in a ridiculously long line at customs to make it even worse. While looking for a cab, I noticed everyone looked at Andrew funny. It might have been because of his red hair, but I’m not sure. Nick, Tyler, and Jonathan stood out as well because of their different skin color, Jonathan sticking out the most however, no offence.
DAY 4
We were only in Quito for the night, not even unpacking because we were planning to head out for Ambato to train for a week (a small town near Ecuador) early the next morning. I ordered room service very late night when getting into Quito, past 2am after our long day of travel. However, it didn’t end up as planned… communication in Ecuador can be pretty frustrating, especially for your team mates when the food ends up coming to their room instead (in the middle of the night). The hotel is a 5 star however, beautiful rooms with luxurious bathrooms. The next morning was our travel to Ambato; we reached there in approximately 2 hours. We were happy to reach safely and get out of the van ASAP… we thought our life was over at least a few times while driving there with a series of honks and hazard signals by our emotionless driver, accompanied by lane switches into non-existent lanes with seemingly no blind spot checks. But he got the job done and we checked in to the Emperador Hotel in Ambato and were greeted by a local family (the Rome’s) that Andrew had met previously at the Pan-American games. The family was very nice and showed us the club that we would be doing our training at, and good restaurants and shops to visit while in Ambato. The hotel receptionist was also very nice… but that’s a different story (use your imagination). We ended up training at the club later that day, doing only light physical activity and drilling so we can slowly adjust our bodies to the new altitude level with low oxygen content. For dinner we ate at this Pizzeria called “La Fornace” or something like that. It was pretty good, with an oven baked style of cooking the flat bread pizza (look at picture of me at the pizzeria).
Jonathan had never eaten better pizza and never drank a better local cerveza and never eaten a better tasting pasta. When the food would come, whether it was the garlic bread for appetizers, to the spice or “picante” to apply on the pizza, all we would hear is “WOW!”, or “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!” Jon sure does love his food. From then on, we only ate at that restaurant, so there isn’t that much to talk about regarding restaurants in Ambato. After our meals at “La Fornace” we would routinely go straight to the “Helateria” for dessert which is a gelato sit down restaurant. Jon has also never had better gelato before. I have to admit though; food in Ecuador has been surprisingly good, and nobody has gotten sick yet (knock on wood). At night, us “22 year olds” went out to a local bar with the hotel receptionist and her friends “Mari-Posa” (a nickname that means butterfly) and Daniela (an Ecuadorian model). At the bar we all just had virgin sparkling water at the bar of course, since we were in serious training. The butterfly (Mari-Posa), had a liking for Tyler, but he wasn’t interested. We came back at a very reasonable time to get a good night sleep for our two training sessions the next day.
DAY 5
Our alarm was set for 8:30am. I had three alarms though… one for 8:30am, the other for 8:35am, and the third for 8:36am, just to make sure. We would take taxis to the club and back, by
the amount of yellow cabs that were around one would think they’re in New York City. A lot of locals travel by taxi as well, probably because of how inexpensive it is (only 1 DOLLAR to all local destinations). After our morning training session, we ate at the pizzeria (obviously), and then went to the markets to look around. They mostly sold an unnecessary amount of shoes and clothes. The shoes were fake brand names sold at pretty high prices. For example, very poor imitations of Lacoste dress shoes were selling for $50, but the name was misspelled “L’Coste”. I’d rather have 50 taxi rides, personally. While on our walk around the markets we went by many homeless people on the streets. Also we came across a beautiful church and decided to take a look. Andrew being our tour guide would explain the statues and shrines that decorated the holy place. I felt the need to make some confessions so I went to the confession booth. Father Jonathan Hill was very supportive on the other side. After that we decided it’s time that we all went back to the hotel to rest up for a bit after for our second training session. We got into more intense condition games and normal games to see how it feels to play at around 8000ft above sea level. It was ridiculously tiring, but we all felt that we are getting very fit and ready for the tournament that is starting in one week.
Day 6
We had one training session in the morning, which was pretty tough because we all played a few games. After that, the nice family we know from Ambato, took us to Banos (pronounced bahnyose),
which is an hour and a half away from Ambato. It is a nice getaway place, 30 minutes away from the Amazon. We stopped to admire the view a few times on the way, breath-taking mountains. Andrew was about to go bungie jumping, but when we went to the drop zone he got cold feet. I don’t blame him based on the home-made string used as a cord and the fall just above the shallow river and sharp edged rocks didn’t look too appetizing. Pretty sketchy. Later in Banos, we walked around the markets and I decided to buy some gifts for people back home, since I’m such a nice guy. After that we went to the hot springs, which was the highlight of the day trip to Banos. Up in the mountains with the natural hot water flowing was very relaxing scene. It took time to get into the actual water, because it felt like a huge pool of boiling water in a steaming kettle. The temperature of the water was just over 50 degrees Celsius, and after several minutes of staying in the water my body felt numb and loose. We then showered and headed to an Argentinean steak house. The tenderloin steak was truly unbelievable (at the time, not so much when I had to rush to the bathroom a couple hours later). We then went back to hotel, relaxed and ready to continue training the next day.
By Arjun Gupta
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