Ecuador to Peru

Our last night in Banos was spent saying goodbye to our friend Lori who flew back to New York the next day!

Now this meal may be the cause of the 2 day delay, as Sarah got food poisoning the day after me....or was it a virus??? We may never know! 

Well after 2 full days on buses from Banos (Ecuador) to Chiclayo (Peru) we are finally here!!! Omg what a few days of travel (and amazing scenery). We covered almost 500 miles, you need to bear in mind were driving over 4000 meter mountains here, in a massive bus not flying down the M4 at 90 mph!!!

Our route in Green

Views from the bus window:

We started off on Sunday morning at 8.30 running with our bags to get the bus from Banos to a town called Riobamba, where we had to change buses and get on another bus to the second largest city in Ecuador Cuenca (A total of 8 hours). These buses were pretty cheap at $9 per person all the way.

Now, normally we would stop off in Cuenca as it was meant to be a nice city and another of those Unesco World Heritige sites!! However we were so sick of Ecuador we decided to book another bus to Loja in the far south without too much thought (another 6 hours away) $7.50 per person.

We arrived in Loja at 10.20pm, Loja is a boarder city effectively to Peru for a tourist. We had this crazy idea that it would be a laugh to catch the 11 pm overnight bus to Peru and just do the entire journey in 1 day! 24 hours of buses. We ran to the ticket office to book onto the overnight bus to Peru.... but unfortunately it was full!!... Bad news....We had to catch the 7am the next day.

So we wondered over the road to the hostel/hotel to bed down for 6 hours until the next bus left at 7am.

We woke early the next morning to be greeted by pouring rain a fitting end to our time in Ecuador! We grabbed some fruit and humitas from the bus terminal and hopped onto the bus for what was set to be another long day!! The journey to Piura in Peru was to last 9 - 10 hours and took us through the dreaded Peruvian / Ecuadorian boarder control! 

While traveling through South America a constant topic for conversation is the pain that border crossings pose. You hear regular horror stories of buses stuck there for hours at night, people left at the crossing due to numbers of reasons. Even some friends thrown in prison for 24 hours due to drugs being found on the buses!

About 2 hours in to the journey we made friends with a Peruvian man after offering him some hand sanitizer after he went to the Bano (so he took a shine to Sarah after that). So from that point onwards he helped us with everything, including navigating our way through the Ecuador / Peru boarder- bless him. As he was a local he knew exactly what to do and I think he saved us about $10-$20.

Normally if tourists don't have their immigration card you normally fill out on the plane and get stamped at immigration they charge you as much as they feel is appropriate at the time, this is South America remember! However on this occasion the immigration agent just handed our Peruvian friend two new cards to fill out. So moral of the story keep that slip of paper you get at immigration it’s important!

The remainder of the process was straightforward if not a little confusing but our new found friend was there to assist!

After a further 3 hours on the bus driving through the Peruvian desert we arrived in Puira at 4.30pm. By this time we had already mapped out with his help where we would go and where not to go (Piura was a no go, as he said it was dangerous). So he helped us find all the bus companies in the city to take us to our next destination which was Chiclayo, another 3 hours away!

We boarded a big shiny bus at 5.45pm that resembled the buses we were used to in Argentina a welcome relief after some basic bus rides in Ecuador. It even had reclining seats, mini tables and tv's (hell yes I like Peru's buses) and it arrived on time at 8.45pm.

Unfortunately the day was not over!!!

Our next challenge was to find accommodation, so we chatted to a few French guys and walked with them to their hotel (they were carrying massive surfboards). It looked nice but was a little too central and a bit too expensive for our budget so we grabbed a taxi and asked for another hostel.

Unfortunately it was full, and so was the next one we went to. Oh dear you can see where this was going….

I started to think we would have to go back to the expensive one, but we found a little gem called Hostal Amigo's! Great place and very friendly.

James was so hungry at this point we had to dump our bags immediately he demanded, he announced and I quote “I could eat my own penis in a hot dog bun” So we headed out to avoid that happening and found a restaurant where he had super size pizza for £3, and I had a banana milkshake!... 

So this is where we are today, there are amazing pre Inca ruins around here so we are going off to a couple of museums tomorrow which is really exciting!! I love Peru already!!!! The people are amazing, the food is better and everything feels so much happier!!!