The Bus ride to Guayaquil

We never posted anything about our bus ride down from the Andes down to Guayaquil, not because it wasn't interesting, but rather because we couldn't get at the pictures!

The bus wasn't so different, although in the picture on the left you can see that our 'in-flight' movie was Casino Royale, which was barely in the theaters when we left. We got to see it in Spanish on the bus for free. Oh! And someone brought their dog, which kept wandering around the bus, walking under the seats, sniffing around for a tasty treat. Maybe we could have brought Pip after all...

For a good portion of the trip, we were literally driving through clouds. Even still, you could see the change in the types of trees, and of course the change in temperature. The progress was pretty slow for most of the trip, since the visibility was pretty low.



Once we'd dropped down to the coastal plain, we were suddenly in the middle of banana country. The picture on the left shows what the banana fields look like, and in the middle picture, if you look closely you can see a cacao tree, with a fruit on it.



We were merrily flying along, trying to catch up on the schedule, when all of a sudden there was an explosion on the bus. It wasn't inside, it was outside -- a tire! It was pretty loud, let me tell you. We pulled over, and within about twenty minutes the tire was replaced. It was a good time for everyone to take a leak, too. The center picture is the driver...and the one on the right is the dog.




We finally got in to Guayaquil in the late evening...quite a bit later than we expected. After finding a place to stay and cleaning up a little, we went out for a walk down to the waterfront.


As you can see by the shorts and short pants...it was quite a bit warmer than anywhere else we'd been! The nighttime temperature was pleasantly warm and pleasantly humid...just perfect!