Having just supposedly crossed the "worst border crossing in South America" we were feeling pretty positive about the rest of the journey from Huachina to Machala (the banana capital of the world). We were ushered quickly off our Cifa bus and onto another as we'd paid for the full journey in advance (in hindsight we could have just gone to Huachina and got an onward ticket from there). The journey from the border to Machala is only 2 hours so we settled in and enjoyed the free wifi on the bus (yes you did read that right). It was Dani's turn to do the hostel ask around so off on the hunt she went only to discover everything in Machala was expensive, especially in comparison to Peru. As my wife was getting increasingly frustrated, I thought I'd go and check out a few. Lo and behold the first place I walked into was willing to give us a double room for $10 USD ($13.50 AUD) a night for both of us! Great! Except this came with the sacrifice of glass in the window in one room or complete floorboards in another. We flipped a coin and lack of floor won so we dumped our bags and headed out in search of food. We quickly discovered there is a reason Machala is not on people's hit lists for Ecuador. There is nothing to see or do and there are no decent cheap accommodation options. What nobody tells you about Ecuador is that the street food is divine. Machala's only saving grace was it's excellent selection of street delights. As we grazed our way through bananas and cheese, sausages on skewers (Dani only) and my new favourite llapingachos we forgave Machala for its disappointing appearance and awful digs. Our next stop was Cuenca. Similarly to my oversight on the route around Peru I messed up Ecuador as well. What we should have done was head up through Piura in Peru to Loja and then up, but as we hadn't done this Cuenca was the next logical stop. Cuenca was a breath of fresh air after Machala. We checked into a guesthouse close to the bus station called Hostal Astoria for $15 USD ($20.30 AUD) a night for both of us in a twin room and despite it not being a private bathroom one of the best hot showers we'd had in South America. Apart from the ladies of the night that hung out outside the guesthouse this place was perfect (my wife will tell you I have a bit of a 6th sense for picking out accommodation in the red light district). Cuenca's historic district is beautiful. The church that looms over the square has some stunningly intricate carvings on the door and the whole area is shaded by beautiful trees. People are friendly and the food is (we now know for Ecuador) characteristically excellent. There are street vendors everywhere selling tamale, humitas, bananas with cheese and bags of avocados and tomatoes for a $1 USD ($1.30 AUD) a bag. In the market, women sell roast pork and one of our favourite South American snacks, bolon. These can be vegetarian or contain meat so for my fellow vegetarians just ask for bolon con queso. We did attempt to do the free walking tour here but our guide didn't show up for the tour. So, as I mentioned earlier we should have come into Ecuador via Loja. This was only discovered when I made the fatal error of handing my wife the Lonely Planet (now this may not sound like a stupid idea but the last time I did this she decided we just had to go to Antarctica because "it's so close to Argentina"). Dani decided we'd made a huge mistake and that we should backtrack. I have a small hatred of backtracking so we rejigged our Ecuador route and decided to head to Loja and come up to Baños via a route along The Orient (the Ecuadorean part of the Amazon) instead of returning to Cuenca.
