Then I went south, skirting along the edge of the jungle. It was notable for the variety of different vehicles I sat in the back of, some for the first time ever, and for the spectacular tropical thunderstorm I just about avoided getting caught in.
I haven’t sat in the bed of a pick-up truck since Central America. Always nice to get the wind in your hair.
Nice sunny day on the way south from Puyo.
Some slight warning clouds but nothing too serious yet.
Then my first ever ride standing up in one of these steep-sided commercial trucks!
The driver stopped at a roadside stand and bought me one of these.
No idea what it was called but it was full of cheese and pretty tasty.
Then the clouds became a cause for concern. The rumbles of thunder were so loud they were almost scary.
And I got a ride in the bed of this covered-over commercial truck (another first) just in the nick of time. At one point it was hailing hailstones three centimetres across.
And then, being in the tropics, the thunderstorm abruptly stopped and never came back.
And I got a long, long ride south which I eventually had to bail on because the guy was driving so fast around the tight curves on the road that I threw up spectacularly. So I ended up in this town, Gualaquiza, for the night.
It wasn’t so bad.
This was in some town further south…
…where, unbelievably, I got picked up by a woman and her daughter, a girl called Katherine who used to live in Hackney and spoke English with a London accent.
Katherine is almost finished an architecture degree but she isn’t very tall.
And that’s all you’re getting.
Total distance hitchhiked: 63,432 km.
Total number of rides: 459.