I got to meet the night receptionist last night who speaks English and in fact seems to be the manager and asked for a morning call at 6.45am, as well as depositing my suitcase with him for the duration of my trip to Ecuador. I told myself to wake up at 6.30am just in case and set my mobile for a 6.30am call as well - all options covered. In the event my body clock malfunctioned as I woke up at 2.15am and then 5.30am. My mobile alarm failed to go off but the good old manager came through dead on at 6.45. A quick shave, completed my packing and was down for breakfast at exactly 7.00am.
The cab driver was there waiting for me at 7.30am and skillfully negotiated the building rush hour traffic to get me to the airport in plenty of time. Check-in and passport control went without a flaw. The airport had a lounge that I had access to, but I thought I would go shopping for a small travel alarm. I searched the Duty Free shopping thoroughly but found no trace of one. Finally I went into a shop where they had electronic stuff and asked for an alarm clock. No they didn't have one, but they had an alarm watch. He showed it to me and it looked jolly complicated with loads of different buttons, world times and heavens knows what else. The price was $69 which wasn't that daunting but the actual alarm wasn't that loud, and in the end I decided to pass on it. By then it was only 20 minutes to boarding time, so I passed on the lounge as well.
The flight to Quito was 2 hours and seemingly I had filled in the entry document correctly as they let me in without any fuss. There was a cab office in the airport which was re-assuring and I explained that I wanted the bus station. Which one? Shit, Alex had been told there was only one. Well I wanted to go to Canoa so that would be the one. OK that would be $18US - Amercican dollars appear to be the national currency. I paid and got a receipt and was told to go and grab a yellow cab. The driver, with a few words of basic English told me that the bus station was at the opposite end of town, and indeed the journey took the best part of an hour. In typical South American fashion the driver wove in and out of lanes, honking his horn frequently. My nerves have become accustomed to this Alex-styled driving (even though he no longer possess a car having sold it to fund his trip ), and so I just took in the surroundings.
The bus station was a huge place with four rows of ticket windows, with the occupants of each yelling out their offers. There was a large ground floor area, but the ticket offices were on the first floor. I did the rounds of all the windows and two seating areas but no sign of Alex. I went downstairs and this was similarly devoid of anything or anybody remotely resembling Alex. I got out my mobile phone - no network connection. I sat down for a while to ponder the situation. I recalled a Tourist Information desk downstairs and made my way there. I asked where the other bus station was. Apparently it was at the other end of town where I had come from. So a bit of dilema. I explained to the girl that I was due to meet a cousin at the bus station but hadn't realised there were two. At this point I heard a voice in Polish uttering a greeting, and there towering above me was Alex with a 30Kg rucksack on his back. He'd been misinformed about the time of his bus, and hence had arrived late. We went in search of a bus ticket to Canoa and it set us back $15 for the two of us. However the bus didn't leave until 9.00pm. We found an eating place downstairs, and had a meal - I had steak, two fried eggs, chips and veg whilst Alex had a pork chop with all the trimmings. We knocked back three large bottles of Pilsener each (total cost of beers and meals $12).
We made our way to the bus stop at 8.30pm and discovered that the bus doesn't actually go to Canoa, but stops around 7Km away. We boarded the bus which took a while to get out of the terminal. We were then subjected to a virtual comedy by the guy sitting behind us who was contacting his girl friend trying to guide her taxi to meet the bus enroute. He kept dashing up to the driver, sighing, puffing, and generally putting up a pretty good display of a lunatic! Eventually the girl was picked up, and the pair of them spent the next hour giggling together. All this was done to the background of the bus radio blazing away (calling it "background" is a bit of a misnomer!). Around 4.30am we arrived at our disembarkation spot and caught a cab with a couple also bound for Canoa. The journey cost us $7 or just under $2 each! We were dropped off near the Baloo complex. I looked after the luggage whilst Alex went to look if we could get in. He reported back that there was no sign of life, but he could sling his hammock up and we could kip until dawn broke. In the event I found a sofa in the garden complex to lay down on and Alex decided to hang his hammock. At this point a torch came on and a sleepy security guard rose from another settee. Alex explained who we were and returned to his hammock. About 5.30 the security guy returned to say our room was ready. Alex dismantled his hammock and we both hit the sack. It had been a long night!
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