Loja is a pretty town with a few squares worth wandering through and a very strange yet funky gate that has a quirky money museum inside and a variety of artisanal shops. It again has a great central market with cheap and delicious food (are you sensing a theme yet?!). We stayed at Hotel Londres for $12 USD ($16.25 AUD) for a double room with shared bathroom. To travel the Orient road the first stop is Zamora, which in theory, is the gateway to the Ecuadorean Amazon. In practice it's a cute little town with not much on offer except it's strangely fantastic hillside clock. It sings every hour on the hour from 7am till 10pm and at night it lights up. Apparently the story goes that everyone in the town was always late so someone decided to build a clock so large no one would ever have an excuse again! Whether this tale is true or not, we're not really bothered, it's a great story! We stayed at Hotel Betania, which we managed to negotiate down to $20 USD ($27 AUD) for a really lovely double room with private bathroom. It also had a great rooftop kitchen and balcony overlooking aforementioned fabulous clock. After a few relaxing evenings eating excellent market/street food dinners we jumped on a bus to Gualaquiza. Gualaquiza is another sweet little Amazonian town with little on offer except a nice little guesthouse Merceditas ($15 USD/20.30 AUD for a double room) and a few waterfalls. It seemed as though we had discovered the first step of why backpackers don’t stray too far off the 'Gringo Trail' in Ecuador. There is absolutely nothing wrong with straying off the trail but it does appear that Ecuador does miss the mark just a little bit when it comes to everything related to tourism even including aspects the Galapagos Islands. Thinking the next stop, Macas would offer a little more as it was a bigger town and also described as a place to base yourself to explore the less traveled part of the Ecuadorian Amazon we set off. Again, it turned out we were wrong. Not only was there nowhere to find a guide to take us to the Amazon (in spite of it's visible proximity to the dense jungle) but Macas itself was an absolute dive. We did find one tour guide, a short walk out of town, as his address was in the Lonely Planet. This turned out to be another let down of this particular edition of the Lonely Planet (there have been many) due to the “highly recommended” guide speaking so little English that he couldn’t even explain the tour. Now don’t get me wrong here, I am aware that we are in a Spanish speaking continent (with the exception of Brazil) and I have no expectation for the most part for English to be spoken, but when a guide is recommended in an English guide book you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming they would at least have one English speaking person in the office. Due to a lack of decent guides and a serious lack of decent accommodation we left for Riobamba the next day. On arrival in Riobamba we couldn’t really be bothered to search further than the bus station for accommodation, thinking that the next day we would wander into town and see whether we could find something better. It turned out that there was a perfectly adequate place just across the road. I know what your thinking…bus stations aren’t the best place to stay and can be a little dodgy. Yeah we’ve heard this too, but so far we’ve often found if they are close enough to the town that they work just fine for us. This may be due to the fact that we’re not big nightlife people so are often tucked up in our room well before dark. The next morning we were up and in search of food. We had heard that Riobamba was famous for it's roast pork market. Not so great for me but Dani was looking forward to trying another local delicacy. We were greeted at the door by a chorus of women peddling their pork. You could fill yourself up with free samples if you wanted to but Dani decided on the woman closest to the door and the look on her face when she tasted the pork told me she wouldn’t even bother walking around the other women. She ordered a plate, which set us back $4 USD ($5.40 AUD) and it was huge! I left her munching and started wandering around the rest of the market in search of a vegetarian delight. Well it turned out we were both in for a treat as I stumbled across the best llapingacho I’d had in Ecuador. We did quickly discover that the food was incredible in Riobamba but that was really all it had to offer. This left us in a little bit of a dilemma as we felt we may be moving too fast to get to Quito where we had a flight booked to the Galapagos. With slight apprehension we made the decision to head on to Baños...
0 Comments
