The long and winding road

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

We're back!  After a hectic, tiring few days...

Scene of our last supper in Quito, before leaving for Bahia.

Last Monday, we left Quito on the "late" bus, bound for Bahia de Caraquez.  The way we figured it, if it took us 8 hours to get from Bahia to Quito, it should take 8 hours to get back.  From what we could glean from the bus schedule, it appeared that the 10:15 PM bus that we were catching in the center of Quito would make its way to the "south" terminal, leaving there around 11:30 PM, which would mean that we should be in Bahia around 7:30AM.  However, that is not the way it worked.

The bus left the central terminal on time, at 10:15 PM.  It did not go to the south terminal as anticipated, but rather just headed directly for Bahia.  At night there was, of course, no traffic.  The road from Bahia to Quito is uphill, so the road back is downhill, making it much faster.  Apparently there is no need to stop at as many places along the way at night either.  All of which meant that we arrived at Bahia at 4:30AM.  At this time of the morning, the local buses were not running, so we had to grab a taxi to take us to the very dark and totally locked up marina.  Fortunately for us, eventually the night watchman at the marina spotted us sitting on the curb in front of the gate and let us in.  He kindly took us in his boat out to Sine Timore, where we were able to crash for a few hours before hunger forced us to get going again.

We had no food on the boat since we had already made it ready to leave it for several months, so we had to go to shore to find breakfast.  This meant we had to launch the dinghy off the deck and get the outboard motor onto it, etc. before we could get to shore.  Breakfast was procured at the Coco Bongo hostel, just before noon.  After that, things sort of went down hill.

On our 2nd trip to the dock. later in the afternoon, our trusty outboard quit, forcing me to row, against the current (fortunately not running too hard at the time) to the marina dock.  I could not get it to start again - seemed to be flooding badly, leaking fuel all over the place.  When the tide had slacked off a bit more, I was able to row us back to the mother ship, where I decided the problem could wait until morning.

In the morning (our last day on board), I got an early start, while the tide was very slack, and proceeded to try and destroy the motor (pretty successful too).  My usual fix for this motor consists of taking the carburetor off and giving it a thorough cleaning, which I did.  Just to ensure it would run smoothly, I also replaced the spark plug with a brand new one.  Unfortunately, when I put the carb back onto the motor, I over-tightened the bolts and snapped the intake manifold in half, although I did not notice this until after many attempts to get the motor going.  It would start, then rev up real high and stall.  After some failed attempts at gluing the whole thing together, it became obvious that this motor is not going to run again without some serious attention, which I just didn't have the time for right then - we had to get to the bus terminal in order to buy our tickets for the next morning.

So, before the current got too strong, I rowed us to shore and we were able to get our ticket purchase made.  Once we were back at the marina, we had a long, leisurely lunch, primarily to wait for the next slack tide - there was absolutely no way I could have rowed that dinghy back to the boat when the current was really moving.  We arranged for Pedro, the night watchman, to pick us up from the boat the next morning at 7AM, so could get to the bus depot for our 8AM departure.

We finally met Tripp, the owner of the marina, who was absent when we were here a couple of weeks ago.  He was cooking up a special dinner (gumbo) for the cruisers.  We were able to persuade another cruising couple to pick us up and take us back, as we had already put our dinghy and useless outboard motor back on deck.  It was a great opportunely to catch up with other cruisers, some of whom we had met before, and others who were new to us.

Once back on the boat, Susanne persuaded me to check the bilge pumps before we went to bed, to make sure they were OK.  No reason they shouldn't be, as I know they were both fine when we left for Quito 2 weeks ago.  Inevitably, one of the them was not working at all.  I was able to track the problem down to a corroded ground wire and had it up and running in short order.  Good thing I didn't leave it till morning to check it out.

Thursday morning was the start of the usual epic journey back to Canada.  The basic steps were...

1) 6:30AM - Get a ride from Pedro, to the marina dock - say goodbye to Sine Timore.

2) 6:45AM - Take a local bus from the marina to the bus terminal (a 20 minute ride).

3) 8AM - Take the long-distance bus from Bahia to Quito (arriving at the Quito bus terminal around 3:30PM, a bit ahead of schedule).  Very scenic drive, although somewhat overcast most of the time.

Last view of the estuary, from the bus as we left Bahia

4) 3:35PM - Take a taxi to the Quito airport - a trip of about an hour.  We had hoped that this trip might take longer as we had a long wait for our flight once we got to the airport, but in spite of rush-hour traffic, our taxi driver found some short-cuts that really worked.

5) 11:30PM - Overnight flight to Atlanta (5-1/2 hours).  Arrive around 7AM, clear into the US, re-check in our luggage and re-clear security.  Take a train from terminal F to terminal A (this is a very big airport).

6) 8:35AM - Flight to Minneapolis (3-1/2 hours).  Arrive around noon.

7) 1:35PM - Flight to Edmonton (2-1/2 hours).  Arrive around 1:30PM.  Took the opportunity to grab our first Tim Horton's coffee and bagel, while we waited for the next airport shuttle - the Edmonton airport is a long way out of town.

8) 2:30PM - Shuttle bus from Edmonton airport to the Ramada hotel in Edmonton, where Susanne's mother kindly met us to take us to her home, where we were in bed by 6PM and slept for at least 12 hours straight.

What are we going to do now?  We have absolutely no idea!

{GMST}53|35.3868|N|113|32.3568|W|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada{GEND}