We had to walk a lot, not necessarilly to the exit but further because we needed to go where the roads splits South. Someone stopped while walking but he was going to San Vicente.I asked if he could take us to the turn off; he agreed. About 30 minutes later we were on our way South with an agricultural engineer that was going to Portoviejo. He left us in the turnoff to Crucita. There, we waited like 5 minutes and we were going to Manta. We were stuck in the entrance of the city for about an hour (or more) until someone took us to what he thought it was a good place to hitch. As usual when someone that doesn't hitch takes to a "better" spot, it turns out that it wasn't. This wasn't the exception. We had no idea where the hell were we, we just knew we were still far from the exit of town. We were told that we were 20 minutes away from the exit. By car, or maybe 2 hours walking. We had no idea what bus to take, people were not being nice. We hitched from the outskirts to inside the city, might work the other way around? After a while I saw a police car so I asked them for help. The result: fourth time hitchhiking a police car. They took us to the exit of town and I think it was more than 20 minutes away. Once there, we were still in a not so good spot. We were in front of a shop so cars were blocking us constantly. On the other hand it was a good spot because Paula wasn't feeling very good due to heat and sun.
After more than an hour later we found a ride to the entrance to San Mateo. We were there until 16:45 when we started to walk towards town. The police turned us down when we asked if we could sleep in the station. Instead, they recommended us to go to San Lorenzo where some Italian missionaries (I think they are missionaries) could take us for the night and might even give us some food.
We had to take a bus. When we got to San Lorenzo and asked a girl about the Italians, she told us that they were going to La Sierra... shite. She said "wait, I might be able to help you". We stayed with her and her family for the night. San Lorenzo is a small fishing village without a police or firestation. Since most people have to get up really early to earn their living everything is done not very late.
In the morning we were still waking up when the woman came running and screaming that her uncle might had drowned, because the rescue team still haven't found his body. My condolences goes to the family.
As for the Italians, I think no one really knew where they really were. First we were told that they were in the mountains and they should be back the following day. Someone else said the following Sunday (we were on a Tuesday). Finally, someone else said that they were back in Italy and will be back in 6 months.
