From Galapagos we flew back to Guayaquil in southern Ecuador, then onto an overnight bus down into Peru. Total travel time was pretty long after a bus transfer to the airport, 2hrs waiting, 1.5hr flight, taxi to bus station, 7hrs waiting at the bus station, 11hrs on the bus including the border crossing to Peru just after midnight, another 4hrs waiting for another bus, then 4hrs to Trujillo . . .
The buses were moderately comfortable, with seats that recline a long way and a reasonable amount of leg room. But nothing is that comfortable for that long.
Total distance covered by bus: 948km. We were pretty shattered by the time the bus rolled into Trujillo.
Much of northern Peru is desert; and not the beautiful, picturesque type, it's the miles and miles and miles of sand type. Or kilometers, in our case. Most of the towns look incredibly poor, dusty and pretty grim. Trujillo didn´t look promising from the outskirts or the bus station but by this stage all we really wanted was a bed that wasn't moving.
Lonely Planet wasn't very forthcoming on hostels and we hadn't been able to find anything much decent online either. Our taxi driver said he knew one . . . it turned out to be okay. There was only a dormitory left, but no-one in it, and by this point neither of us was going to try to find something else.
Luckily the hostel was in the center of the historic part of town and only two blocks of walking took us to a lovely pedestrian-only street that had lots of shops and restaurants. By the time we'd eaten dinner we were somewhat zombie-like . . .
We had all of the next day to fill in before catching another night bus on to Huaraz. There are a lot of pre-Incan ruins in the area, but after looking at some pictures online we decided that we would blob in the hostel until checkout then hang out in Trujillo.
Very cost efficient police force:
Colour co-ordination is a fine art in Trujillo:
We're still not sure what was going on here:
'Trujillo - not as bad as you'd expect' turned out to be our slogan for the town. Not something the locals are likely to choose, but it really surprised us with how nice it is. It has a lovely historic downtown that Ben was upset he couldn't take photos of in the dark - until we both twigged that we'd still be there until well after dark. We hung out for a while in the Plaza de Armas and watched the world go by. Rather entertaining, actually. Ben had a conversation with a local photographer who takes people's portraits in the Plaza then gets them developed immediately. Okay, so a lot of the conversation involved pointing at the cameras, but still a conversation. So now we know what Ben can do if we run out of money . . .
We had a really nice dinner the first night. Just when we'd figured out what was good to order in Ecuador it's time for another country with different specialties and tricky menus. It´s kind of fun just ordering and seeing what turns up . . .
Plus a great find - Peru has pies! Not, sadly, a Thai chicken or butter chicken gourmet pie, but still rather delicious. In Peru they are called empañadas, are shaped differently and come with a variety of fillings, some absolutely delicious. Ecuador also had empañadas, but they were only filled with a little bit of cheese, and the generic bland cheese that is everywhere.
And even more excitingly for me - Peru has cakes! Ecuador didn't seem to sell sweets like proper cakes or cookies, though the bread was excellent. Peru has little bakeries everywhere, some with excellent, delicious cakes. Some South American specialities like Tres Leches and some old favourites like lemon meringue pie. Yum!
So after discovering a little of the nicer side of northern Peru it was time for one more overnight bus ride. This was sort of 'not as bad as you'd expect' - even better seats, tea or coffee, juice, crackers, cake (!) but was still a very, very long 10 hours. Finally we rolled in Huaraz at 8am, just in time to find a hostel.
