Ecuador, leg space and stupid me

Hi Guys

Let me start at the back. At the moment we are in beautiful and tranquille Cuenca in the Ecuadorian high-land. Having had the marvelous idea to put my memory card with my pictures on it, into a card reader, so that the transmition would be faster, I exactly did that... well, at least I thought I did. The card reader was no card reader but an ordanary floppy drive. The result was that the card was stuck. So, the guy at cyber was so nice to switch off the pc and hit once or twice and tata the thing was out... My operation with a mini maglite and Alice's army knive was useless.
Ok, lets go to legspace. The flight from Zurich to Madrid was quite uncomfy for me, as legspace was zero... well at least I thought that then. The collectivos in the Cusco area and the Peruvian Publicbuses were even narrower. In interregional buses the legspace is then better as on the flight to Madrid. So far so good. In Lima it got very tight, so that I was able to sit with the knees 45° in the air. However, yesterday in Guyaquil it was even better. I was only able to sit sideways. No one is as tall as I am on this continent.
Having mentioned once or twice now, that we are in Ecuador, let me resume this a bit. Three days ago we passed the border. We took an international coach from Peru to Ecuador. Well, it went perfect until we passed all boarder patrols. Then our servicio directo started to pick up everyone on the street... as ususal. and as usual we were worrying about our luggage. However everything went ok.
We then came to Guyaquil. Here you HAVE to take a taxi at night, even in the center. Everyone drives fast and even over red lights, in order not to get robbed. Therefore the roads are quite empty at night. Luckily we could stay at Alice's friend, so we were safe. We had some nice insider sight visiting by night with private car.
Ecuador is totally different to Peru. First I thought, that it even looks worse. However, everything seems organized. The cars on the street don't try to over run you all the time. And in contrast to Peru. Not the taxi or the bus finds you, but you have to find it!
Now, after a shaky 4h ride we are in Cuenca. Here everythings is so slow. Not one tout wanting to sell you something. And there are cafes... with wooden seats and no plastic chairs.

Well that's it from now.
Philippe