Arriving in Ecuador
What a difference! The border on the Peruvian side is wild - full of stalls selling all the junk you can imagine. The moment you cross the border, everything is different (except for the sticky humid climate). Very few stalls line the roads, people seemed more serious and there is just less busyness.
We eventually found our way to downtown Quayaquil, the 2nd largest city in Ecuador. Our first impressions were that everyone seems very scaly - not the friendly people we met in the rest of South America. The official currency is the US dollar after many years of high inflation. This resulted in everything becoming more expensive - instead of 22000 sucres (say 83US cents) things were just rounded up to US$1. And in most hotels and restaurants one needs to add 22% (tax and service) - Johan hates the adding thing...
We also went to a small park in the city (a tiny version of the Company Gardens in Cape Town) where there were just green iguanas everywhere - Janine loved it!
We managed to buy our flight tickets to the Galapagos today and will fly out tomorrow morning. This is 3 days earlier than planned so we can enjoy some relaxing at the beach before we head of on an 8 day cruise around the islands.
Culture shock: The process of buying a miniDV cassette for the video camera: 1) a salesperson confirms that they have it in stock 2) another person asks me for my name and passport number which is typed into a computer and a printout is made 3) she accompanies me to the 2nd storey of the shop where I have to pay the money to a 3rd person 4) I then have to go down again, but this time to the store area where my receipt is typed into another computer and reprinted and signed by 2 people and then also myself 3) the 4th person goes and finds the cassette and checks it against the slip 4) another security check is done at the door - this is job creation in its purest form!
We eventually found our way to downtown Quayaquil, the 2nd largest city in Ecuador. Our first impressions were that everyone seems very scaly - not the friendly people we met in the rest of South America. The official currency is the US dollar after many years of high inflation. This resulted in everything becoming more expensive - instead of 22000 sucres (say 83US cents) things were just rounded up to US$1. And in most hotels and restaurants one needs to add 22% (tax and service) - Johan hates the adding thing...
We also went to a small park in the city (a tiny version of the Company Gardens in Cape Town) where there were just green iguanas everywhere - Janine loved it!
We managed to buy our flight tickets to the Galapagos today and will fly out tomorrow morning. This is 3 days earlier than planned so we can enjoy some relaxing at the beach before we head of on an 8 day cruise around the islands.
Culture shock: The process of buying a miniDV cassette for the video camera: 1) a salesperson confirms that they have it in stock 2) another person asks me for my name and passport number which is typed into a computer and a printout is made 3) she accompanies me to the 2nd storey of the shop where I have to pay the money to a 3rd person 4) I then have to go down again, but this time to the store area where my receipt is typed into another computer and reprinted and signed by 2 people and then also myself 3) the 4th person goes and finds the cassette and checks it against the slip 4) another security check is done at the door - this is job creation in its purest form!
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