The Bus Diaries

We should have finished this blog already while we were still on the road but better late then never. So here we go: As we mentioned before, after we returned from our amazing jungle trip, we stayed a couple more days in Quito before we headed further north towards Colombia. Our last stop in Ecuador was Otavalo, a small town famous for its market and bird rescue park. The market was HUGE, we have seen plenty of markets during our trip but this one was exceptional. The stalls spread all over the main square and into the adjacent streets and the street vendors offered all kinds of goods: crafts, jewelery, clothes, fabrics, wooden instruments, food, souvenirs. Everything. We did spend some money on souvenirs there but my heart still aches that I couldn't buy a hand-woven, ... read more

We arrived in the Ecuadorian capital after a nice and short bus ride which was a welcome change from the usual. Quito is after La Paz the second highest capital of the world at about 2800m and luckily we were still used to the high altitude and could enjoy the city a little bit more than La Paz. The main parts of the city are the historical center with lots of churches and museums and "new town" which is less touristy and more comercial with lots of restaurants and bars. Our hostel was at the edge of the historical center and we were quite in the middle of things. Our first goal in Quito was to book our trip to the Amazon and we will write all about that in the next blog post. After the ... read more

Back in the mountain town of Cuenca, we missed the sweet life of being beach bums and decided to head back to the coast and see what the Ecuadorian beaches have to offer. We picked out the small village of Montañita along the "Ruta del Sol", the route of the sun. Sounds pretty promising, doesn't it? We could not do the whole distance between Cuenca and Montañita in one day, so we stayed in Ecuador's biggest city, Guayaquil, for a night. Even though the city sounded really nice from the travel guide, we did not see anything of it besides what we saw from the taxi to the hostel and on the short walk to a restaurant. Next time. The next morning, we were on our way to the coast and Montañita turned out to be ... read more

We are heading further north along the coast and our last stop in Peru was Máncora, another fishing village turned surfer paradise. When we arrived in town after a shaky night-busride, we were picked up by the owner of our hostel in an old, white VW beetle. Our hostel "Kon Tiki Bungalows" sits enthroned on a hill over the city and we had a great view of all of Máncora and the surroundings. Máncora is the prime vacation spot in Peru, not only for sunburnt backpackers but also for locals, so it is not surprising that the main street, "Avenida Piura", was packed with restaurants, hostels, bars, kiosks, surf shops, fruit-stands and craft-stalls where you can literally buy everything. The beachfront is lined with bars and restaurants that offer cocktails and fresh seafood. In high season, ... read more

After our Machu Picchu adventure we spent another 1,5 days in Cusco before boarding a bus to Lima. This was our longest busride so far: 21 hours. If you look at a map, Cusco and Lima are not that far apart from each other but they are divided by mountains, so most of the trip was just up- and downhill zigzaging through the mountains. Pretty boring. We strongly recommend the Norwegian approach to overcome mountains: bridge, tunnel, bridge, tunnel, etc. For the long travel, we booked a very nice "cama suit" bus with comfy seats, blankets, pillows, dinner, breakfast and onboard entertainment. It felt like being on a business class flight or what we imagine a business class flight feels like. The movies that they showed however ranged from mediocre to really really bad and scored ... read more