Going to Ecuador

Sorry it's been a while since I've blogged. I'll try to do this more often, and maybe everyone will check it.

I've been trying for a while to get the paperwork done for my resident visa. The problem is, you have to leave the country to pick it up, and I've left the country, but the visa didn't make it before I returned. So, I got word a few weeks ago that the resident visa had made it to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and I had until January 3rd to pick it up. Last week, Joe and Sarah arrived in Trujillo for their Christmas visit. My entire family's coming on Sunday and staying through January 5th. I thought it might be too much of an adventure to drag everyone to Ecuador, so I thought we'd go ahead, pick up the visa, and get back before the rest of the fam arrived. I think I made the right decision not to bring them all- read on to discover why.

A bus trip from Trujillo to Guayaquil is about 18-20 hours long. There are no direct flights from Trujillo to Guayaquil (you have to fly to Lima- very much out of the way), and certainly no cheap flights two days before leaving. We were pondering how to go when Pastor Jaime (my hero by the way), told us he'd found round-trip plane tickets direct from Trujillo to Tumbes (right on the Peru- Ecuador border) for $50. Perfect! We took them with the plan to get a bus from Tumbes to Guayaquil for about 5 hours, pick up the visa, stay for a night, see Guayaquil, and return in the manner in which we came. Nice plan- we should have stuck to it.

A side note- the night before leaving, we were reading in a Peru guide book about Tumbes. It says the following: "Don't stay long in Tumbes, a rough-and-tumble coastal town that has a history of hassling foreigners ever since Pizarro arrived here for the third and final time, in 1532.....little has changed for foreigners in Tumbes, who complain of scamming money changers with rigged calculators, pick-pocketing youths, and lousy service at local restaurants."

We arrived in Tumbes on the Aerocondor flight Tuesday night and had a taxi take us to one of the few hostals recommended by the guide book. We walked around the town for a while and realized that the guide book was pretty accurate and the people weren't the friendliest or the happiest to see us there. The next morning, after breakfast, we thought we'd head on to the bus station to see when the bus was leaving (the time changes depending on when it arrives from Lima). We arrived to discover that instead of leaving at 10:30 am, it was going to leave 2 hours later, meaning we'd get to Guayaquil too late to go to the consulate. The man working behind the counter assured us we could use our tickets on the return trip and the fastest way to get to Guayaquil was take a combi (small van made for about 15 that carries about 25 Peruvians at any given time) to the Peruvian immigrations, from there take a mototaxi (one step below a dirt bike with a seat across the back that Sarah, Joe, and I barely fit on) to the border, then get out at the border and walk into Ecuador, take another moto or taxi to Ecuadorian immigration, then take a colectivo (a nicer van that carried 6 people) for $12 a person from the border to Guayaquil. We'd get there in time to go to the office. We decided to do this. Not sure it was a good idea.

We got on the combi and were smashed in until getting to immigration. There, some people offered to "help" us- yeah right. We got on a mototaxi (they hopped on the back) and said they'd guide us through the border towns. We shouldn't have let them help us, but we didn't know where to go (although we probably could have asked and figured it out), and the guidebook wasn't lying when it said that Aguas Verdes (the Peruvian border town) was a dirty, loud town of vendors, border guards, and ripoff artists" and that crossing was "possible, but complicated, to do by a combination of taxis and walking. Watch your belongings." Joe says the town was "hostile." Sarah says "sketchy." So, we hopped off the mototaxi and took off walking across the border, hanging on to our stuff and trying to act like we weren't going to be easily ripped off. We went to the "colectivo" station, bought the tickets for an hour and a half later (the soonest that had seats) and headed in a taxi to the Ecuadorian immigration office. Even the border police were sketchy- that was until they realized Joe was me and Sarah's brother and he yelled at them to leave us alone and not say anything else to us, and NO they couldn't accompany us to Guayaquil. We took a taxi back to the colectivo office to wait, and hoped that we wouldn't be kidnapped by the guys "helping" us or robbed by someone in the town while we waited. We finally got on the colectivo, which thankfully, wasn't sketchy, and arrived in Guayaquil just in time to be dropped off on the side of town opposite the Peruvian consulate. I arrived to the office at 5:08. They closed at 5. Nothing in Peru closes at 5- at 5, they're just opening back up from the siesta. But, we weren't in Peru, we were in Ecuador, and the office was closed. Thankfully we had a little time the next morning. If only Thursday had gone as smoothly as Wednesday.

That post will come later- thanks for reading so far! I'll also post pictures later.