The Adventure Begins

After a month in a paradise-like campsite in Máncora, northern Peru, living a simple life with little activity and even less money. I joined forces with two Argentinians to begin a journey of hitchhiking, couch surfing and generally living cheap or at least more economic.

We were sent off with a full breakfast from Camping de Tito and after saying a goodbye or two we set off to stick our thumbs out and hope for some friendly Peruvians to pull over and take us to Tumbes (a town close to the Ecuador's border). We were at it for roughly 3 hours before a nice guy who turned out to be running for mayor of Tumbes 2015 stopped and said he could take us about 70% of the way so we jumped in, very excited for the beginning of the journey. He spent almost the entire time on the phone to different people and then decided to take us directly to Tumbes. We arrived and were immediately advanced upon by a taxi driver/bandit who was trying persistently to separate us telling me to be careful with Argentinians because they love marijuana and they are trouble. Eventually we were convinced to take a quick mototaxi which is just a motorbike with an extra wheel and some seats crudely welded onto the back. We held on for deer life as our bags were hanging precariously from the back. We arrived in one piece (luckily) at a street to board a mini bus for 25c headed for aguas verdes which is at the border. We crossed, immigrations was no problem and nothing short of a swift and efficient experience. I paid my 20 days overstay and we stuck our thumbs out once again. Destination Cuenca!

After about 3 minutes a guy picked us up and explained that he was going to a city 2 hours or so south of Cuenca called Machala. We stopped here for the night where we stayed in a hotel which was $8 a night for a full private room, TV, WiFi, balcony, showers, towels and with the added luxury of toilet paper! This was a super modern city, very clean, lots of store names in English and most exciting of all walls ice cream!

We awoke the following day and headed to the market where there were endless streets of fruits, meat, vegetables and most adorable of all puppies. I resisted the urge to purchase a puppy and decided that some bananas and strawberries would be a more sensible choice. Bananas are one of Ecuador's main local produces and as a result are ridiculously cheap (10 bananas for 50c). We then headed back to the main road to once again "hacer dedo" which translated directly is to "do finger", this alone is hilarious. We caught a quick bus to the "Y" of Machala, we then jumped in the back of a pick up truck on the highway to the next "Y" where we could start haciendo dedo to Cuenca. We were picked up by a cool guy who told us all he could about Ecuadorian culture until he dropped us in a tiny village called Pasaje where we were told it would be easy to hacer dedo to cuenca however the cars that were nice enough to stop told us otherwise, we started to walk. We then caught another 25c bus to a much busier road. It was here that we were picked up by a food refrigeration truck, but luckily it was not an active one, instead we were closed into a pitch black metal room. Feelings of fear and claustrophobia maybe have briefly crossed my mind but luckily for modern technology my phone became a lantern/music box. We then sat bouncing around and disorientated for around 3 and a half hours until the guy opened the door, once again giving us the gift of natural light and said "llegamos a Cuenca" we've arrived! A quick bus to the centre and we found a little hostel called cafecito. We spent one night there and then set off to find somewhere cheaper to stay and to look for work. We asked in a few places before and overly, and I must say, suspiciously friendly guy said to us "I know a place half the price of everywhere else" we proceeded to go with him and arrived shortly after at what I can only describe as a crack den, however, it only appeared this way, there was no presence of crack, just a nice old lady who took half an hour to read, write and remember our names.