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Bus rides are awful, but the days of travel are worth it to reach the idyllic little Gringo town of Baños de Agua Santa (see next post). After chilling in Lima for a day to readjust ourselves to being on the road again, Lauren and I hopped on a Cruz del Sur bus to Piura in the north of Peru. The ride cost 90 soles (about $30) for a semi-cama seat and took a whopping 16 hours. We left Lima at 4:30pm and didn't arrive in Piura until 8:30 the next morning, yikes. Cruz del Sur is one of the nicer bus companies so at least we had relatively comfortable seats and they played movies, though they were pretty bad as always. They also feed you dinner and breakfast on the bus, but we forgot to tell them we were vegetarians and the food is pretty disgusting anyway, so luckily we had come prepared with our own snacks. When we arrived in Piura we found a bus leaving at 9:30 for Loja, Ecuador so we waited around in the terminal for an hour before loading onto the Loja International bus. The ride to Loja took 8 hours and cost 34 soles ($12). The border crossing was easy and uneventful, the most exciting part being the passport stamp; it's fun collecting those. We got to Loja around 6 in the evening and were so glad to be off the freaking bus. We had officially spent an entire day, 24 very long hours, on a bus and we were both so grateful to have some time off the bus, even if it was only for a night. We checked into our hotel, called Hotel Londres for only $6 a night. It is so weird to be in a South American country using the American dollar, which is Ecuador's currency. At least we get a break on having to do conversions. The hotel was cute but nothing special, and after dumping our bags we immediately set out to find some real food. We had been living on snacks for the last 24 hours and my fruit supply had been devoured in the first 8 or so. It was a Sunday night so we figured nothing would really be open, and we were right. The veggie restaurant we had in mind was closed, but we found a Chinese food place and each got a massive plate of vegetable fried rice for $3, awesome.
The next day we awoke early and while we had originally wanted to go to the little town of Vilcabamba, we decided to skip it because our schedule is tight and it's an hour in the wrong direction from Loja. We were hesitant to spend more time on a bus than was absolutely necessary, so instead we headed north to the colonial town of Cuenca. We took a taxi to the bus terminal for $1 and hopped on the first bus to Cuenca we could find. The ride took about 4 and 1/2 hours and cost $7.50, much more manageable than a 16 hour ride. Cuenca is a nice city but the most exciting thing to do there is visit all the churches and museums, which aren't really our thing. We spent a day there wandering around the city and relaxing a bit before catching a bus to Ambato, the connecting city to Baños. The ride to Ambato was 7 hours and cost $7.50; one thing I love about Ecuador are the cheap bus rides. We watched some more crappy movies on the bus (yay!) and arrived in Ambato about 5pm. The bus dropped us on the side of the road with a bunch of other buses instead of in a terminal, and luckily there was a nice woman there who directed us across the street and pointed to the bus that was headed to Baños. The bus was packed full but we at least got seats, so that was nice, and the ride was only about 40 minutes and cost $1 each. Once we arrived in Baños our long days of travel were over and we finally got to relax and hang out for a bit. Read all about Baños de Agua Santa in my next blog post!
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