Day 9 – Crossing the border for real – Pictures to come

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After about 4 hours waiting trying to sleep lying on the hard wooden benches, a packed hot bus arrives and we board, our seats are occupied by some large sleeping men, so thinking it was best to leave sleeping dogs lie, we sit in another two seats, only to have the owners of those seats board just behind us. The ticket collector told these people to sit elsewhere (I guess cause they did after discussion). We continue to the border after a while we stop at this place…not knowing what to do we get off…everyone is lining up….is this the border? We go across the road to where they are lining up and a blonde girl is walking back hoping she speaks English we asked her is this the border she says yes and explained we need to fill out a document get our passports stamped to exit Ecuador, the bus will then drive about 2km and stop at the Peru cheek point where we do the same but get into Peru. We line yup fill out the form our passports are stamped we get back on the bus; it is still about 3.30 am the place is dark. The bus then drove through a frightening area which can best be described as 20 times worse than a mad max movie, and I even saw a hotel that looked exactly like the hotel from Quentin Tarrantino's Dusk til Dawn, I am sure this is where he got the inspiration for the movie and hotel. There is no way I would have enjoyed a walk through here in daylight! We get to the next stop on the Peruvian side and a man in plain clothes directs us to an area to fill out our form, he helps us greatly. He pushes us into the line, we get our passports stamped to enter Peru and go to get on the bus…he asks for money I gladly give him a handful of American coins, which he is happy with (about $4). The bus then drives onto Piura.
Overall the bus trip took 13 hours on the bus and a 4 hour wait. We got off the bus and were immediately accoste3d by a taxi driver. We asked him to take us to the busses to Lima. He first drove us to a money exchange service which gave us a fair rate. He then dropped us off at the Lima bus area. The first bus station we asked wanted to charge us 150s each to get to Lima. Knowing this expensive we shopped around and eventually got a ticket for 70s each (about 30$US). But all the buses leave at 5 to 7 pm, so another 6 hour wait for the bus. Piura is an awful desert dirty, filthy, place; I wouldn’t leave my dog there for a second. We waited the whole time in the bus agent who tried to charge 150s each (they had the nicest waiting room, only dodgy restaurants so we ate <XX>, that is all we ate that day (in fact at this stage I had only had two good meals and two good breakfasts since entering South America, I have only eaten yoghurt, and plantain (similar to Banana) chips (Chittles) since getting here, the food never looks good so that quenched my appetite.
After a 15 hour ride through desert and being squashed because the 2 young men in the seat in front had their seat pushed way back leaving barely enough room for our legs between our and their seats, we got to a disgustingly dusty and filthy bus station in the bad end of town. You could tell this by all the razor wire and broken bottles concreted in top of every wall which surrounded a box (presumable a home).

Tired and filthy and hungry we boarded another bus to the Flores area of Lima. Someone smiled down upon us this day because our hostel was in a very clean and lovely part of town with Maccas, Starbucks and dept stores all around. We showered had a nice breakfast (at midday) changed, organised for our washing to be done (I had the same clothes on the last 4 days; my shops had been on my feet the last 2 days). The hostel is Pariwana Hostel. We then went for a quick walk, and had a sleep.

Waiting to pick Kelli form the Airport.

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