Ecuador - By Bus

We have done a lot of flying instead of taking the cheaper, but longer bus rides.  To my own ignorance, I knew nothing of the difference, but I was about to learn.  Now, there isn't anything particularly bad about taking the bus, but you have to realize that even though the seats are more roomy than a plane and you don't have to worry about passing security, it is going to be slow, and even on the Cama (bed) bus you are not going to sleep very well.  Oh, and the movies on the bus are of a whole different caliber too. 

Our journey from Peru to Ecuador strung together three buses.  The first leg would take about 7 hours to get from Huaraz to Trujillo, Peru, after that we would endure 18 hours to Guayaquil, Ecuador, where we spent a single night before a final 4 hours bus to Riobamba. 

Overall, the bus rides were rather uneventful, but the night bus we wanted to catch from Trujillo to Guayaquil was sold out and we had to spend an unplanned night in Trujillo in ordet to get on the next one.  This gave us the opportunity to take a tour of the Moche and Chan Chan ruins, which were really cool. Kate studied these cultures in undergrad, so she was happy to return to the dig sites ten years later, and even happier to discover that there was a new museum at Huaca de la Luna.

Huaca del Sol and the village as viewed from Huaca de la Luna. Moche

The 'nesting walls' built every 100 yrs. Huaca de la Luna - Moche culture

The tombs and 'fishnet' ventilation at the largest mud city in the world. Chan Chan - Chimu culture

Peruvian semi-hairless dog. His body temp is 40C!

Trujillo Plaza De Armas

We also got to enjoy a 5-in-1 DVD called Hombres Peligroso (Dangerous Men) on the 18h ride to Guayaquil, which started off with Cyborg, (starting Jean Claude Van Dam), and continued with Sylvester Stallone in Cobra.

After almost four days of bus travel, we finally arrived in Riobamba, where we planned to make a summit attempt on the mighty Chimborazo.  Besides being the highest mountain in Ecuador at 6,300 m, it is also the point on the Earth's surface that is farthest from the center.  In hindsight I think we were a bit haughty to try and summit this mountain without proper acclimatization.  We assumed that since we had on average been above 3,000 m for the past month that we would be acclimated, but failed to take onto account that Chimborazo base camp was at 4,800 m and the highest we had been since Aconcagua was 4,750 m.  Needless to say, we both got altitude sick around 5,600 m and decided to turn around.  The good news is that even though we didn't summit we were still farther from the center of the Earth than the summit of Everest; score!

The most we saw of Chimborazo (from basecamp @4800m)

The mountain actually looks a little like Rainier

With our climb cut a bit short we decided to head to Baños de Santa Agua (our next destination) a day early, and so we once again boarded another bus and watched a bootlegged (i.e. filmed in the theater) version of Hangover 4.

Baños is known for being a high adventure town and we were excited to have set aside four full days there, but we were also exhausted from months of constant traveling and were feeling the need for a break.  Fortunately, fate was kind enough to guarantee some rest days for us as I ended up hurting my knee on a swing after a long hike on our first day.  We finally take it easy for a few days; venturing out of our sweet airbnb pad for groceries and little else.

Baños from above

The site of Jeff's undoing

The view from our patio in Baños

We had a nice time being idle. Time flew by quickly and before we knew it, we were back on a bus again.  This time the bus took us back to Guayaquil so we could catch a flight to our final destination, the Galapagos Islands!!!