We were headed further north today and stepped out into the street to wait for a cab to come along. The streets were nearly empty as cab we hailed down drove us to the bus terminal. Again, Kathleen and I remarked, the morning of or after a holiday would be a good day to travel out or through a South American city.
Our destination today was Rio Bamba (Bahm-ba), Ecuador. We planned to stay in Rio Bamba a night because we would have enough of the 7-hour bus ride by then. The bus pulled out at 11:00am and we took off. Surprisingly, we didn’t make too many stops heading out of town, nor along the way.
We had heard from other travelers that Ecuadorians will over-book a bus and you can end up standing for the whole trip if you board after some stops from the terminal. Our trip was to be 7-hours. In Azogues (Ah-zoa-whess) we stopped in a terminal and the bus loaded up. A woman began to get angry as she was trying to seat some kids that boarded. I pulled out our ticket and noticed we were to be seated in the front two seats on the right side. Those seats were occupied already by two men. The passenger attendant started looking at tickets and saw ours and gestured for us to relinquish our seats. Kathleen said ‘not until those men get out of our assigned seats’. They weren’t budging. The woman got angrier.
More commotion ensued as the woman demanded that the kids in her charge have a seat. Again, the passenger attendant came to us and wanted us to surrender our seats as the two men in our assigned seats were not moving. Not until those guys move was essentially our reply. By now the woman was furious, and Kathleen said the woman was upset that the bus was over booked and that people may have to stand. Especially, the children she had loaded aboard.
Finally, the kids were seated, but more people boarded. Again, the passenger attendant came up to us and wanted us to stand. Kathleen and I just stared at him. He was a young kid trying to make things right in his mind, however, we boarded the bus at the origin, and we were not going to stand simply because we were in the wrong seats. Most people were in the wrong seats anyway, so what’s the difference?
The bus backed out with nearly a dozen people standing. As we continued on down the road we picked and dropped off passengers. Most who boarded had to stand.
By late afternoon Kathleen and I became suspicious as to whether we may have missed our stop. Sure enough, we came to a town that was half an hour beyond Rio Bamba. We over shot our destination. We quickly decided to get off in Ambato (Ahm-bah-toe) and take the local bus into Baños (Bahn-yose) which was where we really wanted to go in the first place. What’s a few extra hours?
We made the transition between buses and headed to Banos on a slow bus that chugged and sputtered up hills and didn’t do much different downhill. A steady stream of cars were coming the other way. Baños is vacation destination for Ecuadorans.
We arrived in Baños and found our hostal. Plantas y Blanco hostal was right on the corner of two major streets . . . sound familiar? Our room over looked the street corner.
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