We flew into Guayaquil, a port city in Ecuador. It is not the capital, but it is the largest city. We had booked one night here and a flight out the next morning to The Galapagos.
Apart from Glasgow at the beginning of our trip, this is the only other place we have spent just one night. I vaguely remember the decision making process for that choice: it was a mixture of the over cautious advice on the home office website and probably some other googled nonsense indicating that Ecuador was a pretty dangerous place. I do remember reading something about the Columbian drug trade passing through Ecuador. The same wasn’t true for Glasgow, by the way.
We did have an initial hitch - our tried and tested ‘pre-booked pickup luxury’ broke. After waiting half-an-hour and then hanging on the phone for another half, we ended up in a yellow cab from the airport. I have to say that was all arranged and paid for by the original transfer company that Booking dot com had put us in touch with. They even called around to the hotel later and left us a gift of some chocolate.
Our welcome at the hotel was incredible and almost everyone we encountered spoke at least some English and most of them spoke it pretty well.
Had we made a mistake not having a few days in Guayaquil?
I certainly think so
