Heading North – Lima, Piura and crossing the border

We flew from Cusco to Lima, a pleasant hour or so trip much shorter than the 20hr bus ride, and only $30US more each. We arrived to a sunny Lima into the Miraflores district (aka gringo central). We only had a day in Lima and in the end we didn't leave Miraflores – we were planning on heading into historic centre, but time just got away from us. We had a lovely day relaxing in town and by the beachfront.

We took our next flight to Piura – a working class town in far north Peru. With hindsight we should have flown into a more touristy spot closer to the coastal Ecuador border, as it would have signifiantly reduced our travel to the border. We arrived around 8pm, took a taxi to our hostel which was comfortable enough – complete with copy of Mona Lisa and other intersting paintings (see Bernard's blog). We had outstanding value Chinese food for dinner – I order prawn noodles, and were given close to two dozen large size prawns in my dish. Piura is not a touristy place, so everyone in the restaurant looked at us with some amusement. Even finding a suitable hostel took some research. But in the end we had a good sleep, awoke at 7am to watch parts of the royal wedding (I got to see the balcony kisses live) before heading off to catch our bus into Ecuador.

We arrived good and early for our bus - the terminal of which wasn't in the safest part of town. The the security of the service in Peru was outstanding – fingerprinting, camera footage of who was in the bus. The bus did take a lot longer than expected. We didn't reach the border until well into late afternoon. We hadn't had any lunch stops either so we braved a local chicken and chip stall but fortunately didn't experience any tummy upsets. We crossed the border to Ecuador and realised we weren't going to arrive in Guayaquil until 9pm. We weren't particularly impressed with security in Ecuador – they picked up passengers everywhere along the road regardless of whether seats were available and several local men gave Bernard and I particuarly filthy looks and made us very wary. But fortunately we arrived safe and sound in Guayaguil and ready to explore Ecuador.