Roll up!

Monday 15 March
Canoa – San Vincente – Bahia – Jipyjapa – Montañita

The dog in my hotel sleeps outside my room. Which is cute, until it decides to bark all night, which is what it did tonight. So that was very annoying. But it is what it is, and I had places to go. Namely Montañita, about six hours south of Canoa.

Frankly I’m fearing travelling by bus in Bolivia, something that will happen in about a month’s time. I’ve heard some horrible stories on my trip so far. Plus there’s the usual factor of you don’t really know what’s going on. I first experienced this on the train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, where there was no way of knowing when I should get off for my stop. Luckily on that occasion I used some mime to work out from a local when to get off. But I comfort myself with the fact that thousands if not millions have done it before and still live to tell the tale*.

So other than the trip from Quito to San Vincente and the trip to the cash machine a few days ago, this was my first proper budget class bus journey. In my mind I had divided it up into six sections:

1. The bus from Canoa to San Vincente
2. The ferry from San Vincente to Bahia
3. The taxi from the ferry terminal to the bus station
4. The bus from Bahia to Jipyjapa
5. The bus from Jipyjapa to Montañita
6. Find a hostel to stay in

The first part was easy, I had done that before.

For the second part, I fortunately saw the ferry pier from the bus as we approached San Vincente so I knew roughly where I had to go. I found it and despite the boat leaning over on one side quite dramatically we ferried across the Rio Chone successfully. They’re building a bridge at the moment, which is a good thing.

Once on the other side there were taxis but more excitingly cyclos waiting to take people away. I picked a cyclo and headed off into town at a leisurely pace. I could have used a cocktail. It seemed I had arrived in a good amount of time to catch the bus to Guayaquil via Jipyjapa, which was provident. Amusingly, Jipyjapa is pronounced “hippy happa” which makes it a fun-sounding town.

Again there was the issue of getting off at the right place and luckily the bus conductor helped me out on this occasion. The guy sitting next to me also wanted to help me out, but he got off at Puerto Viejo a couple of hours before, which wasn’t much use. I also realised that by sitting on the left (driver’s side) I couldn’t see the road signs, so sitting on the right might be a better policy from now on.

So anyway I had a lunch of biscuits and the conductor signalled me to leave when we arrived in Jipyjapa. We were at a basic road junction on the outskirts of the city, and I was wondering where I would find the bus to Montañita. Luckily as soon as I got off there was some guy frantically waving at me to get on his bus. I asked him in fluent Spanish “Montañita?” and he seemed to say something that looked like a positive response. So I got on.

The bus was packed and I had to stand along with the other late arrivals for the first hour or so. Slowly people filtered off and I had a seat soon enough. We seemed to wait for ages in Puerto Lopez but in due course we set off again and arrived in Montañita just before sunset.

I walked down the main street to the beach to see what hostels were there and some Australian guy helped me out. I took a room overlooking the sea. It was nicely turned out though the shower was small but was perfect for the first couple of nights.

So all in all it went very well. I chatted to the Australian couple and a German guy who was with them and ended up hanging out with the German guy that night. He even gave me the rest of his spaghetti which was nice, though it was all the same to him as he was leaving tomorrow and wouldn’t have been able to take it anyway.

He was called Johannes and came from the part of southern Germany that isn’t Bavaria – I didn’t know such places existed. He was half Romanian (“half gypsy” he said) and had a slightly crazy look about him, but in a good way. We were joined by an old, crazy Scottish guy and had some drinks. We had a good laugh and I did a pretty good Hitler impression and made jokes about Nazis which was fun (as in, testing the boundaries of bad taste - not as in an insulting way). We spoke to some Swedish girls which is always nice. He had a term for the squealing noise a dog makes when you step on it which was pretty funny – a “foot trumpet.”

*I am posting this in Peru having been through Bolivia and survived. The buses are better than Ecuador. It helps to pay more for the "tourist class" buses that don't have chickens on them.