I'm Sorry, I don't Speak English

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We were up at 7am for breakfast at 730, for our car ride at 8. Breakfast was uneventful and the taxi came by at around 815. We hopped in the car and made the long trip across the island to Baltra. On the way I told my mom I was going to pull a local "no gracias" when it came to paying the ferry guy 80 cents...she saw it done on her ride last week, so now I am going to try it. We made it to the ferry to cross the canal...very cramped. The guy started working his way around the ferry getting people to pay, and when he came around to me, totally bypassed me and did not ask me to pay! DAMMIT!....I definitely wanted to pull the "no gracias" and not pay! We boarded the bus on the other side and made our way to the airport...another 10 minute ride.

We checked in at the airport and got our boarding passes, but could not go into the gate area until an hour before our flight. We decided to get some food at the cafe (the entire airport is open air, so no walls...so VERY nice in a tropical location. While we were enjoying our cokes and while I was enjoying my chicken sandwich, birds are flying everywhere and gobbling up any crumb left on the table or on the floor...very cool. The time came to go into the waiting area for our flight, so while we gave the customs declaration to the guy (The Galapagos is like a country in and of itself)...I asked where I could get the stamp for my passport...he said on the other side of the airport (about 30 feet away since it is so small)...so I went over with mom and we got our Galapagos stamps in our passports...very sweet looking stamp. We waited around in the boarding area for an hour until our flight arrived and deboarded...we hopped on and headed back to the mainland.

We arrived in Guayaquil around 12pm and decided to rent a car and drive to Cuenca to do our Alpaca shopping. We also decided it would be a great idea to get a GPS system to get us to where we needed to go...we still needed to leave the city which was going to be a feat in itself. Also, I couldn't technically drive since I lost my license in Montanita...so mom was driving us out of the city while Simon (the GPS system) would navigate us out. So we checked the car over and signed it out. We turned Simon on and hopped on the road. Homeboy went ABSOLUTELY CRAZY. He kept repeating himself over and over again, and didn't tell us the turns until we were already past...so after about 10 minutes of this...and getting lost...and driving around in circles and getting lost...I told my mom that we should just find a cab and pay him to drive us out of town...after about another 5 minutes she finally gave in. So we found a cab, I told him where we wanted to go and we negotiated a price of 5 bucks...we followed him and he got us out of town onto E45...the main road to Cuenca and the Andes!

After about 10 minutes of driving, mom pulled over and we switched. We turned Simon off because his maps were expired and the icon wasn't even on the road...he kept telling us to turn left on E45 when we were already on it! So we used maps and old fashioned navigational skills of reading signs to get us where we needed to go. After an hour, we stopped for some fruit since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. Mom was eyeballing all the bananas on the side of the road so we stopped...Just her luck, the stand we stopped at didn't have ANY BANANAS...so I picked up some mangoes and a few yellow things for a buck. Once in the car and on the road, we reached in the bag to see what we had....the yellow things didn't seem too good, so I didn't try them and the Mangoes were WAY too messy to be eating while driving...so no fruit was to be had by either of us!!

Around dusk, we finally made it to the Andes and started climbing the twisting, turning road. It was a torn up part gravel, part paved road that was in some piss poor condition. But, when in Rome...So I drove like the locals, passing on blind turns, dodging potholes at 80kmh...once it got dark, it got DARK. I slowed my speed as we progressed higher and higher up mountain chain. We were still hungry and still wanted bananas, so we stopped at this one place along the road, some little dead end village. I asked for 4 little bananas and she charged me a buck...i went to get it off the vine and she took a quarter of the vine off and handed it to me! So we had about 20 little bananas to have for dinner...or until we got to Cuenca. The drive wasn't too bad until we hit the cloud cover...now it was dark, foggy/cloudy, with 15 feet of visibility at most...whew. After about another hour we stopped to refill our gas tank...we were at half tank...but didn't want to get below that in case we got stranded for any reason. We asked the guy how much longer to Cuenca, he said 2 hours...so we're close.

We hopped back on the road and drove through on and off cloud cover. We came across some express buses several times on our drive...these guys are CRAZY. The buses looked like they were going to tip over the side of the mountain (very few guard rails by the way)...tiilting from left to right, swaying with the curves...I COULDN'T EVEN KEEP UP WITH THEM! After about 3 hours from the gas fill up, we finally arrived in Cuenca...now time to find a decent hotel!

We pulled over to get a few bucks of gas in our tank to ask the gas guy where a nice hotel was...that wasn't dangerous...he gave us directions in spanish. While he was talking to my mom, she said "I'm sorry, I don't speak english." HAHAHA I about laughed my ass off!. So he gave us the name of the hotel...hotel italia, and we were on our way to find it. Lucky for us we were on the street it was on and we eventually came to it...i "parked" illegally in/off the road while I ran in to get a room. THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY! So I went across the street to a hostal. I asked for a room with two double beds but they were all out, so we had to get a full size bed to share! So I unloaded the car into the lobby to drop her off and then went to find a parking spot...very few and far between! So I parked the car, where I thought it would be safe and untowed...went in to ask the kid behind the front desk if it was good...he came out and said no, so he hopped in the car with me and drove me 2 blocks where the hostal parking was...2 bucks a night...AWESOME!

After parking the car and heading upstairs to the room...I find the room is REALLY small but we do have satellite tv!!! WOO HOO! After watching tomb raider til 1am, I finally called it a night and hit the sack.

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