A brief encounter with the law

We've spent the last few days in Guaranda - a small town located in the highlands.



It's not really a touristy town but we had to come here to visit the village of Salinas, further up the mountain!



Salinas is a village located high up in the mountains at an elevation of 3500 metres. Our plan was to catch the bus up there but we didn't know the exact location to catch the bus in Guaranda. We started looking for it in the main square but a local women there suggested to go to the main bus station as catching it in the square would be too complicated for us.



On our way there, some police officers stopped us and requested to see our passports. We were both cautious about this but figured it was OK as there were two of them in uniforms, one was a woman, and they had gotten out of a police truck.



So we showed them our passports. They enquired as to where we were going, informed us that the bus leaves from the square only. But requested us to get in their truck as they wanted to take some photos first (we didn't quite understand what they wanted to take a picture of). They told us they would get us to the bus afterwards and reassured it was all ok.



We hesitantly got into the truck and they drove to the police station. The woman officer jumped out with our passports, ran in and then returned to the truck quickly. She had grabbed her phone and used that as we drove onwards to take pictures of our passports.

Rather then taking us back into town, they drove us down the road towards Salinas hoping they'd overtake the necessary bus so we could get on board. It was actually quite pleasant in the end.



After it was clear they weren't going to find a bus on the drive, they dropped us off at the split in the road where one path is the road to Salinas and told us we can hail the bus.



The thing that topped the whole experience off is once we got out, the woman officer asked if she could have a photo with us!! I think we were the only tourists she had ever seen!!