Ride to Quito

  Quito, Ecuador
Thursday, August 2, 2007

A stream of multicolored buses was leaving the Guayaquil bus station. It seemed like almost everyone was from a different transport line and we entertained ourselves by commenting on the company names: FBI, Seņor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles-it looked like He was needed to get the bus to its destination). Once again we got the speech about buses including "The bathroom is only to be used as a urinal. I repeat, a urinal." This line added,  "If you feel motion sick, ask for a bag!" Then the announcer, a man, went into a sales pitch for Meccano candy bars. He handed them out to each one ("at no obligation") and told how cheaply he sold them and how the children who met you at the end of the route would want to know what you brought them. After he collected the unsold candy, he was dropped at the side of the road and the second salesman stood up. First he gave us some more advice from the bus company, "We will stop for 20 minutes in Santo Domingo for lunch. At that point, please take anything of value with you. Disreputable people lurk at bus stations watching buses. They come on as though they were passengers and pass packages out the window to waiting accomplices." Then he began his sales pitch for quartz crystals and silver chains. "Remember," he told his clients, "The quartz energy is personal.. Don't give or loan it to anyone." Finally, he was dropped off, too.
 

Typical River, Southern Ecuador

We crossed the Rio Babahoyo and saw round, upright trees. Then there were trees that were spread out at the top shading a large area. Other trees had droopy orange jungle-like flowers. We got a completely different impression of Ecuador upon leaving Guayquil. It was no longer the neatest part of Latin America, but the part with the most obvious poverty. Seeing children and adults sitting in the doorways of hovels, made me wonder why I have so much and they so little. I cannot imagine spending one night in most of those places, yet that is how they live.
 
We passed an interesting city of houses on stilts over rice paddies. What made it unique was the sidewalks on stilts, some as long as a couple hundred yards, to the road. The elevated sidewalks looked too rickety to support many people, but the laundry hung alongside them and the obviously lived in huts at the ends, proved they did.

Sidewalks on Stilts

 
Dole advertised that the banana plantations were producing their products. We drove by miles of sugar cane and every so often, a little mobile sugar cane press, selling the juice straight from the cane. The plague of South America, the plastic bag, littered these roadside. The schools looked like jails with no glass in the windows, only bars, but that is simply natural air-conditioning. We passed a hot climate bus-multicolored, no doors or windows, only benches filled with locals on the back of a truck bed. Personal cars were few and far between, but moto-taxis abounded. At noon, school let out and the children in white shirts and blue skirts or slacks paraded home on either side of the road. The sky once again was the flat gray nothingness we had encountered along the Peruvian coast.
 
Finally, we arrived at Santo Domingo about 3 and rushed off the bus to use a restroom and get lunch, not forgetting our backpacks. The beans, rice and chicken were very good. After only about 18 minutes they started calling our bus. Not wanting to be left here without our suitcases, we gulped a last couple of bites and drinks and ran downstairs.
 
The clouds parted for a few minutes and we enjoyed sunshine, blue sky and fluffy white clouds. We drove through "taffy town" where men pull taffy by slamming it against the doorpost of the store with their bare hands. I'm not brave enough to try it! Suddenly we entered FOG, thick, gray, wet. As we climbed the mountains we endured the second violent movie of the day-an airplane beset with poisonous snakes on the loose. Suddenly an empty bag dropped down from our overhead bin-I managed to stifle the scream! As Dickens says, "Foggier, and yet foggier still." The walls of the mountain side were streaming through the tangle of vegetation. Out the other side was a gray emptiness. Thankfully we were riding on the inside and our driver was cautious.
 
We came over the top of the mountains, the road straightened and became flatter, and we were out of the fog. Above the sky was blue, behind was a band of fog. Here the people wore long sleeves and hats. Children looked as though they had been playing in their mother's rouge. Off to one side the wide open mouth of a volcano was smoking. Beyond that was the snow-covered tip of Cotopaxi.

Volcano Mouth Smoking

 
It was almost dark when we arrived at the station in Quito. After picking up our suitcases, we met Jose, a man who works at the Bible Institute with the Rogers, whom they had asked to pick us up. We tied our suitcases in the back of the double cab Mazda pick up and squeezed in. He called Lloyd and Linda Roger who were up on the northern coast of Ecuador, enjoying a few days vacation with their visiting daughter, Peggy and her two children, and Dan and Nikki and their kids who live in Ecuador and work with them. Linda told Jim it was all set for Jose to drive us the 5 hours up to meet them in the morning and stay until Saturday! Great news! Much better than settling in by ourselves at Dan and Nikki's.