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Ecuador Redeems Itself in Our Eyes

Two night buses in a row sounds a bit crazy, and if you’d asked us four months ago we would have said that wasn’t a good plan. However, we suddenly found ourselves on a tight schedule despite having had four months to travel and we needed to make some quick progress. Jess’s sister is meeting us in Colombia on May 8th which means we need to get to Quito in time for our flight to Bogotá on May 6th. Since we have friends in Quito we want to spend some time with them, so we’re shooting to be there by May 3rd, and Quito is three night buses from Chachapoyas which we left on April 28th. In addition, we really wanted to visit Cuenca on our way to Quito so we could see something new in Ecuador. Since Eric really doesn’t like only spending one night in a hostel (moving every day), we needed to be in Cuenca by April 30th. That meant two night buses; one from Chachapoyas to Chiclayo arriving at 5:30am and one that evening from Chiclayo to Cuenca departing at 5:30pm.

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Bolivia Hop to Peru

We heard about Bolivia Hop from Sophia, the woman we met on our walking tour in Sucre, and we thought it sounded like a fun way to see Lake Titicaca while crossing the border from Bolivia to Peru. Bolivia Hop is a recent expansion of Peru Hop and so far only goes to Copacabana and La Paz. Peru Hop has seven destinations in southern Peru and you can hop on and off along the route and stay as long as you like in between.

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San Pedro de Atacama

We have a week before we need to be in Bolivia for our WWOOFing post, so we decided to go back to Chile to explore the Atacama desert for a few days. There are three bus companies: Pullman Bus, Andesmar, and Gemini, that each run three trips to and from Atacama per week. The bus costs 1600 pesos ($42.11) per person no matter which company you go with. We took a 7am bus on Friday morning with Pullman Bus. The bus ride was uneventful, but our arrival in Chile was marked by some of the now familiar challenges of exploring a new place.

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Bus del Infierno

Our two weeks in Paraguay are over and we are a little sad to be leaving. While we’re not sure we’d use valuable vacation time to make a special trip to Paraguay, we are really glad we came here and would wholeheartedly recommend it to other travelers.

Our next destination is Salta. There are no direct buses to Salta from Asunción, so we have to change buses in Resistencia. On the map, Resistencia looks very far out of the way since Salta is a little north of Asunción. In fact, it looks so far out of the way we explored other options including crossing to Clorinda, just across the river from Asunción and catching a bus there. There is a city bus to Clorinda, but it can take two hours to cross as it winds through all the city streets first. There is also a ferry from Puerto Itá Enramada in Asunción, to Puerto Pilcomayo just outside Clorinda. Allegedly there’s a shuttle into town, but if you missed it, you’d be 10km from anywhere. The final argument is there’s only one bus from Clorinda to Salta (leaving at 1:50pm), but it goes through Resistencia anyway, so it’s a lot easier to just get a bus from the bus terminal in Asunción to begin with.

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