Ecuador – Guayaquil

Day 1 – Getting to Ecudor

Finally leaving Trujillo at 2am in the morning we quickly settled down into our 180 degree coach seats and tried to get to sleep.

Waking up in the morning, we were still in Peru and waited for our breakfast.  We made very slow progress and we figured we would arrive in Ecuador very late in the evening.  It wasn’t helped when we reached a check-point where we thought we had reached boarder control, we hadn’t.

 

 

Instead we had to wait in a queue of buses and then get off and get our documents checked whilst officials checked out the bus, I’m guessing a smuggling check?  We waited around for another ½ hour and then got back on the bus before setting off again.

 

 

About an hour later we actually reached the boarder where we had read it was a pretty simple affair to get through as the Peru and Ecuador border control were in the same building.  It would have been simple if it wasn’t for the very long/slow queues, the whole process took about an hour to complete.

It wouldn’t have been so bad but we had to wait around until the whole coach had been processed and then had to wait a further ½ hour until we could board the bus once again.  Just to rub salt into the wounds before we left boarder control we were all kicked off the bus again and made to stand around in the blazing sunshine for another ¾ hour.  It appeared that our coach had been singled out for a customs search, most probably checking that a consignment of Peruvian marching powder was not accompanying us on our journey.

Finally, we were on our way again and we got our first glimpses of Ecuador and on first impressions in looked very hot with jungle type countryside.

Once across the border the journey continued for about another 4 hours until we got to our destination which was the large city of Guayaquil at around 8.30pm, about 18 hours since we started our journey.

The bus station was absolutely huge and once we had retrieved our bags we hunted around the station trying to find the office to buy our tickets for the next day.  After some confusing conversation exchanges with some ticket desks we finally found the office we needed on the top floor, but it was closed so we will just have to take our chances the following morning.

Gauyaquil was not really our end destination but we could not get a bus connection to where we wanted to go the same day, so we had just booked a hostel for the night to break up the journey.  So, we jumped in a cab and went to a small hostel that was run by an elderly couple and we appeared to be the only guests staying there.

The room was OK, but we were keen to get out and get some proper food to eat so we quickly locked up our bags and got some directions from the owner to some nearby restaurants.

Walking around the corner and not spotting any bars we noticed a parilla restaurant and as it was getting late we decided to give it a go.  The food when it turned up was bigger than we expected and we wish we hadn’t ordered a side dish, but it was welcome after our days coach food.

We stayed at the restaurant for a bit but were a bit concerned at the prices of their beers, we hoped this was restaurant prices and not standard for Ecuador!  Once fed and watered and a bit tired from our travelling we headed back to the hostel for the night.