Ecuador to Peru: Crossing the Border and No Virgin Insight

Our plan was to leave Cuenca on Monday morning, head to Loja (a hub near the border) spend the night there, catch a bus on Tuesday to Piura(in Peru) and from there a night bus to Lima and then onto Ica in the south. Our plan would have us in Ica on Wednesday or Thursday. Well, Monday morning Justine woke up with a bit of a stomach problem...we figure a small case of food poisioning. Chris with his cast iron stomach worked on his journal and let Justine have a few more hours of sleep. This worked out in our favor as the bus that we were told left at 9am did not exist.

Arriving in Loja at around 4pm Justine soon discovered that there were only two buses a day that crossed the border (not what the LP says), and they were at 10:30pm and 11 pm. So after some discussion the decision to take the 10:30 bus was made. This meant no sleep or relaxation, and an EARLY morning border crossing. We whiled away the hours waiting for the 1030pm bus getting something to eat and then people watching and listening to Douglas Adams´"Life the Universe and Everything" on the Ipod.

10:30 arrived and we boarded the bus. The seats reclined slightly, and we were none to eager for the bus ride as it was scheduled to arrived in Piura at 7am. With a border crossing in about 5 hours, we quickly tried to get comfortable and get some sleep.

Cheesy Interlude:
AT this point, Chris´memory flashed to a CNN World presentation that we had watched earlier this week. It was a segment where travellers send in their questions and a reporter researches the information. The question was looking for which airline had the most leg room for passengers. It was reported that they would only look at coach class, as all first class had ample leg room. The results were that Virgin Airlines has the best leg room with 72cm. GAWD do we wish we had that!!

We were awakened at 2:30 in the morning to go through the proceedures of crossing the border. The process was relatively quick at that time of night, and we were back in the bus and on the road by just after 3am. With fewer passengers onboard, we chose to try sitting in different seats and sprawl across two seats each. This lasted until about 5am, when we began to stop for numerous locals on the side of the road heading off to work and kids heading off to school. Of course we spent the whole night rocked and lulled to sleep to the blaring tunes of yet another Spanish Rock-pop CD.

Now in Piura, we are killing time until our bus leaves at 6:15pm. The bus trip to Lima is 12 to 16 hours, but luckily for us, this is on a "plush" bus with Cruz Del Sur (with semi-cama seats, and dinner and breakfast supplied). Still, we are not really looking forward to more time on the bus. Especially considering that our plan is to immediatly turn around and get on a bus in Lima to Ica, another 4 hours!!.... Hopefully, hopefully only 52 hours of travelling in total and we will get there... hopefully.