| Nov 6, 2005 - Piura, Peru
| (click to enlarge)
 | | Crossing the international bridge |
| I swear I'll get better at this. But for now, here's how the day went...
Woke up around 6am to get my stuff together and get to the bus station early enough for my ticket. This bus is one trip without a transfer that take you to the Ecaudor/Peru border at Macara, waits for you to finish custmos and walk across the international bridge, adn then continue on to Piura, Peru. It leaves 3 times a day, and take about 8 hours. Turns out the 7am bus was cancelled, not too sure why, maybe because it was Sunday. Or maybe when she told me "there is no bus", it was just her way of saying all the seats were full. I've found that not only do I feel stupider when communicating in Spanish, but at other times even when I can completely understand people, I have the ability to make THEM stupider while trying to simplify things for me. Anyway, I had to take another taxi back to my hostal, and went back to sleep for a couple hours. Walked around, killed time, and got breakfast (which in Loja meant rice, fried pieces of steak, and salad). Finally got on the bus at 1pm, and got into Piura around 9pm. Sat next to a French person on the way there, coincidentally assigned to those seats, but she didn't speak Enlgish so I was still practicing my Spanish the whole way. And wow, I had no idea that the entire north of Peru is one giant desert! It doesn't compare to the mountain scenery that I've seen, but spectacular nonetheless.
Got to Piura, which I have not heard great things about, and was debating taking an overnight bus to Trujillo right then, or crashing for the night and leaving early in the morning. Opted for the bed, but in the cab on the way to the hostal (which is how they spell it in Spanish, so I'm gonna switch back and forth) my driver told me that there were no buses the next day until the afternoon. So I changed my mind, and paid for yet another cab fare back to the stretch of raod with all the bus companies. They all had buses leaving around 11pm, and yet were all magically full. However, though there are no direct buses to Trujillo until the afternoon, I was able to purchase 2 connecting tickets from the same company that would have me leaving at 7am.
And then, I took another taxi back to the same hostel. I went out for a quick and small bite to eat (some shredded chicken on a roll), bought 2 mangoes for my breakfat the next day, and went to sleep. |
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