The plain of Ecuador.
April 2011.
We enter Ecuador.
Welcome to the land of green gold!
The country is the world's leading producer of bananas.
The customs clearance is pretty epic.
We lose a full day doing the customs formalities and seeking a hypothetical car insurance.
And finally we cross the country without insurance!
The price of petrol being very interesting in Ecuador (U.S. $ 1 per gallon ...), we passed the border with empty tanks.
But unfortunately, all stations near the border are out of stock!
We end up buying adulterated diesel on the black market for three times the price.
We spend our first night a few miles from the border, and we have the visit of a team of policemen strongly armed.
A frantic neighbor took us for cattle rustlers.
It starts well!
The Ecuadorian countryside is completely different from what we saw in Peru.
We see all sorts of unknown plants and trees.
Here teak and cocoa.
A woman explains us that the cocoa beans are sun dried and then roasted before being ground.
So, Tugdual who wants to try it harvests a cocoa pod along the road.
Everywhere there are fields of bananas.
We want to buy only one kilo but they don't sell small quantities.
For 1 USD the complete branch, we can understand that.
We see our first pineapple fields.
And huge plantations of sugar cane.
What a festival for the eyes!
It is nice to see, but we also have to taste...
We are eating some amazing pineapples when Tugdual shouts "Look !!!!".
And we see our first iguana enjoying the sun a few yards away from us.
We walk a hundred yards along the road and we see a dozen: the children are delighted.
The landscapes are beautiful and so different.
We fall under the spell of these houses with typical colonial architecture.
