Tips for travelling in Ecuador

   I´ll be honest, Ecuador was not the most fascinating country we have been to.  We rushed through.  Maybe we didn´t give it enough of a chance.  We did however learn some valuable travel lessons.

Accommodation

1.  Avoid staying in rooms without windows.

   We had a very cheap room in Loja, but with no windows and aqua green walls it felt like we were in a psychiatric hospital.  This was compounded when our best attempts at conversational Spanish were met with blank looks and confusion, which was also more common in Ecuador.  After two days in the cell and linguistic isolation outside it the paranoia set in and we had our biggest barny of the trip.  In tru clichéd fashion I cannot remember what started it, so perhaps amnesia was also a symptom.

2.  Cable TV should not influence your choice of hostel

   ... unless you really like CSI, CSI:NY, CSI:Miami, CSI:SVU, Criminal Minds ... etc.

Transit

3.   On the bus avoid the front two rows on the top floor

   These are the seats of death.  Most bus accidents seem to involve rear-ending a semi-trailer and inevitably the front seats at the top end up inside the trailer.

4.   Also avoid the second row from the back

   These are the seats of the bloody thieving sods.  Travelling from Baños to Quito in these seats we found out that someone had taken advantage of the privacy of the back row of seats behind us to get on their tummy, crawl under our seats.  After braving the air quality around my hiking boots the little sod slashed our bag and made off with some trophie: our laptop and Kizzy´s kindle with all the Twilight books downloaded.    If we´d sat at the back this would not have been possible.  If we´d sat further forward someone would have seen him and stepped on his head.  I hope.

5.   Take a nun with you on border crossings

   Leaving Ecuador we got chatting with a sister on her way to visit family in Columbia and shared a taxi across the frontier.  We had speedy service and paid a fifth of the price for the taxi.  It seems that invoking religion never hurts if you think you might be being ripped off.  The phrase "God is watching" has been reportedly used to good effect in this part of the world.

Comfort and safety

6.   If you have the option of hiring gumboots, you probably need them.

   There is a reason they are there.

7.   Showering tips

   "24-hour hot water" means there will probably be hot water at some point in a 24-hour period.  It will probably rely on a mess of dangerous wiring coming out of the shower head.  This is normal.  Our only cause to panic so far was when the shower started sparking and smoking at our hotel in Alausi. 

   As to the travel.  In Peru: Lima is a nice enough capital city with a beautifully sited shopping centre built into the seaward cliffs.  Huanchaco is a nice enough beach town with reasonable surf and great for seafood.  Over the border to Ecuador and Cuenca is beautiful.  Baños has lovely scenery and a fantastic waterfall in the Devil´s cauldron, easily accessible by a 20km bike ride.  Between these two gems is a place called Alausi where you would only ever go to for the experience of the Devil´s Nose train ride with its "hair-raising series of switchbacks".  It´s pricey and not worth staying in Alausi for.  Quito would have been nice but we were a bit traumatised by the theft.  They have really helpful police though: we dealt with a very nice chap called Marco.  The Mitad del Mundo was kitsch and tacky but had the obligatory photo ops on the equator. 

Here are some pictures from along the way ...

How bus travel is for Kizzy with her little legs

How bus travel is for me with my big bones