The guy at the hostel reception arranged for the coach company to phone us to confirm the bus time. They would call around 11-12. We decided to wait up, so ordered a saucepan of hot chocolate and packed our bags. Around 11.30 the reception guy came in to confirm the time. It was 4.00am!!! We were hoping for 10.00am at least.

We set the alarm to get a little sleep before we headed off. 4 snoozes later, we finally managed to get up and get a cab at 3.30, we checked-in at the ticket office and waited for the bus.

When the bus arrived some Ecuadorian guy was in our seat, so we had to move him. After much dubiousness and a spell of words in Spanish he finally moved. While other passengers had the same issue, we got snug in our recliner seats and fell asleep.

Waking up, most of the people get off. It's incredible how much baggage they have, it's like they are moving house. I check the time, only 4 hours have passed, great.....another 30 to go!!!

After a breakfast stop we head on. Movies play with dubbed Spanish and Spanish concerts. The passengers love this music they sing and clap. Nothing the IPhone can't drowned out!!!.

We pass several farms where the farmers are burning the base of the crops. The flames are huge and smoke covers the sky.

12hrs in we stop off for lunch at a roadside restaurant. We both get stake, rice and beans with an orange and it only comes to $6, about £4.

Hopefully our stomachs can handle it. We get more drinks for the journey and head on. Reading the Lonely Planet, to work out where to stay when we arrive.

We arrive at the Ecuadorian immigration control and after a lengthy wait get stamped out of Ecuador.

Navigating our way through Mancora. We eventually get to the Peru border. We get stamped in at 9.20pm and change up our remaining dollars.

Back on the bus, time to sleep. 19 hours to go....

The ladies behind us start singing again in Spanish and clapping, that topped off with the pure stench from the toilet is driving me crazy,

Finally we stop for lunch, I try to play safe as its all in Spanish and order the soup. Half way through eating I discover the soup contains chicken feet, cow intestine and either cow brain or liver!!

Back on the bus, i hope the soup doesn't make me ill. We end up watching some weird Japanese movie dubbed in Spanish. It's so bizarre. North Peru is not what I expected. We are coming down the coast. Inland is a sandy hill terrain, a dust desert.

About 7pm the coach joins a convoy of other coaches that spirals down the mountain in to Lima. Lima lit up like a metropolitan oasis in the middle of the desert terrain. Atop one of the mountains that overlooks Lima stands a huge cross, all lit up, standing like the christ the redeemer. We finally arrive after 37hrs. As there is so much dust I notice that most of the cars have reflective stickers over them and most buildings carry the national flag.

We join up with Ray an America guy (ex US navy) we met on the bus and get a hostel together. Its over our budget but we think we need to treat ourselves. We all then head to KFC after arranging our bus tickets out to Nazca for tomorrow night.