Cuenca and around
So we finally leave Peru, after nearly two months here – have already made a ‘side trip’ to Trujillo, we don’t feel the need to stay here again, so after our night bus pulls in at 5.30am, we head straight to another bus company to catch a bus to Piura (one anyoying thing about Peru, apart from near the Bolivian border, there hasn’t been a main bus terminal. Instead you have to traipse round all the different companies offices, which are generally not in the nicest part of town).
Unfortunately the next bus wasn’t until 10.30am and so we had a bit of time to kill in Trujillo – which proved quite difficult early on a Sunday morning, nothing was open! We eventually found the market, which was full of very busy fruit juice stalls so managed to have some breakfast, but it wasn’t the nice relaxing breakfast over a decent cup of coffee we where hoping for. Boliva, Peru and also now Ecuador don’t do nice coffee unless you end up in a gringo place. The standard coffee comes in a jar, and looks like soy sauce on the table, you then top it up with desired quantities of hot water and milk, it was a novelty at first, but we find ourselves craving a decent cup every now and again!
From Trujillo we headed to Piura and bought ourselves a night bus ticket over the Peruvian border to Loja, Ecuador. Piura was surprisingly pleasant and we will be passing through again on our hop from Guayaquil to Lima in order to catch our Mexico flight, so we didn’t feel the need to stay here for an extra night.
Leaving Peru was painless and at 0.36 we walked across a bridge to the Ecuadorian post. All was fine, a strange stamp – not a stamp at all but out passport was passed through a printer and a ‘stamp’ printed into our passports, so back on the bus we got. 10 minutes later, and there was a bit of an uproar as the border was closed, until 3.30/4am, with some passengers still waiting to be processed. The friendly immigration guy then got back on our bus to check documents – he stank of alcohol and we started to worry that our visa/entrance stamp won’t stand up to border formalities when trying to leave the country.
One benefit of our enforced stop at the border is that we managed to get some sleep, with the worry of what was going on. We never did find out, but we eventually pulled into Loja at 8.30am, half relieved that it wasn’t the intended 5.30! We decided not to stay in Loja and instead caught our last bus to Vilcabamba, arriving at 10.30am – 37 hours after leaving Huaraz.
Vilcabamba proved to be a lovely place to recover from our mamoth bus journey and we were very lazy, enjoying the warm sun, made a change from the mountains. It was also surprisingly green, having spent most of our time from Trujillo to the border driving trhough desert. Kind of reminds me of the UK, green hills and fields – only the hills are slightly higher and hillier than at home!
From Vilcabamba we headed to Cuenca, a lovely colonial town in the highlands of Ecuador and we have enjoyed wandering around town soaking up the atmosphere and sampling the many cakes and ice creams its cafes have to offer!
From Vilcabamba we took a day trip to Ingapirca, Ecuadors inca ruins to visit. We arrived, after a two hour bus journey and did think “is that it?” but the site, although very small, is different from anything we’ve seen in Peru. The main temple is oval, the Incas only built a couple of oval buildings, so that is novel in itself, also the stone used is a very different colour – it looks yellow from a distance but has a green tinge the closer you get. We are pleased we went, but are also glad that we didn’t make a big effort to get there as it would’ve been disappointing.
Tags: Cuenca, Ecuador, Ingapirca, Travel, Vilcabamba
Jenni
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