...on the highway to (nearly) the middle of the world

You get immune to bus drivers slamming on the brakes so the crash came as a big shock.
I had already been propelled forward when the driver swerved wildly - first left, then right - before the shunt sent me on another lurch.
Unfortunately for me, I´d left my seat upright to support my bad back. The lady in front had hers reclined, meaning it was at the perfect height to connect sharply with my Adam´s apple.
In the first instance, however, my main concern was the harsh scraping noise passing down the side of the bus where I was seated.
I was surprised to find the window intact and, once the bus shuddered to a halt and The One With The Common Sense and I had checked on each other, we sat in stunned silence.
As the driver´s assistant raced forward to smash his way out at the front, the mind raced through a number of unpleasant thoughts.
Was the driver okay? Was anything else about to hit us? Were the fumes hanging in the air from the engine, the brakes or a more sinister indication of fire?
Perhaps the worst aspect was that all the curtains on the night bus were closed - including those separating the driver´s cabin at the front - so it was hard to tell what was going on.
However, one resourceful bloke - another bus company employee, we think - checked out what was going on up front and reassured everyone that all was okay.
Welcome to Ecuador.

Our driver had swerved to avoid a bus braking sharply in front, only to find himself head-on with a car and so moved back with no time to miss the bus, it transpired.
However, it was to be getting on for two hours before we could get off the stricken vehicle because the seriously buckled door wasn´t safe to clamber through.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, we were left with only emergency lighting and - without the air-con - a very breathless atmosphere.
Paramedics arrived after perhaps 15 minutes but fortunately nobody was hurt apart from one little girl who got a bump on the head.
The biggest pain was some of the old-enough-to-know-better women who insisted on making the situation more uncomfortable for everyone by crowding around the front and fussing about.
If they had sat still by the window, they would have been a lot cooler than by rushing back and forth, shouting about how hot they were.
As a result, the poor lady in front started to panicking to the extent she was reduced to tears and The One With The Common Sense got a serious cob on with three rotund women who insisted on hovering around her seat.
One even tried the old chestnut: "There are children in here. It´s too hot for them," which roughly translated as: "I´m a bit uncomfortable. Help me quickly. Me, me, me, me, me."
Inevitably, it took the fire brigade to calm things down properly, getting the ladies hot under-the-collar in a different way and lightening The One With The Common Sense´s mood considerably.
They all just looked like fat old blokes to me, but then I´m not one to get excited about fluoroescent pants and helmets.
It still took them an inordinately long time to get us out, with the help of a pneumatic jack and a huge circular saw.
The mood among the waiting passengers was lightened when the resourceful man from earlier removed one of the skylights so a paramedic could climb onto the roof to be handed a baby who needed a bit of fresh air.
It all ended in quite a dignified fashion with the passengers being lifted - women and children first (but only once the firemen had shamed a couple of middle-aged blokes) - through the shattered door frame by two burly fire officers.
The front-left corner of the bus was pretty badly stoved in - and it was missing its windscreen - but we were certainly glad to be travelling in a proper bus and not the minibuses that ferry people along many routes.
I´m not sure I´d have been writing this blog just now.

It might not have been so bad had we been near our destination - Quito.
However, we were only an hour from the Peruvian border and so had another eight hours on a replacement bus to look forward to.
It had already been a tough journey.
Firstly, a rickety bus from the seaside town of Mancora (a disappointment due to its lack of surf) had left us at Ecuadorian immigration.
Then the bus staff had packed the passengers into taxis back to the town centre we´d just left to get into a variety of onward buses.
We nearly missed ours because the cabbie dropped us at the wrong depot. (Though maybe that would have been preferable).
To add insult to injury, when we finally arrived in Quito, there had been a landslide which meant the taxi cost a fortune and took much longer than it would have done ordinarily.
I then spent our first day in the capital in bed, with my back in serious pain, my stomach badly upset, my throat sore from the crash impact, and the makings of a cold.

Finally feeling well enough to confront the world, it seemed reasonable that we should go straight to its heart.
It´s not every day you get to straddle the equator, which lies just outside Quito, so we decided to head to the Middle of the World Museum.
After a fairly complicated journey on the city´s public transport system - broken by visits to cafes to spend a centavo or two - we found ourselves at the site.
After forking out for entry, we found ourselves in some sort of horrific theme park village being pestered every four paces by people trying to drag us into cafes or souvenir shops.
We watched some entertaining enough traditional dancing in the square but that seemed to have little to do with the equator itself and so we pressed on to the globe-topped monument marking 0 deg latitude.
Unfortunately, the point was measured inaccurately years ago by the French (zut alors, imbeciles) and the massive tourist infrastructure is 250 yards away from the actual ecuator.
So, we wandered up the road to find a rival, GPS-measured - and much more interesting - museum.
There, we watched water rush down a plughole without circling anti-clockwise, as it does in the northern hemisphere, or clockwise, as down under.
There was another experiment involving balancing an egg on the head of a nail which is, apparently, easier on the equator. Someone more intelligent than me will have to explain that one.
We were also encouraged to feel how centrifugal forces make it difficult to walk along the line of the equator with your eyes closed and arms outstretched - though I seriously doubt my ability to manage that anywhere in the world.
(Except maybe after a few sherbets, when I can do just about anything.)
It was all very entertaining and included some displays about indigenous life which included recreations of typical homes, some deadly jungle animals and a shrunken head.
And not a cafe hawker in sight. What more could you ask for?

Quito seems like a really pleasant city but now it´s time for an overnight bus journey through winding mountainous terrain to the jungle... can´t wait for that one.