Rushin' through Riobamba

Heading to the north of Ecuador, we decided to break up our journey and stop in Riobamba for a night. One thing that we have learnt is that if the bus company says that the journey will take four hours, it is likely to take at least one to two hours longer. We've also learnt just because there is a toilet on the bus it doesn't mean that passengers can use it. It's kind of like a good room in a house that never gets used, except on important occasions with important people who need to be impressed. We had to almost plead to the bus attendant to use the toilet and reassure him that we only needed to do a number 1. We are surprised that he didn't make us sign a contract on the non-existent toilet paper. So after six hours on the bus, we were ready to jump ship. Lucky, we had been monitoring our location as there was no announcement that we were at Riobamba. If we had not asked, we would have ended up at the next main town, about an hour away. As it was, it felt as if we were out in the sticks, on the outskirts of town.

We were able to flag down a taxi, who took us to our hostel. When we got to the hostel, we surveyed our surroundings and came to the conclusion that we were staying on the wrong side of the tracks – quite literally. After playing a game of “what nationality are these gringos”, we were handed our keys. One of the staff leant over to the woman behind the front desk and said “Alemanes” (Germans) and pointed in our direction. Immediately Ricky interjected with “no, somos Australianos”. We are often mistaken for Germans, French, twins or German/French twins. And often the question is asked whether we want two beds rather than just one matrimonial bed. Sometimes the question is asked repeatedly.

With the limited time that we had, we headed directly to the historic centre of the city. But along the way, we stumbled upon a shop that had a unique speciality: sports shoes in one section and sex toys in the other. The window display included some interesting merchandise that wouldn't be permitted in Australia but here no-one seemed to blink an eye. We continued on our way to the downtown area. The downtown streets are lined with colonial-style buildings. For a small city, the streets were a hive of activity, with cars and people going about their business. Looming in the background is the Chimborazo volcano and other mountains, which look down on the Chambo River Valley from far above. At a little over 2700 metres, we had expected that we may have had problems with the altitude but it seems that we've acclimatised to high altitudes. We didn't need to get used to the altitude for too long as we were off to our next stop, lower down in the valleys.

Next stop: Baños.Read more