| May 12, 2006 - Heading north in a hurry
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 | | show all 4 | | Crossing back into Ecuador | | Looking back at Peru, This pic look familiar? (November) | | Some road issue on the way to Loja | | |
| To start this one off, I will again copy from an email I wrote while in Lima the day these bus rides started:
"Now a quick update. After 26 hours I got to Lima today at about 10am. At 7pm tonight I have 14 hours to Piura in the north (where i was in November), and about 1 hour after arriving there I have that same original first bus ride of my trip, 8 hours back into Ecuador to Loja. Crazy no? But I'd rather rush through Peru and get back to Ecuador to do more there. From Loja I either go south 1.5 hours to a town called Vilcabamba which is supposed to be real nice. Or I head on 6 hours back to Cuenca to spend a few days. Lots of bus time, but I just traded a book to get "Angels & Demons" (Dan Brown) which should help, and they show lots of movies, my iPod is working, and I have more over the counter Diazepam from Bolivia. So I'll be ok. You'll here from me again in Ecuador"
And that is more or less how things went at the start. I left Lima at 7pm, and was immediately served a nice hot meal of chicken wings and rice. They showed "Cellular" so I watched that, and that had a very nice sleep.
I was a little nervous about getting into Piura on time, because I had already called and reserved my ticket from Lima, and a window seat #8. As we approached I had no way of knowing how close we were, since Piura is a small town anyway, and the whole trip there is through an empty desert. So I started to get worried as we finally pulled in about an hour late at 9:30am, the exact time my bus was supposed to be leaving there for Ecuador. Sometimes slow South American time can be your friend, and I was praying for it. I got off the bus first, got my pack and cabbed it 4 blocks to the Transportes Loja station, and the bus wasn't even loaded yet. I shoulda known. The bus left at 10am, and I didn't get my seat #8, but its all good.
Or was all good, until I got to the border in the afternoon. This was my 13th and last border crossing of the whole trip. Here's what happened. When I initially left Ecuador in Novermber it was on this exact route, using Transportes Loja to go from Loja in Ecuador, crossing the border at Macara, then contuin on to Piura in Peru. Apparently when I left that day the computer system was down on the Ecuadorian side in Macara, so they had no record of me ever leaving the country. This could have been a problem since I only had a 90-day visa there, and I ws going on 8 months at this point. But I had my passport with all the stamps to prove my travels, and of course I was COMING from Peru, so I could not have still been in Ecuador. They understood, and took some photocopies of all my stamps. I explained that I had a flight in 2 weeks and didn't want any trouble on my departure day, but they promised me that they would send my info on to Quito. I had nothing to worry about and didn't even need to check that it happened, they would do it. Yeah right, how reassuring. I decided I'd double check anyway.
Got back on the bus and finished the final 3 hours to Loja. At the point I was in groove. It was late, but there was no point staying in Loja, and I had gotten really into Angels & Demons. So I bought a ticket for the next bus going on to Vilcabamba. I had about 2 hours to kill in Loja, for which I walked around and got some food, and then was on my way. I had reached Vilcabamba by Friday night, having left La Paz on Wednesday morning. Its quite a feat. About 50 hours of travel in about 62 hours of real time. I would stay Vilcabamba for a few days. |
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