Planning our route

Once we decided to travel to Ecuador, a fun part – for me – was to plan our route. As retirees, Phillip and I have plenty of time to do it ourselves, and we’ve had good luck in the past with planning travel, so we didn’t use any travel agents. By early August, we had a general idea that we would travel about a month in Ecuador, with Phillip’s priority being the coastal areas, and my priority being the Sierra (highlands) area. We wanted to see the Amazon area on the east, called the Oriente, but it was our third priority for the trip. In addition to my Lonely Planet guidebook, I bought the Fromers and the Insight Guide books about Ecuador.

After Phillip and I roughed out an itinerary based on regions, he called American Airlines and arranged our flight, using frequent flier miles. Based on flight availability, our trip became five weeks long. Fine with us! 

Since we arrive and depart from Quito, we decided to make a loop through the country. I began to look at hotels in the cities and towns that interested us. Quito and Cuenca are World Heritage sites and large cities, so we decided on a week in both of them. Guayacil is actually the largest city in Ecuador, but from what I could tell, except for a park in which hundreds of iguanas live, it doesn’t have as much to offer to the visitor as other locations.

One of our early decisions was that we would use the extensive Ecuadorian bus system for our transportation. Also, we would break the trip up so that we wouldn’t be spending more than 4 hours on a bus between our stops and we would spend at least two nights if we stopped. The 2-night decision was so that we wouldn’t just see Ecuador thru bus windows. Applying those decisions to the route lead us to actually fly from Quito to Manta because of the distance and to stop in Guayacil for two nights. Although five weeks sounds like a long time, we won’t have time to make a worthwhile trip to eastern Ecuador, where the Amazon tributaries and rainforests are. Next trip to Ecuador?

During the first week of August, I made almost all of our hotel reservations using the Internet. Most of our stays are in hostels, but don’t think of dorm-style rooms with shared bathrooms (after all, we are 53, not 23). Hostels in Ecuador are more akin to our bed and breakfasts. Hopefully, I’ve reserved us private bedrooms with private baths! That’s one of the things we will find out and blog about as we travel.

With our route set, this month I am adding the not-to-miss attractions to each stopover on our itinerary. I gave Phillip some sticky arrows and our map, and he is adding stops he wants to make to look at towns on our route. I hope the bus steps aren’t too high, as it looks like a lot of on and off activity!