Things to do in Ambato

Food · South-east of the centre, off the Panamericana

The wholesale produce market for the central sierra — acres of fruit and vegetables changing hands before dawn, three days a week at full tilt.

Local tip: Go very early, on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, and go to look before you go to buy. It is a working trading floor rather than a tourist market and it is genuinely startling in scale. Then go to the retail markets — the Mercado Modelo or Urbina — for the food counters and llapingachos, which is where you actually eat.

Culture · Ficoa and Atocha, along the Ambato river below the city

The nineteenth-century country houses and gardens of Ambato's writers, in a strip of orchard and flower nursery along the river.

Local tip: The quintas of Mera — who wrote the words of the national anthem — and of Juan Montalvo are the calmest hour in Ambato, and the walk along the river between them through the orchards is the reason people live in Ficoa. Go on a weekday morning; the gardens are the point rather than the houses.

Neighborhood · Up the western hillside, about 20 minutes from the city

An entire parish of leather workshops and tanneries at 3,000 metres, selling jackets, bags and boots direct at a fraction of city prices.

Local tip: Ecuadorians drive from Quito for this and most visitors to Ambato never hear of it. Go at a weekend when everything is open, bargain, and check the stitching and the lining rather than the label. The views back down over the valley from up there are better than anything in the city itself.

Landmark · The city centre

A stark modernist cathedral of 1954 facing the city's main square — built to replace the colonial one the 1949 earthquake destroyed.

Local tip: It is the opposite of what people come to the Ecuadorian sierra expecting, and that is exactly what makes it worth ten minutes. Read the earthquake first and the building becomes legible: this is a city that chose to rebuild forwards rather than reconstruct what it lost. Montalvo's mausoleum is on the same square.

Nature · About an hour east, at the foot of Tungurahua

A spa and adventure town in a gorge below an active volcano, where the sierra drops away into the Amazon basin.

Local tip: This is where the whole province goes at weekends, and it is an hour from Ambato rather than the four hours it is from Quito — a real and undersold advantage of living here. Go midweek if you can. The waterfall road towards Puyo is the best cycling descent in Ecuador and you can hire a bike and get a lift back.

Nature · Above the city at Píllaro road, on the eastern hillside

A large free public park on the hillside with gardens, walking paths, animal enclosures and long views over the whole Ambato valley.

Local tip: Run by the provincial government, free, and almost entirely used by local families rather than by anyone else. It is the best view of the valley and the volcanoes on a clear morning, and the walk up through the terraced fields from the city is a proper hour's exercise at 2,600 metres. Go early on a Sunday before the barbecue crowd arrives.