Gipatik: 07.06.2019
Unfortunately 😥we had to leave the beautiful town of Cuenca today and head towards Guayaquil. At check out, we were recommended a minibus. It would be more comfortable 👍and much faster💨 in Guayaquil than the regular size coach. Well, a taxi took us to the station and we got the tickets. The minibus can accommodate 14 people. Since we had 30 minutes before it started, I went down from the courtyard and took a look around😊. A stray dog followed me, but he was very friendly. Every time I stopped and looked at him, he looked away 🙃:-).
We were sitting on the bus at 11:15 a.m. sharp, but it didn't start yet. Many people kept running and wanted to join. We finally left with a 15-minute delay. Luckily, the bus was only occupied by 7 people. But what happened next was a nightmare. The driver was totally crazy. The tires screeched in every turn. Our stomach turned with his braking maneuvers. I had eaten some Coca Cola Haribo before the trip. I must have eaten them another 4 times during the journey. It was really outrageous what he did. The journey lasted about 1 hour on a winding road, and in every turn, we were thrown from left to right! That's not an exaggeration 🤢🥵!!!!
I would have liked to take photos during the journey, but the "comfortable" bus had such dirty windows :-(, it was no good. And besides, the seats were even tighter than in the public coaches.
After about 1 1/2 hours of leaving the mountains behind us, we might as well have been in Asia. Huge 🍌banana plantations, 🌽corn, 🍚rice, and pampas grass fields were on the right and left of us. It was amazing, I had never seen such large plantations anywhere 🤓. It went on like this for a while. I really liked that the locals were selling their products, such as bananas, coconuts, etc. along the road and in the middle of the road. I could already feel through the car window that it was incredibly hot outside - yuck -.
After leaving the plantations behind, it finally came - the city of Guayaquil! Our travel time was stated as 3 1/2 hours, but our idiot 🤖 did it in 3 hours 🤮! He was very proud of it 🙈!
Guayaquil can be compared to Bangkok. At least in terms of exhaust fumes 💨, noise 😧, and hustle and bustle. It's all too much for me here. After our check-in, we walked around the area a little bit, and I can hardly breathe here, it's so stuffy. The weather is like a laundry room. I miss the Ecuadorian flair here 🥴! I'll be jumping for joy when we sit in the plane ✈️tomorrow morning heading to Galapagos. We'll be there for the next 6 days - Yeah :-))))))))!