We’re in Peru, baby! Though at the moment we’re just hovering around feeling nostalgic for Ecuador, and gradually realising that it is not for its cities that Peru is popular. Also, first impressions were somewhat tainted by our struggle to get here in the first place.
Our last days in Ecuador were fairly unspectacular… tore ourselves away from Cuenca at last and made for Loja, famous for its easy access to Peru and little else. We explored a surprisingly complex park, and marvelled at the rather grandiose gate to the city.
Then, bored, we took a day trip to Vilcabamba, a village in the mountains to the south, and popular with hiker-types who like to spend their evenings dangling from a hammock in the trees listening to birdsong. I imagine that’s the way Vilcabamba was meant to be experienced, rather than trawling the dusty roads feeling spooked at the silence.
The silence was wonderful though. And we did go for a nice walk, along a paved but deserted country road, relishing the ability to breathe without worrying about the resulting poisons working their way through our bodies, and not needing to scream above the noise of engines. Still, we might have gotten more out of it if we’d stayed in a cabin in the cloud forest and adopted horses.
Then, chomping at the bit and biting the bullet (something like that – sounds very uncomfortable, but I suppose it was), we bought tickets to Piura, Peru, and crawled out of bed and to the bus station at 6am the next day.
And it was all going well, if a little blearily, and far slower than we would have liked, but onward nonetheless. Until we hit the Ecuadorean border town of Macara, at which point we were told that buses had suddenly been forbidden from crossing the border, and were unceremoniously handed $3 each to find our own way across.
(I still have no idea why, although a Peruvian man at immigration gestured something about being shot…?) So I swore at everything for a while. Then we latched onto some other similarly lost travellers, some of whom were thankfully more proficient in Spanish than we are, and on we went, a troupe of miserable-looking foreigners with huge backpacks and little clue.
We somehow negotiated space on a crowded pick-up truck from Macara to the border, then it was a short walk across the actual border, a few minutes on border formalities which were a breeze in comparison (to think that’s what I’d been worried about! I’d laugh but it’s still too soon), a long uncomfortable and overpriced taxi to the nearest town of Sullana, and then an even more uncomfortable and overpriced bus to Piura. At last.
So as I say, first impressions not too flattering. Because we’re out of the Andes and near the coast for the first time, everything’s looking a bit more scorched and flat and unattractive. But I am looking forward to getting to the mountains and Inca ruins and stuff.
For the sake of anyone else planning this route… it really shouldn’t have been this difficult. Shootings notwithstanding, there is a direct bus from Loja in Ecuador to Piura in Peru, with Transportes Loja – it should leave at 7am and take 8 hours, though it’s often a lot longer. As with any border crossing, whatever your route, aim to start as early in the day as possible.
