Sep 16, 2005 13:28
Well i have left Peru and i am very sad to do so. I´ve had a gerat time there and what really annoying is that no matter where you go, what you do or what you see there is always some travelling the other way saying "oh you´ve got to go here/there its amazing... blah blah blah!". I´ve misses so much but time is flying by and i need to move on.
My journey from Lima to Guayaquil in Ecuador took 34 hours! Nightmare bus journey! After a very sad good bye i wondered into the bus terminal to discover my luxurious bus with seats that turn into beds, blankets, pillows, air con, food/tea/coffe, excellent quality ripped dvds and a toilet that was garantie to work without you having to pour a bucket of water down the loo when your done, had been cancelled. Never fear! Using my now near perfect Spanish i negociated a bus to a town called Tumbes on the Peru/Ecuador boarder where i could then hop on a bus to Guayaquil and managed to get more than half my money back. all was good.
My new shinny brand spanking new bus glided into the bus terminal, well when i say glided what i really mean is coughed, spluttered and smoked to death the nearest bunch of pigoens that where happly begging to the beggers outside the station. Arse. Seats that only reclined a few degrees, no blankets or pillows no food or drinks but still a dvd player that worked and a toilet and this they said was busniess class! I spent a moment wonder what kind of business... shoe shining? Still it was confortable and clean.
And we were off! Well until we got to the outskirts of Lima (which took 2 hours beacuse of the traffic and the amount of stops we made) and then the bus broke down. I dont really know what went wrong with the bus as it didnt have any of the standard broken down type fetures like smoke or funny noises coming from name-a-part-of-the-the-bus type things. All i could understand was "its bust! We need to wait for another bus." I wasnt to concirned we had dvds and i was sure we were only 20mins away from the centre of Lima... 4 hours later our new bus arrived. I tried to be Mr Furious but i couldnt help but laugh as one of the locals was nearly swinging punches at the bus driver.
The new bus was worse than the old one seats bearly reclined, the dvd player didnt work and there was a bucket of water next to the toilet. Well the bucket of water could have been a replacemnt for the sink as that didnt work either... nore did the toilet. Trying to go for a wee out the window of a bus doing 80km whielst its leaping about the highway was an experiance (but not my first so i manged not to wee all over myself).
Made it to Tambes after very little sleep and living off 4 bread rolls, 2 packets of crisps and a bottle of Inca Cola for 36 hours. I felt rough. I am not to sure what happened next but i cretainly broke one of the rules about travelling which is not to conduct any business as you get off a bus or plane as you usually get mobbed by touts. Before i knew it i was in an unofficial taxi with 2 dodgy looking blokes doing 100km an hour at the Ecuador boarder. "Oh bolloxs!" was thinking that i was being set up for a drug run or they are just going to off it with my stuff at some point. You hear stories about this from other travellers but you mostly put all the storys you hear down to rumours. They drove me though a very nasty looking local marked full of men with gold and silver capped teeth and women who looked as though they knew all there was about how to skinning ginne pigs and gaurds armed to the teeth with machine guns and body armour. Dont panic... Dont panic... dont panic! My day bag is most importent grab it and run if need be. We pulled up behind the market in a dusty field, were there wasnt a sole in sight. Oh poo.
One of them spoke very bad english and was trying to get money from me, he was demaning $´s for something?!?! After about a min a worked out what he wwas trying to do, he wanted me to give him $40 for the taxi ride, crossing the boarder and for the bus. I dont think so! The taxi was no long that a 15min ride ($1), the boarder crossing is free and the bus is no more than $5. A very very poor conman i thought. Still i was in the middle of a town i didnt know at the back of a very local dodgy market. I played the stupid card (it came naturally). I continued to say that i didnt understand and all i wanted to do was get to the bus station. after at least half hour of they calling me this that and the other in spanish (well one of the first things you do when your in another country is learn all the swear words and insults!) he eventually must have though i was the most stupid gringo he´d had the miss fortune to try and con (he wasnt far wrong) and he walked me to the bus station. He then procedeed to to ask for more money at the station, i gave him $3 dollors (which was more than enough) whielst smiling and calling him a c**t. He gave me a smile in return of not understanding what i said then wondered off.
2 bad horror movies and 4 more hours on a bus and i was in Guayaquil. The hostel i had chosen was full i tried 3 others and they were cockroch and little bastard infeasted places but i had to pick the best of a bad bunch.
After being on the bus for so long i was busting for a poo. And poo i did. It was an ancient beast, a mammoth of a thing, a long trunk, tusks and fur that had been living in me for the past 2 days. Ahhhhh relef! But oh no, the sewage/toilet systems in some South America hostels is very poor indeed so for the night i had to live next door to this monolith. I had nothing to chop it up with i did consider using the lid off the system tank but it simply wouldnt have done the job. 18 flushes and it is now the scourge of the sea! A danger to shipping in the Pacific!
Travelling creates a lot of first for things, things that you have never done or thought that youd do and standing on a cockroch with your bare foot and hearing it crack and crunch as i got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night was cretinly a first for me. Having to spry myself down the anti-little bastard spry in my own hotel before i go to bed is another.
My room also had a strange smell about it that took me hours to work out what it was, my fan was blowing stright at me but inbetween us were my socks and boots. Time to wash me and my clothes i think.
I was for some reason very nervious about coming to Ecuador. I had heard from a lot of other people that it wasnt as nice as Peru and not as geared up for tourist as you might think but being hear in Guayaquil isnt that bad so far. Its a big busy city but i dont feel intimidated or lost at all.
Right off to find some lunch and a Galapogus tour!