More hairy bus journeys encountered both on our way to and from Quevdeo unfortunately.

Leaving Quilotoha we thought we would go to the coast and enjoy some sangria time which we felt we deserved after the previously mentioned volcano climbing. Err, did I mention we walked up a bag with 45 kg on our backs... Anyway, the bus gods must have been against us as our bus down the mountain was delayed every ten minutes or so by road building. I guess they have decided to improve the route down to the coast but as it's the only route out, are unable to stop the traffic whilst doing so. The result is buses and all other road users have to make battle with the bulldozers, diggers and other big yellow vehicles whilst they are putting the road in place and hope to get the right side of them before they drop boulders and other road stuff in teh way. It was basically a battle of wills with our driver generally winning every time, getting us closer to the coast more quickly than any other vehicles appeared to be moving. I just closed my eyes when it got too confrontational near to the edge of the cliff.

Unfortunately, even with our bus driver's skills, we didn't get to Quevedo in time to change for another bus to the coast so we chose to stay the night and get up early (our regular readers will be aware that we can't get enough of getting up before dawn nowadays) and be on our way. The only nearby hotel was a classic bus station hotel. dodgy guests, dodgy bed, dodgy bathroom. Basically skanky manky ranky grossness.

Our early morning bus journey started off well enough with Steve dozing off, with our feet on our rucksacks at the front of the bus. All very relaxing so far. However, the bus Gods must have had it in for us as about an hour in I woke Steve up in a massive panic as I realised there was a horrible smell and what I thought was petrol leaking from the engine, into the bus, all over our bags and starting to pour down the aisle. Steve grabbed our bags out of the immediate spill (sorry Laura, not sure you're going to want yours back) and we moved seats. Our bus conductor, (who actually wasn't our bus conductor at all, just some weird guy who apparently got his kicks out of pretending to work on the bus by chivvying people on and off - some kind of power trip i guess) tired to stem the spill with a cloth but this was pretty ineffective so we had to open all the windows to avoid the fumes. I spent the remaining two hours of the journey planning my escape route from the bus if it caught on fire, absolutely terrified. It was only when we arrived that Steve told me he thought it was oil (Ed: He knew it was oil, it was black and came out of the engine). I still think it was petrol. Our bus driver did at least apologise when we got off.

The lack of petrol/oil must have delayed us further as we didn't make it all the way to the coast in time for the England - Algeria game. I insisted of course that we watch it (why would i want to go and lie on the beach in the sun when I could be sitting in a bus station watching football), so we stopped en route at Jipijapa - what a great name for a town- and had our lunch whilst watching the game on a little tv set with an Ecuadorian family who owned the cafe and who were packing up around us for their weekend away.

Anyway, what we'd hoped would be a short journey to the coast took a little longer than expected.

Just a random thought - there are an awful lot of bananas grown in Ecuador. I believe they were the countries biggest export for a long time. A lot of our journey from Quevedo followed fields and fields of bananas and warehouses holding them. Bizarely though, it is pretty difficult to buy yourself a banana in a shop. I guess they're all more valuable when they're exported.