Hour after hour passed and the realisation dawned that we would once again have to stay in this city. Handily there was a hostel near where we were trying to hitch from and they actually had a room for us. The walls may have been made of cardboard and the locks not especially secure but at least there were not the the sounds of ‘working girls’ and their clients in neighbouring rooms.

We happily spent the evening streamlining our travelling operation. When I was packing for South America I realised that I could pack everything I needed into a 35litre rucksack and have a little daypack for planes and buses. I rather stupidly then decided to bring a 70litre. Just in case I needed the space. Obviously I filled it with all sorts of things that I did not need - and so now was the time to cull. In practice this meant only being able to get rid of medical supplies that actually looked like they should have been dumped many moons before. Hopefully you will soon be able to see Rob disposing of a medical glove in a manner not necessarily orginal but assuredly amusing nonetheless.

Morning came and once more we tried to leave Guayaquil…

Tags: trip, ideas, hitchhiking, guayaquil, ecuador, rucksack, ways, to, amuse, oneself

Pleased as we were with the fact that people would pick us up, there were many occasions that we had to walk 10km with all of our possessions on our back just to get to the appropriate road out of town. This would frequently be followed by waiting for hours on end for one of the aforementioned kind people to help us on our way. There would sometimes be those that did not seem to understand that we were trying to hitch for free - if we had money then we would have got one of the multitude of buses that passed us at tiny intervals. Funds being so low we realised that we simply had to sit and wait taking it in turns to stand by the edge of the road with thumb out. We had heard that in some countries this is considered a rude gesture and we hoped that this would not be the case in Ecuador otherwise we would have had many problems.

The next main stop on our journey was Guayaquil, which turned out to be as unpleasant as we had been led to expect. Clutching our trusty guidebook (unearthtravel was not even a gleam in your heroes’ eyes) we picked what should have been the cheapest option for somewhere to stay as we had reached the city at night. The entry way should have given us some clues as well as the fact that there seemed to be hourly rates advertised. Certainly not ideal but tired as we were we tried to get a room - a shared one to further save our meagre supply of cash. This did not seem possible and drew some surprised looks, so we made our way to our respective rooms and really did not like what we found…

If you have not guessed already it was indeed a ‘love hotel’ complete with tiles around the bed, a music button and plastic mattress and pillow. Rather disturbed by all this, but realising that we did not have much choice, we dumped our things and headed out into downtown Guayaquil with a not small amount of trepidation. We were determined to spend as little time in that horrid building as possible. So taking the plunge we had some rather yummy junk food and went to the cinema. I have not been understating how little cash we had, but sometimes these problems have to be overlooked.

Finally we gave in and returned to the hotel where I certainly had a fitful night’s sleep partly due to feeling uncomfortable…obviously I slept in a sleeping bag and in the past I am sure I have slept on a bloodstained mattress but that is nothing compared to the sounds of a working girl and her client having too much fun in the next door room.

Very early the following morning…at about 6 we started to make our way to the edge of town. The day before we had taken a bus the wrong way which was part of the reason we had to stay. This and the correcting bus were the only paid for transport that we took in the 3000km and cost about 50p. The problem facing us was that Guayaquil is an enormous city - how were we going to escape?

Healthy young chaps as we were we thought walking would be the best way…several km later and getting a little lost we asked a member of the military police how we could get to the edge of town. He seemed rather concerned although we could not really understand why. We hopped into his vehicle and he very kindly took us through the shanty town that seemed to be the cause of his distress for us. Looking back we were very lucky not to have walked though there…there was not a particularly large police presence and it would have been a while until anybody noticed we were not where we were meant to be. If you do decide to hitchhike please take a lot of care. The policeman dropped us off at the bus stop at the edge of town (he really did not understand our aversion) and left us to try once more to get out of Guayaquil…

Tags: hitchhike, guayaquil, ecuador, unearth, travel, trip, idea

Tags: unearth, travel, ecuador, chile, bolivia, peru, hitch-hike, guide, trip, idea

Tags: unearth, travel, ecuador, chile, bolivia, hitch-hike