Thursday 22 March 2012

I woke up early, packed up and went looking for the restaurant at which I was supposed to meet up with Leo, for breakfast. However, it was far too early for it to be open, and even after a visit to the bus terminal where I determined what time busI could get, it was just starting to open, but they pointed me to another restaurant. So, I was unable to make the appointment or make my apologies to Leo, and ended up having breakfast at one of those beachside cafes. (That´s if Leo was able to wake up, he seemed a bit appalled at how early I was intending to have breakfast: he´s settled in nicely at Puerto Lopez, it´s his favourite place that he keeps coming back to).

I killed time till 11 am (checkout time) at an air-conditioned internet café, then cleared out my room, and killed more time by getting an ice lolly and buying the bus ticket for the 12:00 pm bus, which my hostel had told me went to direct to Guayaquil (journey time 4 hours): no changing buses three times, like I had to get to Puerto!

On the journey to Guayaquil, we passed a lot of local houses built on stilts, and which were obviously needed from some of the flooded areas that I could see. As with the journey from Bahia to Puerto Lopez, you could see the odd stand of cacti amongst the general greenery at the side of the road.

Half an hour from the bus terminal in Guayaquil, you could tell we were approaching a major city (Guayaquil has a larger population than Quito) from the sight and smell rubbish piled up along the side of the road. Guayaquil itself, in the early afternoon, was just like any large city: busy, smelly and polluted. I must say it looked very unappealing and didn´t feel too safe.

The Terminal Terrestre was very modern and busy and I had to navigate myself through the adjoining shopping centre to get a taxi to the hotel I had chosen in the guidebook. After briefly unpacking, I went exploring for some food, and also got myself to the famous Malecon 2000 waterfront, wandered for a bit and then made it back to the hotel, enjoying the light cooling rain that fell.

I found I preferred Quito to Guayaquil; for one thing, it´s much easier to find places to eat of an evening, and other facilities (supermarkets, lavenderias, and internet cafes) are much more accessible/easily found.