Transportation

Getting around (or watching others do the same) can be pretty funny here. The two travel concepts here that diverge most from ours are that there is no maximum occupancy for any vehicle and that no vehicle is designed to carry just one person. You might think this meant that there are strange, enlarged cars and weird motorcycles here, but that's not really the case (well, there are some interesting motorcycle derivatives, but I'll get there in a minute). Really, people here are just more creative/daring in their loading techniques.

I've seen lots of bicycles with little wooden seats added to the bar in front of the normal one, which serve both for extra capacity and to let little guys reach the peddles. Most of them also have pegs on the axles for standing passengers, and it's not uncommon to see three people on one bike -- one driving, one on the handlebars or extra seat, and one standing on the back. Motorcycles, in comparison, offer much more room, and are the ride of choice for small families. The record so far is 5 on a motorcycle, but at this point I wouldn't be too surprised to see a 6th squeezed in somewhere. Usually it'll be a dad with a small kid in front of him and a smaller one packed between him and mom on the back.

The same concept applies to cars. One restaurant owner Peter and I were talking to this week was showing us an old car he was restoring (it had a honda engine in it, but no marks on the outside, and I couldn't tell what it might have been. It had to have been a good 50 years old at least.) and explained that what he really liked about it was that even though it was pretty small, it had a lot of room. "It fits eight people! Three in the front here, and five in the back! I take my whole family to church in it." Despite the cramming of the insides, though, it's not common to see the exteriors loaded down with passengers and cargo like you see in pictures from other places. That probably wouldn't be safe. Cars really aren't very common here anyway. Most vehicles you'll see will be cargo trucks and buses, with the occasional pickup and lots of bikes and motos (all of which, despite the machismo attitudes of their riders, have at most a 200cc motor). Maybe the most common, though, is the mototaxi.

These usually use the front half of a motorcycle attached to a rickshaw kind of covered seat (3-5 person capacity) with a little cargo area in back (3-4 people once again for large parties). Some of them have the front wheel of the cycle replaced with a big cargo bin, but those are usually for carrying goods to market. The weird thing is that mototaxis are everywhere. There are 3 or 4 on the quietest streets at all times, and loads around the market or fish market on the beach -- more than you would think there would ever need to be in a town this size. But people use them all the time. They're great if you have something big or heavy to carry, but the definitions of "too big" or "too heavy" to carry. as well as that of "too far," are vastly different to Ecuadorians. For example, if one needed to transport a small dive bag with a couple of wetsuits and pairs of fins the 4 or 5 blocks to the boat, an American volunteer wouldn't think of hiring a taxi, while an Ecuadorian wouldn't usually consider walking. Just one of the many wonders of foreign travel, I guess.