The road from the Andes to the coast was pretty nice. Uneventful but through some lovely roads winding down to sea level. I passed quite a few cactus looking crops which I believe are dragon fruit. There were a lot of them for sale along the way. I stopped off and fuelled up and found that I had done 340kms on a tank and still had two bars left. I’m guessing it was because it was downhill by a couple of kilometres. Normally after 300kms I have two bars left. It cost me $9.00AUD to fill up. Ecuador is a bit cheaper than Colombia, but I think the fuel is 85% compared to Colombia’s 89%. Ecuador also offers a 95% fuel, but I never see anybody use it. I heard it is imported fuel and it costs 20% more. The bike seems to run fine with the lower octane fuel.

I hadn’t booked anywhere in Pedernales but went straight to a place I had been looking at on booking dot com. Called the Hostal Sarai. It was $25.00AUD for a very small room but clean and safe bike parking. The town was a reasonable size but seemed to be mainly set about 6 blocks back from the ocean. Those six blocks seemed slightly dodgy but town seemed fine. The place was full of yellow TukTuks. Actually, I don’t know what they are called in Spanish.

I slept well and next day headed off down the coast with no set destination. It was a bit overcast. The roads were good except lots of potholes so you had to be careful of the holes and of oncoming traffic dodging holes on their side. I think I had Great Ocean Road in my head but the reality was quite different. It was a bit windy, coming off the sea. They don’t seem to take advantage of the ocean frontage like we do in Australia.

I checked out a couple of little seaside towns but nothing took my fancy. I stopped at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere and had a nice breakfast of fried eggs, fresh cheese and patacones which are slices of fried platanos or plantains or cooking bananas. I’m getting to like them now. And a juice. I never know what fruit it is even after I ask. It’s a fairly common breakfast and less than $5.00AUD. The road wandered in and out along the seaside and through the sort of hinterland you’d expect to see in North Queensland.

I got to Puerto Lopez about 4.00pm and decided to stay for the night. This town was actually built up on the coast but still had the church and main square a few blocks inland. As I drove along the beachfront people were almost jumping out in front of me to drag me into their restaurants. There were a lot of them and not many people. I ended up doing a lap of the beachfront and stopped at a couple of hotels and asked their prices. I didn’t even have to get off the bike. They came out. They were all about $30AUD and so I ended up just taking the third one called Hostal Humpback (the whale not the bellringer) because the guy seemed nice and spoke a little bit of English and I could see it had parking alongside the hotel. Hotel (cheap) and Hostal seem interchangeable over here.

Nice enough room but no external window. Hotels in my price range often lack an external window but have one that opens onto the passageway. This place had a nice rooftop terrace although nowhere near as flash as Quito. But ocean front. Turns out it was opposite the fish market but wasn’t too smelly. There was an older German guy in the room next to me. He had been there for 2.5 years. Good source of information. I had a nice fish dinner and an early night after about 6 hours on the bike.

Next day was overcast again. The fish market was bustling and an interesting place to walk around. The bay was full what seemed like hundreds of similar boats bringing in fish of all sorts. It was a real hive of activity. There were people buying and selling and cooking and walking around. There was a woman selling little bird eggs. She had some cooked and ready to go and the others were just stacked in her cart. The town had a huge Malecon (boardwalk) and so I wandered up to one end of it and found a few weird things. No people but I guess it’s not beach weather. The strangest was a couple of missiles and an anchor. And one of the missiles was missing?

I went back to pack up my stuff and decided I couldn’t be bothered so I booked in for another night. I went back to the same bar that night that had a nice balcony and a good spot to observe town. And cheap beer. Like the night before the bars on the beach side of the road were pumping the music out so loud that I think you could hear it in Australia. The volume got to me in the end so I went back to the same fish restaurant for the same feed and then back to the hotel. I had noticed they were setting up a big stage on the beach but at 10:00pm when I went to bed it was playing music but there was no one around. I woke up about 2:00am and I could hear it pumping and not long after it stopped and I could hear drunk people in the streets. I was going to get up for a look but fell back to sleep.

Next morning it was still overcast and misty rain. The hostal was family ran and the elderly mum used to sit out the front and knit. I had a few nice chats with her. I decided that the coast wasn’t going to be the beach retreat I had pictured so I moved on. I rode down the coast about 20kms to a place that apparently has lots of hippies called Ayampe. It was a small place with dirt roads and dotted with a few surf shops and nice looking restaurants. I pulled into a beachside one for breakfast. Almost Aussie prices but a really nice western style breakfast.

I decided to push on a few hours to the town of Guayaquil which has a bad reputation for safety. I know that boats leave from there to the Galapagos and you can get small planes over there as well. In my mind it was a small costal town. Not unlike the one I’d just left. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It has 3.5 million people and is the largest city in Ecuador by far. I know this sounds weird, but the name reminded me of Gulliver’s Travels and there was a tiny town in that book.

I went to a hotel that was listed on booking dot com and had to park on the busy footpath while I tried to locate it. No one I asked knew where it was. I googled again and found a picture and I was parked right out the front. No signage and a tiny little door between two shops. I knocked on the door and a guy came out. Not overly enthusiastic about my arrival. He had a room but I would have to park the bike at a parqadero down the street. I rode down the footpath for a look and that seemed as equally dodgy and expensive. I decided to try the next hostal on the list. The Hostal Montesa. The lady was nice. She had a room for $22AUD or another for $30AUD and it came with free safe parking in the hotel. It was cheaper than the first place, even without the parking, so I took the bigger more expensive room with the street view.

I parked up and unloaded and then went walking before it got dark and was unsafe. The hotel was near a cable car and it was $2 for the plastic card and $2 to charge it for a round trip. I had no idea where that was but it sounded fun. I climbed aboard. Turned out it was about 20 mins each way and travelled around a bit of the city and then across a big expanse of water. I don’t think it was a tourist attraction but local public transport. It was great. I had a high view over a huge cemetery which I rode around twice by mistake when I left town. On the trip back I jumped off about 20 mins from my hotel and walked along the busy Malecon next to the water. It was so busy with families and music and street theatre, it seemed very nice. I found a place to eat some Turkish food and a beer and then made it back to the hotel as it got dark.

Next morning I got up early and went to a lighthouse I’d seen from the cable car the day before. About an eight hundred step climb but I forget to photograph the top step but I got a photo of the bottom one and I wasn’t walking back up. Only me. Lovely views over the city. Guayaquil turned out to be quiet a nice city with a lot to do. I found a nice breakfast spot. And got back in time to check out at 11:00am and head to Cuenca. Which I had heard is a lovely city and I thought quite big.

It’s been suggested that I write down my mileage on each blog which seems like a great idea. But my mileage is actually kilometerage and today its 6820 KMS.