Day 15 - Puerto Lopez

With the hangers-on in other places, sam and I did it solo and jumped on a 1 hour bus along the coast to quaint seaside fishing village called Puerto Lopez (which we called 'P-Lo' for short). We hopped on a local bus, got ripped off by the bus driver who charged us more than 3 times as much as he should have, and arrived at the overcast, dusty village just over an hour later.

The place was deserted. We'd ended up in a ghost town, with no tourists, and just hoards of people trying to get us into their tuk-tuks to take us to their mates hostal, since every hostal was empty. Sam and I roamed the streets, but there were no backpackers anywhere. A friendly couple directed us towards one in the guidebook (despite trying to persuade us to come to their hostal), but it was shut. and fearing for our lives, we went to a different place in case they wanted to rob us (I hate having thoughts like that, but we need to be careful).



The hostal was empty, so we walked along the STILL OVERCAST beach for 2 hours, then bought some bread and played some cards and hit the sack at 10pm, vowing to ditch the town and head back to civilisation again. The options were more coast (risking more ghost towns on the way), or get back to Quito as soon as possible, where we knew people and could start some spanish lessons. So when the morning came, we jumped on a bus to JippiJappa (pronounced, get this, Hippy Happa!) to get to Guayaquil, the most convenient place to get back to Quito.