On Friday, we were to travel to Lima for a few days before we headed north to Mancora. The bus journey to Lima was to be 21 hours which doesn't particularly fill me with any excitement although I'm sure Beth's eyes light up at a long bus journey as this is the perfect opportunity for a lengthy sleeping session.
We weren't leaving until 2 so we packed up all of our stuff, got some supplies for the journey and then checked out of our room. After getting to the designated bus station, we checked our bags in and awaited the call to board the bus. We had paid a bit extra for VIP seating and were hoping for a pretty comfortable journey. As we were waiting to board the bus, we were reassured as both of the drivers and the attendant were breathalysed before every person who got on the bus was filmed for some reason. There was also a couple who were getting rather intimate sitting in front of us and the girl kindly gave the guy a huge hickey on his neck just before we left. We boarded the bus and were delighted to find that we had individual tv's in the backs of the seats and we even had wifi!! This delight lasted approximately 6 hours into the journey before the journey took a real bad turn.
Just as we were being served dinner, the bus stopped and as we were concentrating on eating, we didn't really pay too much attention. However, after we hadn't moved for an hour we started to think something was up and when the driver turned the engine off to stop the air conditioning and tv feed our hearts sank. Unfortunately, neither the drivers or the attendant bothered to tell any of us what was going on so we decided to try to get some sleep in the increasing heat due to the lack of fresh air on the bus. Eventually, the sun started to rise and at around 4.30am the attendant decided to tell us what was going on and informed us that there had been a few landslides on the road which were being cleared during the night. It's just one of them unfortunate things that seems to happen a lot in South America but it would have been nice to be told what was going on. So after about 10
hours at a standstill we were eventually on the move again but with the promise of another 15 hours on the bus. The rest of the journey wasn't too bad with only another half hour stop when a road was shut as workers were replacing the Tarmac and a half hour to grab some food in Nasca.
We eventually arrived in Lima at midnight and hastily got ripped off on the taxi ride to our hostel. We were just happy to finally be here and eager to get off a bus. In total, it had taken 33 hours to reach Lima; we could have flew from England to Australia and been well into the journey back for that amount of time. Anyway, we found our hostel relatively easily and found a 24 hour supermarket to grab some food and drink before having a hot shower and hitting the sack.
We had a lie in on Sunday and decided to have a walk down to the Pacific Ocean when ready. We have finally crossed a continent and went from the Atlantic in Rio to the Pacific in Lima. This has been achieved through some epic (and not so epic) bus journeys and one flight!!!
After having a Starbucks, we decided to look round the shopping centre which overlooks the ocean as I'm desperate to get a South American football top. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get anything but we did find a cinema which was charging about 90p each to see films today. Always up for a bargain, we bought tickets to see Rush which was excellent and was even in English with Spanish subtitles. It was bout 5pm by the time we got out of the cinema so we headed to the supermarket for some food, a couple of beers for me and some alcopops for Beth. We are currently sitting on the roof terrace in the hostel with a few drinks and listening to some music. Now for another 18 hour bus journey to Mancora where we have had to change our accommodation at the last minute due to our hotel cancelling. Hopefully it's a blessing in disguise.