The only gringos in the village

And so to Riobamba. We arrived just in time for lunch at a local restaurant, recommended by the guidebook and packed with Ecuadorians. "¡Queramos el menu del dia!" we cried merrily. Our extensive experience tells us that the set lunch will be soup, a main course of meat with rice and salad, some kind of dessert and juice, for under 2 dollars (approximately 10 UK pounds with the current exchange rate). All was going well until the main arrived - it was a stew of wierd rubbery white honeycomb things and smelled awful, so we both ate around it leaving a buffer zone of rice. Then we looked it up on the internet and found out it was probably the ecuadorian delicacy of cow-stomach casserole.



We had pizza for dinner.



The following day it was an early start to get the train. The railway in Ecuador was built in the 1800s, and only a few sections remain. This particular section is famous because it was known as the most difficult railway in the world when it was built. It has two switchbacks on a very precipitous hillside known as the Devils Nose, and was quite the feat of engineering at the time. More importantly, you can ride on the roof of the train. We got seats inside for the first half, then they swapped us over for the ride back up. The scenery was pretty spectacular, and the switchbacks were, well, switchbacks. It was good fun, though.



After all that excitement, we got a bus to Cuenca with our new friend Deborah. The bus also contained the four most annoying people in the world, so we greatly enjoyed the 5 hour journey and spent some time debriefing each other over a nice cold beer. Our plan was to spend one night there, then catch a bus on to Loja and then work our way over into Peru, since we need to be in Lima by Friday. Our plans were scuppered by the unfortunate fact that Chris seems to have eaten some amoebas somewhere along the way (possibly from the river when we were rafting) and we spent three days getting him well enough to travel. He was thoroughly checked out at the very good medical centre in Cuenca, the doctor spoke excellent english and prescribed a cocktail of drugs which began to fix him right away, but she even gave us her email address so we can check back with her if there are any more problems.



So then yesterday we were off again, from Cuenca to Loja and then an overnight bus across the border to Piura in Peru. We arrived here at 7am this morning, our bus to Lima is at 6pm, and we have already exhausted all that the town has to offer. It´s not really a tourist destination despite being a transport hub, and we haven´t seen any other gringos since we left the bus station. We´ve even been to the cinema to see the new Keanu Reeves film (not awesome) to try to kill some time. We´re pretty exhausted ourselves and not really looking forward to the second overnight bus in a row. But at least we´ll be in Lima on Friday morning, and so will be on time to meet up with our tour group in the afternoon. We´re travelling with a group from Intrepid Travel for the next three weeks, going from Lima to La Paz. This is something which seemed like a good idea 6 months ago ... I´m reserving judgement on whether it´s really worth it.