Payback

Sunday June 1st

Today was an early start, and it was even earlier for those of us who were late out last night. Jason wasn't too popular for his extra early wake up call, although ironically the people who it was directed at were the ones who didn't hear him, the rest did. But he was suffering on the road today.

Today was the day we crossed into Ecuador. The border crossing, although still involving a load of different checkpoints, was still quite easy compared to the others. Nothing much happened in this one for once.

The Ecuadorian roads are a lot worse than in Peru, but they aren't the worst. The first dozen service stations we pulled into weren't great, they didn't even have diesel, but eventually we got to one that did. And it only cost a dollar a gallon, which made our driver happy., But what made the rest of us happy is how well the shop at the service station was stocked. It was as good as one here. It beats Peru on that score, so we can take a bit of hardship on the roads. You have never seen a dozen magnum ice creams make people so happy. And spending dollars makes it seem like you are spending a real currency again.

We got to our destination Cuenca which is the third biggest town in Ecuador, and still we couldn't get any mobile coverage. It is a nice looking place, but there is one problem, there are no restaurants open on a Sunday evening. Well luckily there is always one and we were able to find it, but it really was quite deserted, a bit like Christchurch was in New Zealand.