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Tuesday morning, I was up early for breakfast and to check out of the hostel, ready to catch the taxi at 7.30am for the airport. The taxi ride was long, it took over an hour to get to the airport, but I'd already checked in online, so wasn't too worried about being late.
I dumped my backpack at check in and headed for the departure gates. This wasn't a short process, firstly you have to queue for Passport Control, then queue to pay the 30 USD departure tax and queue for a third time to go through security.
It was then time to familiarise myself with the airport, not an overly exciting airport, modernish but not on the scale of Heathrow, so you could get easily bored. Luckily they have wifi, because on my return journey, I will be spending 12 hours in the airport waiting for my connecting flight - god save me.
As I sat there quietly minding my own business, the lovely attendant approached me to tell me that my carry on bag was to heavy to be put in the overhead compartment - how she new this without actually lifting it up was beyond me. So I had to say farewell to my bag as they checked it in.
For some unknown reason the plane was delayed for an hour so there was a lot of waiting around. The flight was fairly standard, managed to watch 85% of a film prior to them turning off the entertainment system.
Considering the size of the plane I thought that the immigration process would be fairly straight forward, but I was wrong, we had to queue for an hour to get a stamp. Not the fastest process in the world, but I knew at the end of it, the bag men would have already unloaded the bags and they'd be there ready for a swift pick up on my part. On that point I was correct, unfortunately I spotted yet another queue which I was forced to join as every single item had to be x-rayed, so I kissed another hour goodbye.
Afterwards I jumped in a cab to head into the metropolis that is Guayaquil to meet Sascha. For the first time in ages, I had succumbed and booked into a dorm room - no TV, no private bathroom, wasn't sure how I was going to cope.
Sascha and I then went for a wander around the town. Our first stop was a park that for some reason had a large population of iguanas living in the trees. It was a fairly strange sight to be hold, but none of the iguanas seemed too concerned at all the passer-bys staring at them.
We then headed for Las Penas, a quiet cobble stoned, stepped area, with pretty shops and houses. Each of the steps was numbered and there were 440 odd up to the top where a lighthouse overlooks the city.
For dinner we hopped into a cab and went across town to a Chinese restaurant, and then had a couple of drinks before heading back to the hostel.
The next day, we cabbed it over to the bus station where we got tickets to Montanita.
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