Advertisement
Published: July 24th 2015
Edit Blog Post
Distance driven today: 238 miles / 383 km
Cumulative distance driven: 10,079 miles / 16,221 km (6,000 miles to go)
Today’s trip: Machala, Ecuador to Piuna, Peru
Border crossings: 1
Less than an hour after leaving Machala this morning, we had arrived at the border between Ecuador and Peru. At least we had been driving in the direction towards the border, according to the big and very clear road signs that the Ecuadorian ministry of transportation had set up along the road. Big kudos to the Ecuadorians for clearly signposting the directions to the border
before even getting there. This was a welcome change since I haven’t seen such clear roads signs before the border since I left the US and the border between Arizona and Mexico. However, once we had driven about 15km / 10 miles
past the point where the border should be according to our GPS unit and the road sings, I got a bit concerned. Had we really missed the border entirely? Was that even possible?
According to a recent edition of the Lonely Planet guide, the Hanquillas border between Ecuador and Peru is one of the most dangerous and confusing border
crossings in South America. With that in mind, Zoe and I were really surprised when the border building finally showed up, and turned out to be a brand new, extremely spacious complex that appeared to be more organized than anything we have seen at a border crossing before. It turns out that the immigration agencies of Peru and Ecuador, as well as, the customs are all now collocated under one roof. Yay! What an amazing idea to put the offices in the same buildings, literally next to each other. Thus this brand new border complex promises to radically simplify the crossing, and on top of that make it feel very safe. At least that is how it is supposed to work in theory.
In reality the bi-national immigration office was significantly understaffed, and the passport waiting line for exiting Ecuador and entering Peru still took a whole hour. The second issue was perhaps the most important one. It turns out that the promise of the collocated border authorities wasn’t entirely true after all. The Ecuadorian customs hadn’t had a chance yet to move into this brand new complex. That office was still located 10km / 6miles back in Ecuador;
however we were already into Peruvian soil! As we were going through the Peruvian customs to initiate the process for temporary vehicle importation, we were told that we hadn’t visited the Ecuadorian customs to get a stamp that we had taken the motorcycle out of Ecuador. Apparently, we had managed to miss the Ecuadorian customs (same thing happened by the way when we exited Mexico heading to Guatemala). The solution we were told was to exit Peru, re-enter Ecuador, then exit the Ecuadorian customs, only to re-enter the Peruvian immigration and customs. Needless to say neither Zoe nor I wanted to add at least two more hours to our border crossing, and having to redo the whole process. We therefore decided to not go back to Ecuador and have our bike officially exit the country.
Before we left the border area, we met two adventure bikers from Ecuador who were also heading to Peru and we started to talk. They were on their way to a bike convention in a nearby Peruvian city and go really excited to meet adventure riders from the US. The Peruvian bikes were definitely interested in our motorcycle, which is a model that they
had barely ever seen in their country. They also gave us stickers with the logo of their adventure riding club, and we happily put them on our panniers. Before they left, the obligatory set of photographs were taken.
Well into Peru we stopped at the first city to get gas. Guess our surprise when we discovered that regular gas was over $5 a gallon. It turns out that Peru imposes very high taxes on gas. Since we had just paid a mere $1,5 for a gallon at the Ecuadorian side yesterday, it is fair to say that we were in a state of Petroshock. It only begs the question of how Peruvians can afford to drive. We may also have to slightly adjust our fuel budget for driving through Peru, as we have at least a whole week’s worth of driving to get through this rather big country.
While driving through Peru we have decided to take the coastal Pacific route, rather than go through the mountainous inland. By now, we have ridden enough mountain passes, switchbacks and hair pin turns in the last month to last a lifetime. Therefore, riding on flat, pretty straight coastal roads, with
the Pacific Ocean as our permanent right-hand side vista as we head southbound, makes sense. However, Peru is a relatively large country and we have over 2.000km / 1,200 miles or riding to do before we enter Bolivia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.195s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 51; dbt: 0.128s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb