The survivors of the bus crash in Ecuador that killed five Britons spoke of their ordeal yesterday, as the country’s President offered to help to fly the bodies back to Britain.

Exhausted and wiping away tears, the young British tourists who were with their friends when they died less than 48 hours earlier said that they missed them but would visit the country again if given a chance.

“We’ve been helping each other through it,” said Richard Winter, 37, from Basingstoke. “We’re hoping to leave tomorrow and get back to our families. But that doesn’t mean we won’t come back to Ecuador. We’ve been treated really well. All the people here have been terrific. We miss our friends. We were only with them two weeks, but we were really close.”

Asked if he would have embarked on his holiday if he had known the risks, Mr Winter replied: “Without a doubt.” The other members of the adventure tour group nodded in agreement. “To live is to live with risk. You can’t just lock yourself away for ever.”

Mr Winter was speaking at a press conference at an hotel in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. Another seven members of the group joined him, while four remained in hospital, with painful but non-life-threatening injuries.

Earlier in the day Katherine Heaney, 23, who was visiting the South American country on a break after graduation, said from her hospital bed in Quito that it was difficult to think of the five victims: Sarah Howard, a 26-year-old freelance tour guide, Rebecca Logie, Elizabeth Pincock, and Emily Sadler, all 19-year-old gap-year students, and Indira Swann, an 18-year-old student also on a gap year.

“One moment we were on the bus watching a movie,” said Ms Heaney, who suffered a sprained neck, a black eye and cuts to her face. “After that, everything went dark. I don’t really want to say anything about what I remember happening next, but I’m sure you can imagine.”

The drivers of the bus and the lorry that crashed into it are being sought by police for questioning. Detectives are also looking for a man whom they think was a passenger in the lorry. The crash happened at dusk on Saturday, near the end of an eight-hour drive southwest from Quito to the fishing town of Puerto López, where the group was due to build sanitation and other facilities for a crèche.

The coach had been booked by the British gap-year tour company VentureCo. The vehicle, operated by a firm called Reina del Camino, had reached Sancan, half an hour from its destination, when a lorry carrying a load of sand crashed into its side at about 7.30pm local time on Saturday.

All of the survivors are expected to return to Britain today.

The bodies of the five victims are thought to be on their way from the coastal town of Manta to Quito. From there, they will also be flown home.

Sarah Martin, 18, from Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, said that no one had felt as though the bus was being driven recklessly before the accident.

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