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Published: August 26th 2007
We left the jungle and headed on the longest journey yet to get to Ecuador, the last country before travelling back to London. A bit frustrating when you look on a map, as quite a short distance as the crow flys, managed to take a full 38 hours !!! We flew back to Lima, and boarded an overnight bus to the Ecuador border. The journey went quite smoothly until we hit the border, by far the worst and most scary border we have had to negotiate since we´ve been in South America. From what we understand, it is one of the most regular routes for drug / people / weapons traffic, with Peru producing a lot of the coca leaves used for Cocaine and Columbia the main producer before export to U.S and Europe.
One of the biggest problems with this trip has been knowing who you can trust. Everyone is trying to sell you something or ´help´and even being unbelieveably wary, it is impossible to be 100% on your guard in a place full of really bad people. The border crossing is a difficult one with the bus station on either side nowhere near the immigration offices, and the immigration office being nowhere near the actual bridge marking the border. We were advised to try and get a particular bus company who takes you across the border and stops at the immigration offices so you don´t have to take your life in your own hands in the towns on either side. This is what we thought we had done, when some very helpful guy took us by taxi to buy our bus tickets having shown us his ID. In reality, he was charging us an inflated price to guide us through the immigration process, with personal security to avoid all the ´bad people´ and to a place in Ecuador where he could buy cheap bus tickets on our behalf. Clearly, cars are not allowed to travel between countries without the usual checks, but taking us through the central market (pedestrianised) and various police checks (who were paid off), we arrived at the gates of a compound by which time we were fearing the worst. After trying to charge us twice the originally agreed price, we got back to the original price, with an agreement that i kept the keys for the battered Toyota until we had bus tickets in hand.
In the end it all worked out, and not much more expensive than the intended border crossing. When we got to Cuenca, we met some other backpackers who told us that they crossed a different border corossing after hearing about exactly our situation, but with all bags and money stolen and the people dumped in the middle of town. We were very lucky !!
We have spent the last 3 nights in Cuenca, a really nice City with cobbled streets and old colonial buildings. We spent one day in a national park at 4,000 metres hiking. We managed to walk about 10km in 5 hours which tells you something about the terrain we were covering. Mountaineering is a better reference than hiking.
Anyway, off to Banos today (another 10 hours) to do some outdoor activities.
Will write soon
Unfortunately, he took us to buy tickets on the other side of the border and to do this drove us through the middle of town
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A Hazel
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No shrinking Violets
You are two very brave people, not a shrinking Violet like me. Don't know what I will do without your blog to read, it's been so interesting and hair raising at times. Take Care, Lots and Lots of Love. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx