After many hours of travelling I am back in Peru! – But back tracking a bit. On the 14th I arrived In Banos, a town full of hot springs, waterfalls, adventure sports, surrounded by jungle. Every block has at least one tour company trying to get you to sign up for bungee jumping, rafting, cannoning, jungle expeditions… etc. Since I hadn’t gotten to see any of the Ecuadorian jungle I decided to go on a one day jungle tour. (This is when I should have booked it for another day, and registered for my upcoming school semesters- and now all the good classes are full) Anyway, our first stop was a money rescue center. This place had different types of monkeys, and other animals such as anteaters, just wandering around and we were able to pick them up and play with them. It was so awesome, they were so cute and friendly, well except for one who climbed on a man who had his kid on one of those backpack carrier things and stole the kids lollypop! He actually ran away with it in his mouth, just like in the movies. At our next stop we visited a native community of about 90 people- all one family. And from there we all got into a canoe and went for a stroll down the river for 30 minutes to our lunch destination. Lunch was at a riverside campground sort of place that you would stay at if you did a 2 or 3 day tour. After lunch we went for an hour’s walk to a waterfall where we could go swimming. Along the way our guide pointed out many different medicinal plants and the different types of bugs you can eat if you’re stranded in the jungle. He also showed us a tree that has the ability to move 3meters over its lifetime by growing new roots in certain directions. After the walk we hiked up 230 steps to a “mirador” or lookout. Here we had an amazing view of the river and the jungle that we had just been exploring. Overall a great day!
The next day me and a friend went for full body massages and manicures at a place in town (for only $20) before I had to start my journey to Loja – which is where I would be catching another bus to Peru.
Not so simple. From Banos I had to take a bus for just over an hour to a town called Ambato, where there are suppose d to be many bussing going to Loja passing through. Well, sometimes lonely planet can be wrong. I got there and the official company did not have a bus until 5:45am the next day. I walked down the street a bit to another company and asked (in Spanish) if they knew anything about bussing to Loja. There were two other people waiting for the same bus as me at this company and they said one should be along in about ten minutes. Well, ten South American minutes went by, no bus. Finally one comes and it’s already overflowing with people so we aren’t able to get on that. Also, I might point out, we aren’t at a bus station, we’re on the side of the road with all these random people trying to catch busses. We have to wait another hour and a half (on the street) for the bus, one comes by and doesn’t take us, another comes by and doesn’t even stop. Finally around 9 a bus lets us on. However, they are also completely full and there’s already two guys standing. We slept in the aisle for the majority of 10 hours. One thing that was cool was while we were waiting we just ate street food, sat on the street that smelled like pee, listened to music from a shop and a guy trying to sell the new Harry Potter movie. So authentically South American.
We arrived in Loja around 7 in the morning were able to catch another 10 hour bus almost right away going to Piura.
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