Guayaquil and Banos (12 - 17 June 2008)
The Peru Lonely Planet calls the border crossing between Peru (Aguas Verdes) and Ecuador (Huaquillas) “the worst border crossing in the whole of South America”. And the guide book was spot-on. Besides the fact that it was chaotic and extremely filthy, it was also crawling with cockroaches. Now when I say cockroaches, I mean it in both ways - the insects and the infestation of scammers waiting to do you in, in some way or another.
We arrived at the Peruvian border and went through all the normal immigration activities. When we walked out of the office, a guy pointed us to a taxi to take us to the other side of the border. Next thing we knew, the guy was in the taxi with us. He introduced himself as Enrique. We were not totally sure what his agenda was, so I asked him what he does. I could not make out everything he said, but it was something about him helping tourists get across the border safely and he has been doing this for the last seven years. I asked him if he needed to be paid for this, because we really did not need his help (this was the seventh over-land border crossing for us - no sweat!). He said we could give him a tip if we wanted to. No harm in letting the poor guy walk with us to the bus station on the Ecuadorian side, right?
We sped through the town to the bus station just to get away from the chaos and dirt - Enrique still by our side… After buying the bus tickets to Guayaquil, the only thing on our minds was to get some breakfast. When we sat down in the restaurant, I finally scraped up enough courage to tell Enrique that we really do not need his help (we still had to go to the Ecuadorian immigration) and that we would be fine without him. He calmly said he understood and that we owed him $20 for his service! What?! $20 for walking next to me for a kilometre?! Did he think he was Brad and Angie’s bodyguard?! I laughed out loud and told him he was ‘loco’. He knew he was pushing his luck - he probably succeeded in this trick with some uninformed Americans before. We decided to be fare and gave him $3. The last we saw of Enrique was when he walked away with his tail between his legs…
Our main reason for going to Guayaquil was to book a tour to the Galapagos Islands. We were debating whether to do this trip to the Galapagos for quite a while, because it is quite an expensive tour and we were far over budget for all the South American countries. But we figured ‘what the heck, we’ll probably never get a chance like this again’. Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador, even bigger than Quito, the capital. And by this time we know not to expect too much from the cities. and we were right - Guayaquil was not much to write home about - just a massive rat-racing city with crime and pollution.
We found a company and booked our Galapagos tour - starting on 21 June with three nights on a boat and two nights on the main island. So we had a week to kill before flying to Galapagos and we were not planning on spending it in Guayaquil. The next morning we checked out of our hotel (who boasted about their hot showers that was actually non-existing) and took a bus to Baños.
After about five hours we arrived in Ambato from where we could see smoke rolling out the top of the Tungurahua volcano. What a sight! I never thought I would actually see an active volcano with smoke and all! This volcano towers over Baños and contributes to the name of the town - the volcano heats the underground water, creating many thermal pools. The volcano is as much an attraction as the thermal pools are. The volcano has actually been active since 1999, when the town was declared in an orange zone of danger and the entire town was evacuated. But when nothing happened with the volcano, the residents moved back to town against the authorities will. And since then they have been closely monitoring the smouldering volcano and they implemented a detailed evacuation plan to residents and hotels.
Unfortunately, the view from Ambato was the only view we had of the volcano for our time in Baños due to bad weather. But even though it was overcast and drizzling most of the time, we still managed to have a great time. The Casa Blanca Hotel was such a treat; there was a lovely old lady helping with what ever we needed - she even made us some popcorn to go with a movie on a rainy day. We visited the local zoo with its many exotic animals. We even got to see a jaguar and the toucans! We also spent some time in the thermal pools - they were so hot that we could not stay in the pool for longer than five minutes at a time
A local speciality in Baños is the delicious toffee made from sugarcane and is called melcocha. They make it in these small street shops and it is quite a sight to see this tedious and tiring manual procedure - the toffee is hung from the wall and stretched into long golden strips before being sold in small plastic packets on the street.
Interesting fact, well not so much interesting as funny… the Spanish word for ‘toilets’ is ‘baños’. So we actually spent three days in the toilets and enjoyed it
Click on the image below to view the gallery for Guayaquil and Baños: