Ecuador

When I started this trip I had no intention of coming to Ecuador, however I'm eternally grateful I did. I had another chance to hang out with an awesome bunch of people, tasted the ocean for the first time since Brazil and fulfilled a lifelong ambition of discovering the Amazon and some of its wonders.

My experience in Ecuador started in Quayaquil, after about a 5 or 6 hour bus ride from Mancora, Peru, with many police and military checks along the way. Upon arrival in Quayaquil I found out it was too late to get my next bus ticket so I was forced to shack up in a cheap hostel for the night and return to the bus terminal the following morning where I bought a ticket to Montañita on the Pacific Coast for a long awaited reunion with a big group of friends made along the way.

I arrived at the 'bus terminal' (a small patch of road) in Montañita on a Beautiful, sunny day and immediately found Kelly, waiting for her bus then Jack and Sam walking down the street and finally found the rest of the group, Sam and Syd, Alieshia, Sally and the Great Danes. After almost a week of solo travelling it was a great feeling to have a group of friends to chill with. Made even better by the fact we were chilling on a beautiful beach on a perfect beach day, I could have stayed there for weeks, perfectly content. However I soon found out the group was splitting up the next day, some staying in Montañita and others making their way to Quito to start an Amazon tour. I was left with a hard decision, but decided to leave the next day with our jungle crew, based on the fact that as beautiful as the beach was I had many amazing beaches awaiting me in the Caribbean and of course back home in Oz. It was election weekend in Ecuador and by law drinking alcohol was banned 48 hours prior to election day, but as always, seek and you shall find, and find we did. We had a 'fiesta grande' that night as I knew it would be my last night in South America with a lot of good new friends. The following morning at breakfast we had a strange man with a driver and bodyguard, and money to burn, offer to drive us all the way to Quito, almost 24 hour drive. However he gave everyone the creeps so we decided to board the bus we'd already booked to Quayaquil. At midday I said 'hasta luego to Jack, Aliesha and Sally, and Sam, Syd the Great Danes (Matthias, Matthias and Daniel) jumped on the bus to Quayaquil.

We were completely unprepared for our arrival in Quayaquil, we expected to easily book our next bus to Quito and leave the same night. Instead we were confronted with absolute chaos in the bus terminal. As I said, it was election weekend and every Ecuadorian has to be in their home town to vote. As the doors to the terminal open we stood there gobsmacked with the sight before us, hundreds upon thousands of locals queuing to find a bus to their home town. You could feel the body heat in the air and to walk through the crowd meant being ruthless everyone pushing to get though to were they needed to go, lost children crying everywhere and when finally at the other side of the crowd I was covered in at least 50 different peoples sweat...awesome! After a fruitless search for a private vehicle to drive us to Quito we decided to bunker down in a hostel in Quito for the night and try again the next morning. The next day Sam and Syd managed to find another smaller terminal and got our tickets to Quito, due to a crappy taxi system we missed our bus and had to pay again to catch the next one, however finally we were getting closer to the Jungle!

We arrived early in the morning, we learnt quickly that taxi drivers in Quito have no idea about where they're going as we couldn't find the hostel I booked anywhere, after trying a few hostels that were full we had to go to a hotel in the centre of town. The next day we started looking for a place to book our Amazon adventure. This didn't quite go to plan as it was Sunday and every tour place was closed, we found out that we'd have to wait for the morning and then leave the next day, however the Danes were flying home in a week and so it meant we'd have a very short jungle experience. We all gave up looking for places when and started walking home when we stumbled on the only jungle tour place open in town. After booking a better tour than we'd hoped for and for $100 less than we expected to pay we thought we should celebrate, so celebrate we did! After a hilarious night we woke up all a little groggy but got to work organising everything we'd need for the jungle and boarded a bus north-east at 11 o'clock that night.

 

Upon arrival in a small town (unsure of the name, opps) we had a 3 hour trip by car and arrived at the Amazon River! We met our guide 'Beaver' and jumped into a motor canoe. Our adventure started with a two hour boat ride to our lodge in the middle of the Amazon jungle. We had 4 days in the jungle and loved every second of it. I hadn't anticipated seeing so many animals but we saw everything from tarantulas, ridiculously huge insects and heaps of birds through to monkeys, river dolphins and a sloth (kind of) just to name a few. Spend a lot of time swimming in the river, even woke up to a swim everyday, nothing like a dip in the Amazon to wake up! We also went fishing for piranha and visited a local village. Proving its a small world, we ran into our friend Kelly in the middle of the Amazon and got to spent a fun night in the Jungle. The Amazon is defiantly a place I need to visit again.

After arriving back in Quito, we only had one night together as a group, so we made the most of it. We finally made it to a Karaoke bar after saying we should go way back in La Paz, over 1 month and 2 countries later we made it. The next day was full of sad goodbyes, I knew I see them all again somewhere in the world which made it a bit easier. From here I'd be travelling alone, something that made me excited and anxious at the same time. After finally finding the right bus terminal and waiting 4 hours I jumped on a bus to the Columbian Border. After being forced to spend a night in Tulcán, I took a cab across the Border and said goodbye to Ecuador.