We never really knew what to expect from Ecuador. Before arrival we knew that Ecuador is a small country that grows coffee and cocoa, we also knew it was neither the richest or poorest in South America and that the President was a somewhat radical character (sheltering Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for one). Other than this we knew little about the place so we arrived pretty much without preconceptions.
Thanks to our Spanish course we spent seven weeks in Ecuador in the end, far longer than we’ll spend anywhere else. Also thanks to the Spanish course we were able to live with some of the locals and really get a little more under the skin than we’ll be able to do anywhere else.
After our ride on the Devil’s Nose train, we’d decided to make the journey straight to Baños on the same day since there was nothing else to see in Alausi. We’d also eaten at the only restaurant with any hope of vegetarian food, so our only option for dinner was being the only people at the no. 1 restaurant (of 4) on TripAdvisor yet again. After the train we headed straight back to our hotel, collected our bags and jumped onto the first bus to Riobamba, the nearest city to Baños along the Pan-American highway. We were headed for the small town of Baños, an hour further east of the main highway, but Riobamba was as far as we could get on a direct bus from Alausi.
The view down to Baños
The bus wound its way north and soon enough we were arriving in the Riobamba bus terminal. The bus next to ours was heading to Baños, but we needed to buy tickets before boarding so we headed into the terminal to buy them. The counter was easy enough to find so we queued up an ask for two tickets. The response from the woman behind the counter was “no hay boletos” (there are no tickets). Since it was late in the afternoon this was a little worrying so we had a quick look around for other bus companies going to Baños (there were none) and looked at other options including taking a bus up to Ambato and then a more frequent bus to Baños. Luckily someone who was behind us in the queue had noticed our confusion and came over to tell us that there was actually a bus at 5pm to Baños so just to double check we queued up again and asked for tickets to Baños. This time same lady that we’d spoken to not five minutes before asked for $4 and gave us two tickets. We could only assume that since the previous bus had now left she was allowed to sell tickets for the later bus, and had neglected to explain this to us the first time around! Mostly just relieved to have tickets we sat down to wait.
We landed back in Guayaquil from the Galapagos and headed straight for the nearby bus station. We were heading to the small colonial city of Cuenca, back on the edge of the Andes. We had a 4 hour bus ride ahead of us so wanted to get going as soon as possible. The bus station was a huge confusing building, part bus station and part busy shopping mall. After staggering around in circles with our giant bags we found an information desk and were directed to the right bus ticket booth. I asked when the next bus left and was told 5pm, this was in about 3 minutes time but they still sold us the tickets and called the bus conductor to wait for us, what service! So after more running through the station/mall we were on a bus only about 45 minutes after landing!
We had comfy seats and the journey didn’t feel too long, we arrived at about 9.30pm and got a taxi to our hostel. We’ve been booking one place ahead at the moment, especially when arriving late at night it’s nice to know you have a room waiting for you. The hostel, La Cigale (French for Cicada, and it seemed to attract mostly French tourists!), was above a restaurant/bar and so once checked in we just had to walk downstairs for a nice evening meal and beers. We messaged Stephanie, a friend from the travelling classroom who was doing her final week of Spanish lessons in Cuenca, and arranged to meet the next day.
One of the two things about this trip that we (well mostly I) decided were non-negotiable was the Galapagos islands off the coast of Ecuador. We knew that we’d get a better deal if we looked at the last minute so we left it until about a fortnight before we wanted to depart. During our Manta week we discovered that the Spanish school did some last minute deals, but when we asked for quotes it turned out that although they had good deals they were more at the budget end of the spectrum with dates that didn’t really suit us. Fearing that we’d left it too late we frantically starting searching on the internet and realised that, although there wasn’t a lot available, there were still a few options with good dates, itineraries and discounts.
