Lima, Peru

Hi everybody, we made it to Lima. We left Quito on Wednesday night, and actually made it there early. Ecuador´s bus system is less ´comodo´ than Peru because most people do not travel by bus...therefore they invest less in it. That bus ride was cool, though, after the sun came up at least, because we got to drive by hours of banana plantations. REALLY cool to see how they grow bananas.



Anyway, that bus ride ended about 12 hours later in Huaquiles, Ecuador, right on the border. You can tell that you are close to Peru because the lush, green, beautiful jungle sort of disappears more or less instantly into brown, dry, flat desert. We got our passports stamped to get out of Ecuador, and then took a taxi ride through no man´s land to Tumbes, Peru, where we hired a man to pile all of our luggage onto his little cart attached to his bike, for $5 (We argued him down from $8, but after seeing that huge pile, I felt a little bit bad for him...maybe he really deserved those extra $3). We sort of walked along side him, through this extremely busy street market full of bananas, pineapples, other fruits, monkeys, etc, etc, etc, and full of people and these little motorcycles with extra seats in them (´trici taxis´). Whatever, eventually we got stamped into Peru, ate a lunch somewhere (choices: ceviche with a large, whole fish, or liver soup and chicken), and made it to the economy bus (semi cama instead of totally reclining seats) for the next leg. So we pulled into Lima this morning around 10.30 am, a 35 hr ride.



After hanging out in various places for a bit, we eventually split up--Sal, M, The Cousin, and Maicol are staying at the R´s house, where everyone is arriving from everywhere for the wedding plus Christina and Lety are here! We have been having fun, ...we went shopping for wedding presents, and Lety asked for (guess what) a coffee and ended up making it because the guy at the cafetera couldnt make it right...HA. The others are staying at the Flores, and we havent really seen any of them since, except Bob who dropped in for a minute.



Thats all for now, wedding tomorrow!