We arrived back in Cusco around the time we would have been getting back onto the minivan at hidroelectrica and were relieved to have an afternoon relaxing and recovering. We decided we'd stay a few nights to chill and then head north to Lima on a delightful 24hour bus journey. Luckily for us we'd mastered the micro (local bus) system and were able to find the right one to get us to the bus station when we were ready to leave. The most logical option was to leave mid morning so that we would arrive mid morning the following day in Lima. I'm sure if you've read my previous post you are aware that I wouldn't recommend this route through Perú at all and instead think that Puno to Cusco then Cusco to Arequipa and along the coast is the better option. However, if you have decided to come this way you're in for a very pretty, but incredibly windy journey through the Andes. One firm recommendation I'd make is that you come prepared for the arctic, because this bus ride at times is freezing. It is also wise to have some food with you as there aren't any major stops and as it's through the Andes, there were limited vendors jumping on board. We set out at 10am and arrived in Lima at around 11 the next morning. Our company (Transporte Wari) were reliable and relatively comfortable for the price (S/60/$24.40 AUD/18.45 USD) . On arrival in Lima we decided to head to Miraflores to look for accommodation. That was our first mistake! The bus had pulled in pretty close to Old Town and Miraflores was a 6km cab ride away. We had taken the cab costing S/18 ($7.30 AUD/5.55 USD) and arrived, only to discover there was no reasonably priced accommodation to be found anywhere. Our only option seemed to be a single dorm bed for around what we had been paying for a double room in the rest of the country (including Machu Picchu). After hunting around and even resorting to the familiar comfort of a Starbucks to use their free wifi, we came to the conclusion that we should head back to Old Town. We were pointed in the direction of a bus that cost S/3 ($1.20 AUD/0.90 USD) to get there. The bus stops about 3 blocks from the main square. Old Town has a bit of a reputation for being rough but as we're not the sort to be out at night we felt perfectly safe here. We managed to find a place called Hotel Europa right across from the San Francisco Church for S/40 ($16.25 AUD/12.30 USD) for a double room. This was a far cry from the S/60 ($24.40 AUD/18.45 USD) we had been quoted in Miraflores for the cheapest place we could find. We also found a really nice looking 2 star hotel around the corner for only S/50 so it's worth looking around. The benefit of being in Old Town is it feels a lot more local and a lot less over developed. Miraflores is clearly affluent and has been very westernised, thus making it a very sanitary and expensive part of Lima. We booked onto a walking tour of Old Town the next day and it was an enjoyable way to get to know the city but we still weren't really sold on Lima. A couple of interesting things we did discover about the city were that it's the second driest capital in the world and that there is a daily show for the changing of the guard at the presidential palace which have a full brass band that play all sorts of music from classical to pop. This happens at 12.00pm and is worth checking out. The other area close to Old Town which warrants a trip if you have a spare afternoon is Lima's bustling Chinatown. As surprising as this may seem, there are some excellent chifas (South American Chinese restaurants) serving fantastic Chinese food and it has fun and buzzing vibe. The rest of our time in Lima was actually used up by us finding out how to leave. We had been informed by our guidebook that there was no formal bus station in Lima, however this is not true. The Norte bus terminal is a modern fully functional bus terminal and is conveniently connected to Lima's metro system. This is much easier to navigate than the individual bus stations for each company in central Lima and gives you an opportunity to shop around. All you need to do is catch the metro to Tomas Valle and cross the road to the station. Most buses come through this station on their way out of Lima and if you board at this point it saves you the epic boredom of sitting in Lima's unrelenting traffic. You will find that most buses have two different times that they depart from Lima, one from the companies office in the centre of town and one about 1-1.5hrs later from the terminal. Unless you have a penchant for being on long distance buses in city traffic for no real reason, I would opt for the latter! After much deliberation we decided not to stop at any of the costal towns in Perú when we left Lima, as we're not big beach people and we don't surf. This meant another long haul journey to Tumbes before crossing into Ecuador. We were quoted prices ranging from S/60 ($24.40 AUD/18.45 USD) to S/120 ($48.75AUD/36.95 USD) and in the end we went with 'Flores' with the middle ground price of S/100 ($40.65 AUD/30.80 USD). This journey is long and very much the same as the ride from Atacama to Santiago (monotonous!!) The coast of Peru and Chile is a long stretch of desert that runs along side the Andes. It made for a long and boring 24 hour trip. Tumbes is also not the greatest stop but it's functional. This is a good place to change money before heading into Ecuador and by the main square there are official money changers that give good rates. This crossing also has a bad reputation but is actually really easy and no longer the danger ridden nightmare it has previously been made out to be. We decided to take the easy way with Cifa bus but in hindsight it would not have been a problem to do this crossing independently. To get to the Cifa station you walk along Avenida Simon Bolivar until you see the Jose Alfredo Mendoza Olavarria Hospital and it's on the opposite side of the road. Don't get a taxi it's not necessary no matter what they tell you. The bus cost us S/21 ($8.50 AUD/6.45 USD) and there were a few buses leaving in the morning. The bus stops at