The green highlands of Ecuador

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  Cuenca, Ecuador
Monday, November 28, 2011

Just to let you all know we have arrived safe and sound in Cuenca in Ecuador. The journey was as expected long, and also an adventure.
Details will follow shortly together with the blog about Cuenca, but as we only just got round to publishing Trujillo blog and are talking about the boarder crossing we wanted to let you all know we made it!

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The boarder crossing to Ecuador....
We got the nightbus from Trujillo to Piura. We arrived there before schedule and very early in the morning (04:00am)! The office of the buscompany for the next part of the journey was not open at this time of the morning. So we waited a couple of hours in the busterminal of a different company that was open. At 06:00am we started walking towards the office of the next buscompany, but when we got there the market people around said that the office wouldn't open until 09:00am!

So we got a taxi to the main square in Piura and waited for the first cafe to open so we could have breakfast. Then we headed back to the busterminal and we were very pleased there were seats available on the first bus to Loja in Ecuador leaving at 09:30am!

The boarder crossing was another one of these little stations in the middle of nowhere. After the procedures we got back on the bus and continued our journey to Loja. We decided to stay a night in Loja to break the trip up, otherwise it would be an unbelievable long journey. The next day we were able to catch a bus to Cuenca. So we finally arrived in Cuenca around 16:30pm on Sunday afternoon. We had set off from our hostel in Piura at 21:30pm on Friday evening!

A very very long journey. But also very interesting. The views and the landscape along the way were beautiful!! Ecuador is more mountainous and a lot greener than the north of Peru.

Cuenca is a lovely town with many picturesque churches. It would have been even nicer if it didn't rain so much! It was pouring when we arrived. Then eased off a bit in the evening but never really stopped. Then the following morning it was a bit chilly, early afternoon it got really hot! And then suddenly it clouded over and around 14:30pm it started raining again. This time a real storm with thunder and lightning! And again it didn't stop all evening...

So we decided it is time to move on to Riobamba. Bought a busticket and then found out that the trainride which was the main reason we want to go to Riobamba is no longer departs from Riobamba but from Alausí! So what to do now...

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Old Cathedral	New Cathedral	Inside the new Cathedral	Beautiful stained glass in New Cathedral

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