We broke out of the Black Sheep Inn like we were breaking out of jail . . . kind of. Our time at the tranquil BSI came to an abrupt end on Sunday November 28th as we thrust ourselves abruptly back into the world of travelling.

It started with a 6am bus leaving Chucchilan and heading to Latacunga and the Pan American Highway. Among our party was a guy named Allen that we had met at the BSI.The PanAm is the main road of South America Stretching thousands of kilometers down the western side of the continent it is the corotid artery of this place.

Our goal was to make it as far as Cuenca - a city in the south of Ecuador about 6 hours from Latacunga. From there we took a bus south to Ambato where we hoped to hop a bus to Riobamamba or maybe direct to Cuenca. Then . . . . trouble.

All of the buses in Ambato seemed to be only bound for points north - none of the relentless touts were shouting the names of any place remotely near our intended destinations. We soon found out the problem: Due to some type of inter-provincial dispute over routes a large number of bus companies were staging a demonstration on all the major routes crossing the borders if these provinces. There means of demonstration was to completely block the roads by parking dozens and dozens of buses across the road! This is roughly the equivalent of blocking every major highway leaving new york state - or maybe having a clot in your corotid artery.

There was no way we were going back to Quito. A guard suggested we might hire a truck to take us through or at least part way. We did just this, hired a car that managed to slip by the first barricade by driving in the breakdown lane and dropped us about 20K south of Ambato. In front of us loomed a line of perpendicular buses as far as the eye could see. Our cabbie departed with the advice, "stay on the road, don´t talk to anyone and be careful"

So we walked for about 2K passing bus after bus and the remains of several exhausted tire fires. Finally the buses broke and we hailed a truck to take us a few more Kilometers to the other end of the strike zone. From there we walked again before finally getting to the provincial border. It was a carnival scene with vendors setting up booths and people lined up with their cars ready to play taxi for those who braved the crossing. We were able to get a car to Riombamba only to find that the buses there could not pass to Cuenca due to another road block!

Cuenca was too far to attempt to do the same crossing (a cab would be expensive) so we opted to take a bus way out of the way to Guayaguil and spend the night there. As we drove out to the coast, we passed acres and acres of Dole banana farms! After descending for four hours to the heat of the coast we were int the monstrosity that is Guayaguil - the biggest city in Ecuador. I went to get my bag out from under the bus only to find that some enterprising soul had bought enough caramel to be charged with intent to sell . . . and it had melted all over my bag!

So I spent the night showering with my pack and the next day we took a 5 hour bus to Cuenca. All told it was an adventure. We had made it . . . We had broken the line.

Jim K, from Ecuador, reporting