From Ecuador to Peru

Welcome to our travel blog! We hope to entertain you and also to give some info to those travelling the same itinerary :) This time we are travelling to Peru and Bolivia for about a month, departing from Ecuador. 

The first part of our journey was getting from Quito, Ecuador to Huaraz, Peru. We were not interested in visiting the coast of Peru, we just wanted to get to Huaraz on the Cordillera Blanca part of the Andes as quickly as possible. This is how we made it :) (with pictures)

Tuesday, 27.03.2012

QUITO-LOJA

Bus company: Viajeros

Price: 14.20 USD
Departure from south Quito (Quitumbe bus station) at  4.30pm
Arrival to Loja at 4.30am the next day (12hrs journey)

• It was not a direct bus (Trans. Loja has one departing at 7pm but costs USD17 and we are "poor"... :D ) , so it made stops in various cities in Ecuador to pick up more passengers. 

• Interesting stop for dinner in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where we had a chicken so hard it probably lived 100 years before ending up in our plate :)  

• The whole journey we had to watch/listen to the movies they played on the bus at super high volume, including a Stallone movie that was maybe even older than the chicken
• When they run out of action/horror movies, the driver delighted us with folkloric music (i.e. a woman sending her ex boyfriend to hell). Lovely.
• Once in Loja, we had breakfast at a restaurant inside the bus station to fill 2.5 hours of waiting time until the next bus. Breakfast was crap, but we had the chance to improvise a phone/laptop recharging station using the restaurants wall sockets ;) 

 Wednesday, 28.03.2012

LOJA - PIURA (Crossing the boarder)

Bus company: Transportes Loja

Price: 10 USD
Departure from Loja bus station at  7am (only other option was leaving at 11pm)
Arrival to Piura at 4.15pm (9hrs journey)

• After a short breakfast stop at a small village called Catamayo, we travelled to Macarà, a small village set in a tropical environment where heat and humidity started to be unbearable.
•  Just after this town (about 12.30pm) we got to the boarder where we had to get down the bus and get the exit/entry stamps on our passports. In the meanwhile, the bus waited on the other side. We were finally in Peru!

• From here, it was a very hot journey through a semi-desertic part of Peru. We passed through a town called "Sullana", which we agreed to rename "the smelliest and most horrible city in the world", after seeing and smelling all the tons of rubbish left on the sides of the roads (and about everywhere). Not a nice first impression of Peru :( Transport in Sullana (and most places in North Peru) was via taxi-moto. 

• After Sullana, we finally got to Piura, which is not what you call an interesting city, but it was rather clean and more importantly, with all services like restaurants, shops etc. We decided to stop here for a few hours and travel to the next city by night bus, so we had lunch & dinner at a Piuran version of McDonalds (called Bembos on Ayacucho street, with free wifi) and got a crappy hostel nearby for 20 soles just to leave our luggage and have a shower.

• The most interesting part of Piura was the traffic and especially the taxis...they use the car horns literally every second and they never ever give way to pedestrians, not even when pedestrian light is green! :S Taxi fares are 3 soles per ride. (just over $1)

PIURA - CHIMBOTE

Bus company: Ittsa, semi-cama
Price: 35 soles (=$13.50)
Departure from Piura (Ittsa station) at  11pm
Arrival to Chimbote at 7am the next day (8hrs journey) 

• Night buses in Peru are amazing: this was a semi-cama, which means you can bring the seat back down 145° and lift the leg rest, but there are also other buses where the seat goes down to become a mini-bed. After the bad night on Quito-Loja bus, this was a great chance to get a good night sleep, which we happily did :) 

• The only thing we don't like about Peru transport system is that in most cities each bus company has its own station, which means that if you change bus company you have to travel from one to the other. It was nice to find out, though, that all bus companies stop at the same station in Chimbote, so we could stay there for 1.5 hr gap between our buses and even drop our luggage at the bus company office. 

• Chimbote is the biggest fishing harbor in Peru and they have a big fish industry...the smell is quite strong, but not unbearable. This area is still semi-desertic and very dusty!

Thursday, 29.03.2012

CHIMBOTE-HUARAZ via Cañon del Pato

Bus company: Yungay
Price: 25 soles (=$9.50)
Departure from Chimbote at  8.30am (only time for this service)
Arrival to Huaraz at 5.30pm (9hrs journey) 

• This was the most interesting bus ride of all. It is possible to reach Huaraz with a faster bus, but we decided instead for this service, which takes you through an amazing canyon. The road is mostly unpaved and most of the time the bus travels deep inside the canyon, alongside a river. Sometimes the bus was so close to the edge that we felt we would fall into the river, but it was indeed a great experience, those rocky mountains were huge!! The best choice is sitting on the left side of the bus.

• The weather was extremely hot and the bus stopped at various points to pick up or drop people where you would think nobody (aside maybe a coyote!!) could ever live. 

• We stopped for lunch at a restaurant inside the canyon where we had a homemade chicken soup and where a nice Peruvian man offered us a glass of Inka-Cola, the most loved drink in Peru which tastes a bit like bubblegum.

• Towards the end, the bus reaches the Andes where the air is colder and the mountains are green. It was quite cloudy, however we managed to take a glimpse of Huascaran snowcapped summit. And we finally reached our first destination: Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca! Time to find a real bed to sleep in, a hot shower and some demanding trekking! :)