- In general, how is bus travel in Ecuador?
- Do Ecuadorians travel with livestock on buses?
- What is the lechero?
- How can I avoid the lechero?
- What are the travel times between the major terminals in Ecuador?
- Night bus versus day bus for long distances?
- The Quito bus terminal… logistic
The Quito bus terminal… logistics?
The quito bus terminal is in a sketchy area on the southern end (near to nothing of relevance for a tourist). If you are in the northern part of Quito looking to go south, ask around for the Panamericana or Flota Imbabura (has the newest busses in Ecuador). Instead of heading all the way to the very southern part of town to the official bus terminal, I believe both of these companies have offices from where night busses depart in the central part of Quito much closer to the Mariscal district.
What are the travel times between the major terminals in Ecuador?
| Route | Time | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Quito – Guayaquil | 8-10hrs | ~$10.00 |
| Quito – Cuenca | 8-12hrs | $9.00-12.00 |
| Cuenca – Guayaquil | 3.5-4hrs | $8.00 |
Night bus versus day bus for long distances?
Trips between Quito and Cuenca are arguably better at night, if you can sleep through voracious speeds and curvy mountain roads. During the day, the options for direct buses are few and far between, meaning if you dont plan well, you will lose an entire day on a lechero. Direct day buses are nice because there’s lots of beautiful scenery between the two Andean cities, but, again, not for the faint of heart. If you know you easily get bus sick, I recommend going for a flight: 30 minutes, US$49… well worth the price in time saved and avoiding constant nausea.
In the end, as stated above in the sections about the lechero, some buses are light-years more comfortable than others. Its worth paying a few extra dollars for the $12 Flota Imbabura direct night bus.
Now-a-days its not so necessary because the newer buses have heating, but on older night buses a heavy blanket, or tons of layers is a must.
QUICK TIP: If the night bus you are on seems to be really cold, its probably because
- Some windows are cracked, stuck, or left open.
An obvious problem in Ecuadorian buses, but often very hard to fix. - Not enough cows on board!
The bus lacks enough bodies to produce interior warmth. This is also an unfortunate situation that can’t really be helped. - The window shades are open!
Subtly, these fabric/canvas shades do a lot to keep a buffer between the interior warmth generated by body heat and the constant stream of cold night air pushing against the glass windows from the exterior. Close as many as possible around you, and get others to do the same. This also helps keep distracting oncoming headlights from ruining your good nights sleep
In general, how is bus travel in Ecuador?
Bus travel is by far the most popular means of public transportation in Ecuador. Whether you are going to pueblitos within a specific province, or heading across the nation long distance, you can generally find a bus to get you there at a very low price. Quality, however, varies widely between routes and bus companies. A good model to keep in mind for longer distances is that they should charge you betwee US$1.00 and US$1.50 for each hour of travel. As nothing is ever “certain” in Ecuador, this factor does change in various circumstances. For example, the route between Guayaquil and Cuenca is now operated by an alliance of bus companies who, working together, have devised a schedule by which a bus leaves every 40 minutes during peak hours eachway and fixed the price at US$8.00 (for a 3.5-4 hour ride). This seems to me a bit outrageous when the most luxurious night bus between cuenca and Quito (twice the distance & time) costs only $12.
In general, tickets are only sold the day of travel. If you are planning one of the longer interprovincial night busses between Quito/Cuenca or Quito/Guayaquil, call ahead to find out the schedule for the evening as each company usually have 2 or 3 busses heading out each night. Buy your ticket in the afternoon, or try the true ecuadorian way by showing up 30 minutes to an hour early to get your ticket. Its only slightly more risky because these busses rarely fill up *the notable exception being during holidays when busses are packed out, stuffy, and stinky.*
Do Ecuadorians travel with livestock on buses?
Outside the larger cities, livestock is a way of life, and occasionally you do see people bringing smaller farm animals such as chickens or ducks onto the slower provincial buses. But certainly it is a rarity to see this type of thing on a daily basis, especially on interprovincial buses that don’t stop every 5 km to drop off or pick up locals. I’ve never seen a sheep on a bus, but it doesnt mean it wont happen to you!
