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Archive for June 30th, 2007

On to Piura, Peru

Posted by Doreen in Ecuador, Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, June 30th, 2007 @ 12:19 pm

Friday was another long bus ride; about half way thru the trip we crossed the border into Peru at Macará. The ride was thru interesting territory. Starting out from Loja, the road continued “at the top of the world” for several hours with unending mountain tops and blue sky on our left and a series of deep canyons falling off on our right. This was followed by a long winding downhill. The hills changed from green to brown as we dropped toward the desert. The border town of Macará is in a high desert; the most notable thing about it is that the airport is in the center of town, with the control tower on one side of the central plaza.

In Peru we continued down into the Desierto de Sechura, the northern Peruvian coastal desert. The bus dropped us off in Piura, Peru in the late afternoon. We got settled in a hotel – the Hotel Peru, $69 Soles per night (about $23 US) – before hunting for an ATM to get more Peruvian Soles and then ice cream and sandwitches.

Saturday we did some exploring of the city, checking out yet more churches before retiring to the central plaza to sit and read while we people-watched. The one museum that we wanted to see was “closed for remodeling”. Tomorrow we plan on heading to Chiclayo where we will first see interesting pre-Columbian ruins.

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Loja, Ecuador

Posted by Doreen in Ecuador, Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, June 30th, 2007 @ 12:01 pm

See the Map!

On Wednesday, June 27, we took the bus from Guayaquil all the way to Loja. The bus followed the coastal route to the city of Machala, there it turned inland. We spent the next 5 hours climbing into the Andes mountains. It was a wild ride as the bus driver seemed to be racing over the winding mountain roads; he would have done well in a Grand Prix race! For the last two hours of the trip we felt like we were riding at the “top ot the world”. After checking a number of very cheap and not-so-cheap hotels, we picked the Hostal San Luis, near Plaza Simon Bolivar, just $16 per night for a nice clean room, with hot water and cable TV.

Loja is a small city high in the mountains of Ecuador with several interesting churches and a very interesting city gate. It was much cooler there than it was at lower elevations and we even had light rain over much of our visit. On Thursday we followed the “tourist trail” thru the town stopping to enjoy coffee at one of the many small restaurants along the way. This small cafe had upstaris seating overlooking one of the many church plazas and we enjoyed several mokas while waiting for the rain to lessen. The trail passed thru the main plaza with it nearby cathedral. The cathedral has a golden altar that stands out in its ornateness against the more simple walls. We ended the walking tour on a street of older homes with wooden balconies overhanging the sidewalk.