Happy New Year 2004. All our best wishes for the new year. After couple of days in Lisbon which was lovely and one overnight stopover in Madrid, we finally embarked for our adventures in South America. Thanks to the lovely girl at the checking in Madrid, we got upgraded business class to Quito which made our flight such a pleasurable time. It was funny to get upgraded as the Ecuadorian national football team, which were on the same flight, didn't even get this privilege. Arriving in Quito was an unforgettable experience as all the locals and TV crew were there to welcome back their football heros. Lee and I were a bit disappointed when we realised it wasn't for us. Staying one night in Quito, we made our way down to Montanita which is located on the pacific coast of Ecuador and one of their best surfing spot. We caught the bus in Quito to Manta but unfortunately, we caught the slowest bus that we could find. So it gave us the experience to discover nearly all the countryside of Ecuador from the Andes (which gave us the opportunity to see our fist illamas) to a tropical countryside. When we finally got to Manta at 23h00 (11h00 hours bus ride), we discover that the next bus to Montanita was not before 4h00am of the morning and it will take us 4 hours to get there. So in true Lee and Steph form, we found a bar and sat there until they close, which was at about 01h00. So we sat at the bus station waiting for our bus. The bus station was an experience on itself as at about 2h30 of the morning, this guy came up to us and proposed to drive us to Montanita for only $1 instead of $5. Dodgy. Thanks to Adrian and his spanish, we discovered that it was effectively a bus driver, which had to many drink. So we just ignored him and waited for our bus.