Blogs from Guayaquil, West, Ecuador, South America - page 2

Guayaquil - Day 11 After breakfast, we spent some time on the porch, reviewing our information on Guayaquil. A friendly dog came by and settled down under Bob's hammock. We decided to call a taxi to get to the bus station. Cab fair was cheap, $1.50, and definitely worth not struggling with our luggage. The bus was very prompt, very comfortanle, approximately a 3 hour trip for $6.00. As we got out of Montanita, several little towns had hammocks for sale. We followed the beach for quite a while, just the sand and no structures or people. In Valdivia, supposedly the oldest culture in Ecuador, fishing boats lined the beach. Then passed a few little shacks with tall sunflowers in the yard. Saw a long dock protruding out into the ocean with a big pipe within, ... read more

Sorry there haven't been any blogs for a while. We took a trip back to the States to get our taxes done, go through everything we left at our son Joe's house and of course visit as many friends as we could. It all started with a three and a half hour "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" through the Cajas National Park to get to Guayaquil for our flight to Miami. We were in a van with four other travelers and the driver. He makes this trip twice a day, so he doesn't waste any time. Cuenca sits at 8,500 feet elevation in the Andes Mountains and Guayaquil is at sea level, but you have to go up to 13,000 feet in the park before you descend down to the coast. We left at five PM, so ... read more

Today we had the hostel staff call for a van to take us, our two pets and 13 bags to Cuenca. The first van that arrived might have been able to get 6 bags in it. I told them to not even try. About 30 minutes later they sent a much larger van, and we got everything in it except for the two animal crates, which we had to tie to the roof of the van. I did not like this idea as it made us targets. When we stopped for gas before hitting the major road we saw that the crates on the roof were not going to last for long, so we wound up re-arranging everything inside and made room for them. When we were traveling up into the Cajas Mountains I was really ... read more

Here are some pictures of the hostal we stayed at. We even had a jacuzzi in our bathroom. It is located up in the hills above the town, and about a 20 minute taxi ride down to the center of town. We stayed here for three days and just vegetated. We only went down to Guayaquil for a few hours, just to say we did. It is the largest city in Ecuador and it looked it. Large, noisy, dirty, crowded. We spent a while at the Iguana Park. It is loaded with iguanas of all sizes that are free to roam all around. They even sleep up in the trees. After we left there we went over to river that runs up from the coast. The water was very brown. I would not want to swim ... read more

We had a pretty reasonable timed flight this am – 11.40am which meant we had to organise a 9am transfer to the airport. We were up at 7.30, packed up and had breakie and went and visited my pharmacist Peter for his left over antibiotics as he is heading home and they will expire in a few months. Just in case we need them in the next 6 weeks! :) We had a bit of a sad goodbye with Peter and John who had got up and come downstairs to see us off and say bye! Both of who we had been travelling with for a month now. John is from Melbourne so we will catch up with him for sure when we are all back in Aus which will be good. Our transfer never arrived ... read more