Huaquillas

 

The bugs fed on me during the night and I awoke in Pasaje bitten and scratching. I had accumulated an impressive number of bites on my legs and back during the last two nights. I planned to make Huaquillas, the last town in Ecuador before I crossed the frontier into Peru. I brought the bike and gear down the narrow stairs and packed it up on the street. I made a scene with this display and a number of people stopped to stare at me.

 

 

It was cool and overcast and the road passed through a corridor of banana trees before dead-ending at the Pan American Highway. On this stretch there was much construction and I rode much of the way on gravel and sand and slowly as the country began to change from bananas to pastureland and then to rolling scrub. This area was both a protected ecological zone as well as a military base and testing area. The military buildup here until the border was no doubt a result of the fighting over this area during the 1940s between Peru and Ecuador.

 

 

I stopped at a roadside comedor and a had a seco de pollo and then continued over the rolling country into the gritty little border town of Huaquillas. Along the main road into the center I saw a fine looking hotel, one that looked clean enough as to not have bed bugs, and I pulled in and inquired about rates. Rooms without air conditioning were $10 a night and I took one. It was a nice enough place that I decided to stay another night. I was now only a short ride from entering Peru.