Having just supposedly crossed the "worst border crossing in South America" we were feeling pretty positive about the rest of the journey from Huachina to Machala (the banana capital of the world). We were ushered quickly off our Cifa bus and onto another as we'd paid for the full journey in advance (in hindsight we could have just gone to Huachina and got an onward ticket from there). The journey from the border to Machala is only 2 hours so we settled in and enjoyed the free wifi on the bus (yes you did read that right). It was Dani's turn to do the hostel ask around so off on the hunt she went only to discover everything in Machala was expensive, especially in comparison to Peru. As my wife was getting increasingly frustrated, I thought I'd go and check out a few. Lo and behold the first place I walked into was willing to give us a double room for $10 USD ($13.50 AUD) a night for both of us! Great! Except this came with the sacrifice of glass in the window in one room or complete floorboards in another. We flipped a coin and lack of floor won so we dumped our bags and headed out in search of food. We quickly discovered there is a reason Machala is not on people's hit lists for Ecuador. There is nothing to see or do and there are no decent cheap accommodation options. What nobody tells you about Ecuador is that the street food is divine. Machala's only saving grace was it's excellent selection of street delights. As we grazed our way through bananas and cheese, sausages on skewers (Dani only) and my new favourite llapingachos we forgave Machala for its disappointing appearance and awful digs. Our next stop was Cuenca. Similarly to my oversight on the route around Peru I messed up Ecuador as well. What we should have done was head up through Piura in Peru to Loja and then up, but as we hadn't done this Cuenca was the next logical stop. Cuenca was a breath of fresh air after Machala. We checked into a guesthouse close to the bus station called Hostal Astoria for $15 USD ($20.30 AUD) a night for both of us in a twin room and despite it not being a private bathroom one of the best hot showers we'd had in South America. Apart from the ladies of the night that hung out outside the guesthouse this place was perfect (my wife will tell you I have a bit of a 6th sense for picking out accommodation in the red light district). Cuenca's historic district is beautiful. The church that looms over the square has some stunningly intricate carvings on the door and the whole area is shaded by beautiful trees. People are friendly and the food is (we now know for Ecuador) characteristically excellent. There are street vendors everywhere selling tamale, humitas, bananas with cheese and bags of avocados and tomatoes for a $1 USD ($1.30 AUD) a bag. In the market, women sell roast pork and one of our favourite South American snacks, bolon. These can be vegetarian or contain meat so for my fellow vegetarians just ask for bolon con queso. We did attempt to do the free walking tour here but our guide didn't show up for the tour. So, as I mentioned earlier we should have come into Ecuador via Loja. This was only discovered when I made the fatal error of handing my wife the Lonely Planet (now this may not sound like a stupid idea but the last time I did this she decided we just had to go to Antarctica because "it's so close to Argentina"). Dani decided we'd made a huge mistake and that we should backtrack. I have a small hatred of backtracking so we rejigged our Ecuador route and decided to head to Loja and come up to Baños via a route along The Orient (the Ecuadorean part of the Amazon) instead of returning to Cuenca.
Loja is a pretty town with a few squares worth wandering through and a very strange yet funky gate that has a quirky money museum inside and a variety of artisanal shops. It again has a great central market with cheap and delicious food (are you sensing a theme yet?!). We stayed at Hotel Londres for $12 USD ($16.25 AUD) for a double room with shared bathroom. To travel the Orient road the first stop is Zamora, which in theory, is the gateway to the Ecuadorean Amazon. In practice it's a cute little town with not much on offer except it's strangely fantastic hillside clock. It sings every hour on the hour from 7am till 10pm and at night it lights up. Apparently the story goes that everyone in the town was always late so someone decided to build a clock so large no one would ever have an excuse again! Whether this tale is true or not, we're not really bothered, it's a great story! We stayed at Hotel Betania, which we managed to negotiate down to $20 USD ($27 AUD) for a really lovely double room with private bathroom. It also had a great rooftop kitchen and balcony overlooking aforementioned fabulous clock. After a few relaxing evenings eating excellent market/street food dinners we jumped on a bus to Gualaquiza. Gualaquiza is another sweet little Amazonian town with little on offer except a nice little guesthouse Merceditas ($15 USD/20.30 AUD for a double room) and a few waterfalls. It seemed as though we had discovered the first step of why backpackers don’t stray too far off the 'Gringo Trail' in Ecuador. There is absolutely nothing wrong with straying off the trail but it does appear that Ecuador does miss the mark just a little bit when it comes to everything related to tourism even including aspects the Galapagos Islands. Thinking the next stop, Macas would offer a little more as it was a bigger town and also described as a place to base yourself to explore the less traveled part of the Ecuadorian Amazon we set off. Again, it turned out we were wrong. Not only was there nowhere to find a guide to take us to the Amazon (in spite of it's visible proximity to the dense jungle) but Macas itself was an absolute dive. We did find one tour guide, a short walk out of town, as his address was in the Lonely Planet. This turned out to be another let down of this particular edition of the Lonely Planet (there have been many) due to the “highly recommended” guide speaking so little English that he couldn’t even explain the tour. Now don’t get me wrong here, I am aware that we are in a Spanish speaking continent (with the exception of Brazil) and I have no expectation for the most part for English to be spoken, but when a guide is recommended in an English guide book you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming they would at least have one English speaking person in the office. Due to a lack of decent guides and a serious lack of decent accommodation we left for Riobamba the next day. On arrival in Riobamba we couldn’t really be bothered to search further than the bus station for accommodation, thinking that the next day we would wander into town and see whether we could find something better. It turned out that there was a perfectly adequate place just across the road. I know what your thinking…bus stations aren’t the best place to stay and can be a little dodgy. Yeah we’ve heard this too, but so far we’ve often found if they are close enough to the town that they work just fine for us. This may be due to the fact that we’re not big nightlife people so are often tucked up in our room well before dark. The next morning we were up and in search of food. We had heard that Riobamba was famous for it's roast pork market. Not so great for me but Dani was looking forward to trying another local delicacy. We were greeted at the door by a chorus of women peddling their pork. You could fill yourself up with free samples if you wanted to but Dani decided on the woman closest to the door and the look on her face when she tasted the pork told me she wouldn’t even bother walking around the other women. She ordered a plate, which set us back $4 USD ($5.40 AUD) and it was huge! I left her munching and started wandering around the rest of the market in search of a vegetarian delight. Well it turned out we were both in for a treat as I stumbled across the best llapingacho I’d had in Ecuador. We did quickly discover that the food was incredible in Riobamba but that was really all it had to offer. This left us in a little bit of a dilemma as we felt we may be moving too fast to get to Quito where we had a flight booked to the Galapagos. With slight apprehension we made the decision to head on to Baños...
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