After queuing for what seemed like forever to leave Ecuador we walked over the bridge and were surprised to find only a small queue on the Colombian side (we're guessing that a lot of Colombians only bother with immigration on the Ecuadorian side). It only took 20 minutes. The guidebook says to be prepared for thorough bag checks and if you don't have a return ticket (which we don't) the officer sometimes overlooks this for a 'fee.' The FCO's (UK Foreign Office) advice is that it depends on the whim of the officer that day as to whether they let you in or not. Well we had the friendliest guard ever who was only interested in joking about how long we'd queued on the Ecuadorian side. Not one 'proper' question and stamp in passport printed with ... read more

To get to Quito we took a 2 1/2 hr bus to Manta up the coast from Puerto Lopez and pretty much got straight onto an 8 hour bus to Santa Domingo. It was a long trip (particularly with no toilet or toilet stop!) but some of the scenery was great with jagged lumpy hills - the local transport in that area was horseback. Once we finally arrived in Santa Domingo we found there was a whole load of hotels near to the bus terminal so we literally rolled over the road and scored our cheapest sleep in Ecuador yet - $10US for an ensuite. We dumped the bags and then rolled next door to a chinese restaurant. The next morning we were up early (not quite as early as we thought as we knew the ... read more

We decided to go into the Amazon jungle in Ecuador for purely practical reasons, the distance to/from the jungle is much shorter in Ecuador. Plan A was to go to Macas in the southern half of Ecuador's Amazon and try to find a Shuar guide - the Shuar tribe is most commonly known for its past ritual of shrinking heads. They are a proud people who have long defended their land and community and are the only tribe never to have signed any form of peace treaty. The back up plan was to go into the jungle in Coca in the northern part. The journey from Cuenca to Macas was bizarre, for the first 5 hours until the lunch stop in Mendez it was very windy, very rough road with mud and fords to contend with. ... read more

Marie was pretty ill before we got the bus from Piura, Peru, but really wanted to cross the border to Ecuador. We did have tickets to Loja 8 hours from Piura but after crossing the border the bus stopped for lunch in the Ecuadorian border town of Macara, 3 1/2 hours into the journey and we had to bail off there. Unlike the Cochabamba incident this time she managed not to throw up in the street (well we'd only just entered the country...) and politely waited until the second that we got into our room. The border crossing itself was easy, stamp out of Peru walk over a bridge stamp into Ecuador (on the Ecuadorian side they didn't even look at us, just literally processed any passport shoved in front of them). Macara is a laidback ... read more

All the buses north of Lima were overnighters so we ended up on an 8 hour overnight bus to Trujillo from where we skipped straight through to Huanchaco, a beach town 12km from Trujillo on the Pacific Coast. It's famous for totora (reed) fishing boats called little horses which fishermen surf back to the beach with their catch. We loved being by the sea and even though it's winter the days would start off overcast but warm and by lunchtime there would be blue skies and it would be hot! We sorted ourselves out pretty quickly then decided to take a trip to Chan Chan which was accordingly to LP 'the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest adobe city in the world.' It contained 10,000 structures, including 9 royal compounds, one of which ... read more