After we left Vilcabamba, we headed north to Loja briefly (we spent an hour hanging out at the bus station) before getting on the bus to go to Piura, Peru. Our bus left Loja at 11pm, and there were a whole set of security checks as we got on board (we were patted down by the security guard, and she got on board and videotaped all of our faces so that they had a record of who was on the bus. We slept pretty poorly, and were woken up at 3:30am at the border. Besides being the middle of the night, with an unfamiliar language in unfamiliar surroundings, having to cross a bridge on foot between the two countries, and not knowing that we had to go to the National Police Office on the Peruvian side (Stef caught that detail after we had both re-boarded the bus. Thankfully we still had enough time to run out and get registered), it was pretty uneventful and easy.
Piura is called a “transportation hub” according to Lonely Planet, so we figured that we would only spend a day or so there. When we got into town at 7am, we were not at all excited to spend much time there. We found a bus company, paid in dollars, and were back on the road from Piura to Chiclayo by 8am. On our first Peruvian bus ride, they showed the Mel Gibson movie “Apocalypto”. It’s very violent, but a pretty interesting depiction of Inca society at it’s height – the film ends with a fleet of Spanish ships arriving in a bay. A good way to enter Peru – learning a little about the civilization that dominated its history (and most of its tourism).
[...] phone calls), bought our bus tickets to Tacna, and got ready to head out. If you remember, our previous border crossing was pretty uneventful, even though it happened at 3a.m. on a bridge over a river. While we really enjoy easy, simple [...]