Smooth Peru Departure

We hired a travel agent to escort us across the Peru/Ecuador border. I wouldn’t have normally gone to this extreme of handholding, but (a) we’ve had issues at borders in the past and (b) I was not officially stamped into Perú because my initial passport was stolen. I had my new passport and the police report with me, but wanted some extra help to make sure we would be able to abort the Perú mission before our visas (well, Scott’s visa, since I didn’t have one) expired the next day.

The agent ended up ushering me through the entire process. To my great relief, all I had to do was sit, smile and nod. She was a feisty, short, built lady with a sweet smile. I cut in lines at her insistence. She knocked on the desk of the man who was hemming and hawing at my case, and told him to hurry up. It was great.

Next we were bused to the way out of the way Ecuador immigration office and stamped into the country. Then the agent took us back to the city and put us on a bus to Quito. A little hectic, but easy!

Bumpy En Route

The bus ride should have only taken something like 8-hours. It ended up taking 12-hours. Part of the delay… we were stopped every few hours for random checks by different branches of Ecuadorean military and police. After the first two, we started to wonder if something was going down in Ecuador that we didn’t know about. The locals seemed to take it all in stride though, so we went along with them. At each stop everyone would have to offload. An agent would typically get on the bus and look around. And then open the storage underneath and poke around some more. At one stop the police patted down all of the men. Women, especially the half asleep and pitifully harmless looking ones like me, were let be.

The bus also stopped to pick up straggling passengers whenever it was hailed down from the side of the street. Every time the bus did this, the lights would flick on to help the new passenger get to an open seat. Then the baby in the back would start screaming, and we’d start the process over again, trying to sleep in seats with no safety belts as the bus sped over bumps and around curves.

Rough Quito Arrival

The bus arrived in Quito at about 6am. So it turned out to be a good thing that it took 12-hours, because other wise we would have arrived at 2am. Not fun. We were still jolted out of sleep upon arriving at the station. Scott and I were not prepared to get off, and needed some time to unlock our bags (which were locked to the seats in front of us) and pack up our pillows.

We were the last people on the bus. The driver kept yelling at us to hurry up, and finally just started to drive off. He had already dropped off our larger backpacks, which had been stowed underneath the bus, on the curb and was leaving them behind unattended. Great. We flew off the bus, forgetting our bag of liquor and food. Gasp.

We were able to run back to our backpacks, which were being looked after by a nice New Zealander who noticed we hadn’t picked them up. Then we realized that our bag of sustenance was missing. Scott went on a search for the bus to see if he could retrieve it.

No Freak Outs

I was not there for this, otherwise I would have had a major freak out on two bus drivers. Apparently, when Scott tracked down our bus in the departures area of the terminal, he asked about the bag and the driver and his counterpart insisted that there was nothing left on the bus. Scott persisted and was able to get on the bus to look around. The bag had been moved and strategically hidden behind the front door. ¡Ratones! You have to give it to them, though. That bag was holding some awesome tequila, cream pisco and chewy strawberry candy. I was happy to get it back! And happy to have arrived in Quito with no freak outs along the way. Just as I’m getting used to being on the road, our adventures are ending!