Buses

Nothing to say about today as we spent all of it on buses. The bus from Trujillo left at about 1:30 and we quickly fell asleep. When we woke up about 8 we were provided with breakfast of crackers and jam, then we watched a film and looked at the beautiful scenery which started as a coastal landscape which gradually turned into endless banana plantations with large green mountains in the background and eventually to huge flooded valleys of extremely murky water which seem like they should wash the bridges away until we arrived at Tumbes just before the boarder where we were given lunch of rice and some kind of stew, drink and peach bits for pudding. We then crossed the boarder which took an INCREADIBLE amount of time as it seemed everyone on the bus had failed to bring the right documents, even though it says what you need in the bus station when you buy your ticket!! Anyway Mae and I passed through with no problems and we sat down for another film and a 5 hour journey to Guayaquil. When we arrived we managed to drive around in circles for half an hour and eventually got dropped off in a random car park which we were very unimpressed about. After collecting our bags we got directions to the proper bus station from a security guard and walked there with our pack. Upon arrival we bought tickets on our next bus to Banos for $8.25 each. (that's a bit more like it!!) Grabbed some dinner from McDonalsds, (nuggets of course) it's quite strange that with the amount of sugar South Americans put in everything McDonalds ends up being one of the healthier options!! We then just had time to get to our bus and settle down for the next 8 hours journey. On the way out of town we did get treated to a show on local TV which claimed to be some kind of dancing show (it claimed to be Cumbia) but was really just an excuse for surgically enhanced women to jiggle around in next to no clothes, of course given the general quality of the dancing here this might be what they think dancing actually is!!