Monday, July 28, - Fri, August 29th
I spent 4 nights (M-TH) with Juan Rodriguez during my first four nights in Guayaquil (the biggest city in Ecuador 2,118,000). He was a great guy who cooked me up some excellent meals. The first day I met up with couchsurfer Daniela who I had met in Quito, but now she was back in Guayaquil, and she and Juan toured me around Guayaquil. It was a great first day, and extremely hot here in Guayaquil! The other days I just kind´ve relaxed, studied some Spanish, and met up with a few other couchsurfers. On Friday morning (Aug 1), I went to stay with another couchsurfer Kahyda because she was going to the beach with some people on the weekend, and I wanted to join as well. About eight of us took a 4 hour bus to the beach at 1 pm on Saturday. We spent two nights in Montanita and then me and one other guy Ciro also went on a Whale Watching excursion on Sunday. It was pretty cool to see all the whales. There were five different whales that we saw at one time, and it was pretty cool because two of them actually started fighting. You could see the termoil a little bit under water, but that was about it. It was a pretty sweet experience to see.
Saturday, August 9th, about 40 of us couchsurfers did this FREE HUGS event. It was pretty sweet because we all made signs that read ¨Abrazos Gratis¨(free hugs), and all went around on the street giving people free hugs. We even went into people´s places of work that were close to the street and gave them hugs as well. I think I probably ended up giving out at least 70 hugs by the end of the day. It was so neat to see all the people with big smiles on their face and many of them wanted pictures with us as well. After the event was over a bunch of us couchsurfers went to another couchsurfers house (Paolo and Karen´s) house for pancakes they own a banana farm and made us some amazing banana pancakes with bananas and hersheys and had a great meal there as well. They have the two cutest little kids, and I pretty much played with them the whole night I was there.
On Wednesday, August 13, I went to Cuenca to couchsurf with a lady in Cuenca for two nights. Cuenca is supposed to be the tidy jewel of the south with 417,000 people. I jumped around and checked the sites there and then returned back to Guayaquil on Friday, and a group of us took off for the weekend to another beach area called Playas.
On Friday and Saturday August 15th and 16th a group of us went to Playas. It was a small little beach town that was having an annual festival. It was a good time, and always fun to hang around all of the couchsurfers. We came back on Sunday the 17th and the following night was my last night at Kayhda´s place after spending 12 excellent nights at her place. She was an amazing person, and it was great spending time at her place because she usually has about 6 couchsurfers there a night. I ended up meeting some great people at her house, and got some more insight on the countries that I am going to visit during the rest of my travels. She lives with her sister and cousin as well, and she just puts down 3 mattresses in the main room of her house for all the couchsurfers to sleep on. She is 30 years old and has an amazing amount of energy,and is always so upbeat!
On Tuesday night I moved onto Sara Tomala´s house in Guayaquil to stay there through Saturday night (8/23). Her family was awesome...they took me in as one of their own. She lives with her mom and dad and two brothers. They were all so welcoming to me, and her mom cooked me up some excellent meals, and she was even kind enough to take my shorts to a store to get them sewed up for me. I tried to give her money for the repairs, but she wouldn´t take any from me. They were constantly asking me if I wanted more to eat and making sure I felt at home. Her brother took me around the town in his dad´s vehicle one night as well, and they all told me I had a house to come back to anytime!
On Sunday, August 24, I decided to head to Banos ($4) on a 6 hour bus ride north. It is a small town of 12,300 people. It was supposed to be a great small town from what I heard. I spent one night there, and was not too impressed, so the next day when it was raining a little bit there, I decided to take a (4 hour) bus back to Quito for a few more nights and try to take a few more salsa lessons before I made my way down to Peru.
I went to stay with Mercedes again on Monday, Aug 25th. It was nice to get back to Quito and have a double cheeseburger and hot dog every night at my favorite burger place. I also took 2 more hours of salsa classes on Wed and Thurs. It was kind´ve nice because the salsa teacher that I had came right to Mercedes place to give me the lessons and it was only $7/hour, and she is a good teacher from Cali, Colombia. She was much better than the teacher I had in Colombia.
On Thursday, Aug 28th I caught a 15 hour bus ($10) to Huaquillas (Ecuadorian border to Peru) at 745 pm. Once I made it to Huaquillas at 1045 am, I had to take a taxi ($1.50) to get stamped out of Ecuador, and from there I could have taken a two hour bus to Tumbes and get stamped into Peru, but I decided to go with this taxi which was 40 minutes. I tried to get a price from the taxi several times before I jumped into the vehicle, but he was giving me the run around. I ended up just getting in, and they took me to get stamped and then to Tumbes where they took me to a bus station where I had to take another bus to Chiclayo at 12 pm (20 soles = $6.50) because all the buses direct to Trujillo were not until 945 pm. Before they dropped me off they ended up charging me $60 for the cab ride...ridiculous, but I guess that is the worst border in South America and usually people always get screwed over on money exchanges. I just got screwed over on the taxi. Once I arrived at Chiclayo at 745 pm I had to catch another bus to Trujillo so I jumped in this moto taxi and as we were driving I saw another bus that read ¨Lima¨on it, so I jumped out of the moto taxi to ask this bus if they would stop in Trujillo for me. They said it would not be a problem, so I jumped into that bus, and ended up arriving in Trujillo at 1145 pm. It was nice to finally make it to Trujillo on Friday, Aug 29, after a 28 hour trip. I caught a taxi from there to my couchsurfer Cecilia´s place.
It was a great 45 days in Ecuador...THANKS TO ALL THE GREAT PEOPLE I MET...READY FOR PERU!