the very modern and simple shared border and you stand in one line to exit Peru and then move to the next queue to enter Ecuador before getting back on the bus and heading to the border town in Ecuador. Here you change to connect with other cities. Overall, we absolutely loved southern Perú. Past Lima we found there was less to do for our sort of traveller as it was a lot of adventuring or beaches so we did skip over a lot of it. We had been told to be careful of buses in Perú however we found them to be reliable and comfortable despite taking the cheapest options almost every time. The food is also as excellent as they say it is so try as much of it as you can. Just a quick note about Perú though, as some of the information above may now not be accurate. A week after we left (March 17th 2017) there was some major flooding from Lima all the way up to Tumbes. As I've already mentioned Lima is one of the driest cities in the world and this meant it was not equipped with drainage systems to deal with the water when the river that surrounds Lima burst its banks. The roads heading along the coast were also damaged and flooded. Due to this, the route north we took is not currently functioning. A friend of ours was in Lima during the floods and had to fly to Tumbes and others we met were having to redirect the way they were planning on entering Perú based on current conditions. The roads should return to normal and Lima will also recover but it is something to be aware of as Perú is a developing nation and this may take time. The only thing I can say is have patience and a sense of humour and you'll be just fine. Budget Time $$$What it Actually Cost: 23 days = $1,364.73 (AUD) Transport: $415.61 (this total includes a train journey from Machu Picchu that was significantly out of our budget but was a very kind last minute gift from our travel guardian angel ;-)) Entertainment: $308.21 Accomodation: $262.30 Food: $241.90 Drinks: $58.21 Miscellaneous: $50.92 Souvenirs: $27.19 This worked out at an average daily budget of $29.65 AUD per person per day. We came into Perú from Bolivia and two things I was expecting to be significantly more expensive in this location were transport and accomodation. In reality, this was not the case, in fact, in most cases, accomodation was actually significantly cheaper, of a better standard and easier to find. We could have paid a lot more than we did for transport as the range for most journeys is pretty wide, but something we did learn about Peruvian bus travel is that it doesn't really matter how much you pay, you get what arrives on the day. With the exception of a few companies like Cruz del Sur and Oltursa (which are always of a high standard but also always come with a high price tag), it's a game of chance. There has been a big deal made about the safety of Peruvian long distance bus travel, but honestly, we saw no evidence of unsafe looking vehicles and never had a problem on any of the journeys we took. Meals in Perú come in a similar set menu fashion to those of Bolivia. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can all be acquired at any number of small local family 'restaurants' and each meal comes with the addition of some form of extra whether it is bread and a juice/coffee with your breakfast or soup and a small dessert with lunch and dinner. On average these set us back anything between S/5-8 ($2-3.25AUD/1.50-2.50USD) and almost always felt like very good value for money! One thing that will undeniably stretch your budget in some way in Perú will be Machu Picchu. I checked every possible method of getting to and from there and all combinations of visiting, from all-inclusive packages to total independence. All of my research turned up one rather disappointing answer, Machu Picchu is expensive. That being said, it is totally worth it and is a must-do when you are visiting Perú. One of those worth-while budget breakers I have talked about in the past. Perú was another country where we managed to come in a little under our expected budget but I don't believe this would have been possible had we not been travelling in quiet season. We were there in February when the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is closed for maintenance and the impact of this is a huge decline in the number of tourists all over Perú. Obviously, if you intend to do the Inca Trail this is not the time to visit, however, if that's not really your thing this is the perfect time to come!! There are great deals to be had all over the country for everything from accomodation to excursions and even transport. LGBT: Perú is a relatively conservative country however neither Dani or I had any problems. The people are friendly and appeared pretty accepting. As of January this year discrimination towards people based on sexuality or gender has been made illegal and they now recognise that violence towards a person based on either sexuality or gender is a hate crime. This being said there is a higher level of conservatism in Perú than surrounding countries and LGBT Peruvians still face difficulties living openly as laws designed to protect "public morals" are often used against those who identify as LGBT. This being said a bill to legalise marriage equality was put forward for debate in February.
|
Follow us on Instagram or send us a messageArchives
November 2018
Categories
All
|