What is the “lechero”?
I’ve heard Ecuadorians say something to the effect of “i caught the lechero”, which, in busing terms, means they caught the bus that is always slowest to arrive to a destination, because of frequent stops. These “lechero” buses are provincial (but also sometimes long-distance) buses that tend to stop in every village waiting for a “minimum” number of people to straggle in to warrant onward travel. They are also characterized by driving extremely slowly (10 to 15 km per hour) on the road out of town picking up every additional man woman and child until filled to literal capacity, in order to make an extra dime. These buses are the most interesting (read: dangerous) vehicles on the road, because if they are willing to overload the bus with passengers to exorbitant levels, then they are also as equally likely to throw caution to the wind, disobeying ever traffic law imaginable, in order to get to the next stop more quickly. Doubting, anyway, that any traffic laws are enforced or heeded by the majority of the public transport system.
How can I avoid the lechero?
In some smaller out of the way places, the lechero simply cannot be avoided. This could be because not many people happen to be traveling at that moment, and waiting for the bus to fill up is the only viable means of turning a profit. In other places, where there are different companies going to the same place, you have more options, and a better chance to avoid the lechero. It takes skill and a keen eye to succeed in beating the lechero. Here’s my tips for avoiding a long painfully slow, generally uncomfortable ride:
- Be wary of older buses covered in dust. They usually take the “long dirt road” home.
- Regardless of what the chofer (driver) or cobrador (guy who takes your money) tells you about when they are leaving, don’t ever get on a bus that is stationary with fewer than 6 people. Exception: large bus terminals where buses must come and go more or less on a schedule.
- Given a choice of buses: always pick the one with fewer medallions hanging in the rear-view and pictures/slogans of the virgin Mary or Jesus. These superstitious buses tend to throw all caution to their god(s) putting faith in these plastic or furry objects that they will arrive in one piece.
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]]>The independent traveler community
“the gringo trail is far and wide” there’s thousands of people walking the globe right now, befriend someone in cyberspace and ask them for advice, help, or a homestay.
- Thorntree.lonelyplanet.com - the original travelers bulletin board, with a dedicated forum representing every corner of the planet (notoriously slow, even in first world)
- BootsnAll.com – trip planning advice, regional “insiders” advice, popular travel forums, and ability to publish your own free travelogue.
The global free accommodation networks
Find a free couch to sleep on anywhere in the world.
- CouchSurfing.com – the best of all the accommodations networks, this site is actually a gigantic blossoming traveler community. See my CouchSurfing profile here.
- HospitalityClub.org – big competitor with couch surfing
- GlobalFreeloaders.com – lesser known network
- Can I Crash? – less known accommodation network created by the blogging community
The “get there cheap” sites
The following sites are quite popular with any traveler (be it budget or business) because they make searching for airfare so easy by aggregating their results from hundreds of other airfare sites as well as many proprietary airlines, effectively giving you a concise listing of the best deals from across the web with one flight search.
Read and research before you go
- How to See the World: Art of Travel – website written in a book format with 20-some chapters of useful recommendations and life-hacks for travelers; how to turn your dream of travel into a real possibility. all the nitty gritty details of travel: safety, packing, what to take, how to pack, what to do while away, how to take care of business before you leave town. This is a must read for first time travelers.
- Transitions Abroad website great resource for more information on how and what to do while abroad (e.g. travel, volunteer, work, study, live). Global database of work and volunteer opportunities in nearly any corner of the planet. Great TESL / TEFL resource. Interesting info on responsible travel.
- Download and read a copy of the (free) Responsible Travelers Handbook (2006 Edition found here and here)
- OneBag.com – extensive travel-light site from an inspirational go-light guru
- WikiHow Travel Tips – fun and interesting how-tos written by the people who have learned from their mistakes on the road.
- Traveling with an iPod - interesting article from National Geographic.
- Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel – the motivational and inspirational guide to round the world travel
Destination guides
- LonelyPlanet.com – a great guidebook publisher with basic country information on their website, also host the Thorn Tree travel forums mentioned above.
- WikiTravel – the original travel wiki
- World66 – another popular destination guide written and edited by the world
Staying in touch with homebase
- Meebo.com – chat client supports AIM/ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, Jabber all from one webpage, based on nifty Web2.0 AJAX technology. This is a great tool to use from internet cafés around the world that may or may not have your favorite chat client downloaded and installed.
Continued motivation while on the road
- Pick up the Vagabonding book mentioned above and find inspirational excerpts you like, then using the FutureMe website, send yourself future emails to receive the clippings while you are on the road.
- Become a member of 43 Places and its sister site 43 Things where you can build your list of things you want to do and places you want to visit before you die. This site also allows you to send yourself future emails asking about the progress of the things you want to get done.
Other pertinent travel links sites
I’ve covered quite a range of things here but I’m sure there’s still yet more to find on the web. These are the links that I most frequently use while traveling. Other sites that i left off the list are my online email, search, calendar, and feed-reader sites that keep me organized and interested (i.e. distracted from real life) when I enter an internet café. If you´ve got an interesting or useful travel tool or site that I´ve overlooked, please let me know about it.
[edited by James, 7-Jun-2006 to add links to Responsible Travel Handbook and TransitionsAbroad.com in the "read and research before you go" section.]
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]]>Technorati Tags: budget, galapagos, ecuador, travel
>Hi,
>
>I’ll be heading to Quito in August with my family, and
>I have a few questions. Do you know of any good deals
>for seeing the Galapagos Islands?
Your cheapest bet is to do the trip on your own (i.e. no cruise ship fantasies) I
guess you already know about the tons of luxury cruises ($1000+) and $100 dollar day tours. Its not a cheap destination by any means, but it can be done more or less on a budget. The bottom line is that the cheapest it gets for foreigners on the islands is about US$600 per person for an entire trip (say 4 or 5
days). And thats doing things bare bones; heres somewhat of a breakdown according to what some ecuadorian friends have told me that have worked in
Galapagos in the past.
1. Getting There
The cheapest flight you can find is from Guayaquil to the islands at approx. $300 per person. One other option to arrive in the islands (if your time schedule is less rigid then your budget) is to take a 5 day trip by boat from Guayaquil, but I’m not sure of the price.
2. Fees The entrance fee to the islands is US$100 per person for foreigners.
3. Rooms Once you are there, you can find affordable hotels starting around $15 per person.
4. Board Nicer gringo meals starting around $5 to $8 per person, whereas local (and equally filling and delicious) meals start at $1.50 for an almuerzo.
5. Getting Around
You’ll find boats in the bays that can take you between islands for perhaps $5-20 dollars per person. Not sure about overland travel but I don’t believe it to be very common there. However, just for your general information, prices in ecuador for pubic bus transport go for between $1.00 and $1.50 per hour of travel (depending on the bus’ condition and comfort level).
6. Sightseeing You can reportedly find tours there for $20 per day.
Sorry for this potentially disturbing news about the extremely high prices (to put it in perspective for Ecuadorians its $10 dollars to enter the park and $150 dollar flight, an all inclusive trip for them might be $500 per person). However, one must realize that this is a very unique place on earth and moreover this country is in need of every penny it can get from tourism (especially now with the the Oxy petroleum scandal and the recent disputes that have interrupted the negotiations of a South American Free Trade Agreement) who knows what aid the US will end up taking away after that pans out. Ninety percent of all revenue generated from tourism in Ecuador is through the Galapagos, though that can hardly make up for the possible revenues lost to foreign oil exploiters.
The transnational Occidental Petroleum, a US owned corporation, has been [legally] robbing the country [under signed contract with the Ecuadorian government] by hoarding 88% of total earnings of oil for the past twenty years. Imagine having to pay only 12% to use the countries most important natural resource, its virtually all profit for them! The Ecuadorian government recently found Oxy guilty of breaching the exclusive contract and has decided to seize their oil-fields and wells until an accord can be reached between the governments.
