Guayaquil

Day 158 – The Hidden Hostel

After breakfast on the back deck of the hostel in Cuenca, we headed for the bus terminal and got on a bus to Guayaquil (where our flight to the Galapagos would leave from the following morning).

Once at the monstrous bus terminal/shopping centre in Guayaquil we stopped in at an internet café to get directions to our hostel off the reservation confirmation they had emailed us.  Using this and the address from our guidebook I started trying to find a taxi driver to take us there, the first three didn’t have a clue.  The fourth acted confident and we were getting desperate so we hopped in.

Once we got to the general area he pulled over, wound down my window, and made me ask for directions!  The first two people didn’t have much of an idea, the third gave us good directions which the taxi driver refused to follow.  In the end I insisted he take us where I though it was, we passed a sign with the hostel’s name on it, but still couldn’t find it!  In the end the driver spat the dummy and refused to take us any further.  He then had the audacity to demand more money because he’d had to drive for so long.  I politely pointed out that he had claimed to know where he was going and it was not our fault that he lied!

Thankfully it turned out we’d gotten within half a block of the hostel before being evicted from the cab, but when we rang the buzzer nobody answered, this was not going well.  Finally Erin managed to attract the cleaner’s attention by waving and whistling and we were eventually let in.  Thankfully after all the trouble the hostel was very nice, had huge landscaped gardens backing onto a treed hillside, a swimming pool surrounded by faux rock, a huge deck looking over the city and much to Erin’s delight, a bulldog.

 
One of many photos we seem to have of the bulldog!

That afternoon we headed straight back out to try and find a polarising filter for the new camera, but two shopping malls later we had no luck.  But all was not lost, Anna did manage to find a nice new bikini and I got a beard trim.  I also tried a couple of pharmacies to find some new sea-sickness tablets, the first one brushed me off very abruptly, the second one discretely took me aside to explain that the drug I was asking for is illegal in Ecuador as it was commonly used for robberies and date rapes, oops!

For dinner we continued our big city trend (whilst Quito is the capital of Ecuador, Guayaquil is the biggest city) and headed out for Japanese.  This time the prices were very reasonable and we ordered enough food to feed another three of us.

Now armed with knowledge of the hostel’s secret location we didn’t have so much trouble directing the taxi back there.  It was still really warm when we got home sometime after 10, so while Erin sent some last minute emails I went for a dip in the pool.  Then we hit the hay ready for our early morning trip to the airport.