Rather than paying the somewhat hefty $400 for a flight from Ecuador to Lima I decided to make the long journey by bus. I wasnt in any particualr hurry to get to Peru so I had plenty of time to break up the journey.

After a 12 hour overnight bus, which actually ended up taking 17 hours (!) I arrived in a small town called Loja, in southern Ecuador. In itself it is quite a nice little town, but there is not much to do sightseeing-wise and after one day I had pretty much explored it all. Fortunately I met a girl on the bus who I had coincidentally been to Cotopaxi with the previous weekend, so we managed to pass the day together somehow...And thank goodness for cable tv in the hotel because without that the second day would have been pretty tough. Having not seen tv for a good few months it was great to have some trashy english/american programmes to watch...movies, Cold Feet, Trinny & Susannah, Queen?s club tennis, the grand prix...and of course spanish league football - and why is that important...because it featured the main man of football David Beckham, winning the league before he heads off the the United States to earn even more money.

Other than that Loja was pretty uneventful. Except that when I did venture out to climb a hill for a better view of the town I was nearly killed by a stray dog! There are hundreds of stray dogs in Ecuador, wandering the streets and hanging around street corners, but usually they are fairly docile and not at all bothered by people. However for some reason this one took an immediate dislike to me and barked at me continually as I walked up the hill. But when I came back down it actually went for my throat and luckily there was someone else nearby to distract it. Heart pumping I decided the relative sanctuary of my cable tv was better!

So the next morning I was to complete the final part of my overland trip and cross the border into Peru. The bus ride to Piura was very scenic, through cloud forest and over the mountains. As we got further south the weather also started to improve, getting hotter and hotter, also helped by the reduction in altitude. By the time we reached the border after lunch the sun was beating down - a pleasant change.

And it was the same when I arrived in Piura. It is really an oasis in the middle of the desert, simply a town surrounded by dust and drenched in constant sunshine. I only had a day to explore here and that was plenty. It would have been better had many of the tourist sites been open, but the churches were all closed during the day, the one musuem was under construction and the other places recommended by Lonely Plant failed to exist. Thankfully the day was beautiful and sunny and my hotel had a roof terrace so I made the most of the sun and baked up on the roof for most of the afternoon.

In both Loja and Piura I was pretty much the only gringo in town. It?s kind of strange in Ecuador as despite the number of tourists who are definitely here, whenever you get on a bus or go anywhere outside the big cities, you rarely see another western face. Maybe it is because there are so many different buses or maybe I am just going to the wrong places(!) but after a while )I guess you get used to the shouts of "gringo gringo" as you walk down the street(!). You just smile and respond with something in spanish so they realise you are not as ignorant as they first thought. One of my particular favourites someone told me they had used when being ripped off on a bus was "I may be white but I am not stupid!" - a phrase I have learnt and keep for those special moments...