Back to the subject though; all said and done, the Galapagos Islands are well worth a visit if you can work it into your budget. In my humble opinion, a life changing experience for you and your kids is better than any theme park or Zoo in the grand US of A if for no other reason than that the animals are living in peace in their natural habitat.
>Do you have any contacts on Galapagos? I know
>we’re coming during the busy (i.e., expensive) season,
>but there must be a way for a teacher to see the sites
>without using all of his savings. Any advice would be
>appreciated. Thanks.
To answer your other questions, I do not have any contacts in the Galapagos right now. And yes, you can bet your teachers savings that you will be there in peak tourist season with MANY american and european (but mainly American) tourists running around on super deluxe package tours…. it must be nice. My advice: go to the islands while you are here, because who knows the next time you will be able to organize a trip to this part of the world with your beautiful family.
>By the way, our plan is see the islands first and then
>head for Quito
Lastly, since you mentioned you would go to Quito after galapagos, perhaps you could look into finding a flight from US to Quito, then go Quito -> Galapagos -> Quito. However, alternatively, you could get your flight in and out of Guayaquil, and get conecting flights in between Quito and Guayaquil for $65 (one-way on TAME).
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]]>Corporate downsizing, a buzzword popularized by the end of the american economic boom (coinciding with the end of a Gregorian millennium), is a commonly accepted method involving cutting costs, exporting work and resources to needy and cheap third world countries. Its generating lots of buzz these days with companies moving to offshore labor and resources, but somehow cutting down on personal dross tends to go against everything the commercial world preaches through cleverly placed adverts to their target markets.
Introducing Acme product line QRSTU. You need products Q, R, S, T, U! [repeated 2x daily]. Ok, so you bought and own my products S, T, and U. I know you love them but wait, have you heard of new and improved F? You REALLY need F… buy-one-get-one-free.
I’ve suddenly been sparked into action to start my consumer downsizing as an effort to loosen my roots from the red clay that binds me to my home in north carolina and to free me from the “work, produce, consume” state of mind. cleaning out corporate deadwood is a fundamental technique embraced by every businessman in all history but generally the individual does not possess the motivation to cut out their deadwood. But then, seemingly out of nowhere a swelling grows from within. Its some basic inexplicable instinct to experince new sights and sounds and cover new ground. To be an airbourne seed, lifted from the tree by the whisp of a windy day. This is exactly what has happened to me; since my return from a six month circuit through south america, ive been hit once again with a serious case of travelbug. I’ve known for a while now that I will inevitably be pulled back to the road and it’s just been a matter of time for an opportunity to present itself and for another burst of wanderlust to grab hold.
So I finally acted upon a process that I’ve been devising in my head over the past year or so of just exactly how to clean up my living space and cut out the deadwood in order to facilitate ease of globalmotion. The first step was that I took a veritable boatload of old well used clothes that I’ve aggregated and carried with me to the various dorm rooms and cheap college apartments over the past 8 years. I parted with white running shoes, brazen (a.k.a., gaudy) floral neck-ties, soccer cleats with 5 year old mud stains, holy white tee-shirts (from years of over-bleaching), multiple pair of corduroy pants, stretched out sweatshirts… I even left behind the luggage that I used to carry them to the drop-off point It was a truly liberating feeling to get this stuff thats been collecting dust in my closet out of my bedroom and into the hands of some people that perhaps can make good of the excess crap i own. Although I’ve done my share of thrift store bargain hunting this was my first experience supplying products to the cause. I was surprised to find out that you can give away your junk and get a receipt for the transaction. A momentary thought flashed through my head. Could you actually claim someone taking your leftovers as a deduction when you file taxes? I guess I’ll never know because I turned down the receipt with the justification that the additional paper would only add to the clutter that I’m trying to clear out.
Technorati Tags: awareness
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