How to get from Qutio to Peru was the biggest challenge we had faced so far on our journey. We had to be in Chile for our flight to Brazil (for the carnival) by January 27th and it was already January 11th. Flights between the two countries are remarkable expensive – the cheapest we found was over £350 and we met an American girl who had paid in excess of $400 – so that option was clearly out of the window. We did some research into international buses and found that they were over 24 hours from Quito to northern Peru. Again, we wrote this option off as the thought of that long on a bus was depressing, especially after our prior to experienced of Ecuador’s bus system. Little did we know we had many of these long bus journeys in store in the not so distant future.

The only logical option therefore was to travel to Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second city, located in the south of the country 8 hours south of Quito and 3 hours north of the border. We travelled during the day from Quito’s south terminal – Quitumbe – with a company named ‘Ecuador’ and it took 10 hours as opposed to the 8 they advertised, pretty standard for this part of the world. The bus was very basic but only costing $10 we didn’t expect much more. Taking what seemed like the long route through the hills rather than the main road probably added to journey time but then again, maybe this was the main road in a south american country.

We arrived in Guayaquil and the bus terminal which resembles a cross between an airport and a mall. It has everything you could want there except a cinema, that we know of, it would not surprise us one bit to find one hidden away somewhere inside. It was extremely late and our stomachs were growling so we made for the food court, ate a very average meal and caught a taxi into the city. We stayed at Hotel Suites Madrid, which were expensive even for Ecuador’s standards but it was so late we didn’t have the patience to argue or look for another room.

We rose next morning as late as possible as we knew sleep would be hard to come by the next night as we had planned to take a night bus to the Peruvian town of Mancora. We checked out, leaving our bags at the hotel and made for Guayaquil’s newest development and apparent pride of the city – the waterfront, also known as Maceon 2000. The sun was scorching that day and the heat almost unbearable. We both wished to be back in the cool climate of Quito again. Guayaquil’s pride and joy was overall extremely underwhelming and over rated. We arrived what was a walkway spanning the side of an unimpressive riverside, and strolled up and down. It runs parallel to the main road with the opposite side full of ugly high rise buildings. We passed a cinema and a few expensive restaurants as well as a memorial to Simon Bolivar but not much else of interest to a few tourists.

After a short walk we grabbed some sandwiches and another for the night bus and opted to head to the bus terminal/mall as Guayaquil had not made a great impression. The city served as a good break up point for what can prove to be a long journey but we would advise against planning more than one day here as there is really not much to see or do that is worthwhile. You would be much better of spending extra time in Quito or another nearby town, or like us if we had our time again, take the long bus.

By 3pm we were again sat in the food court and making use of the free wifi to stream TV from Netflix. We had been advised to use the company ‘CIVA’ so we booked a ticket on their 9pm international bus for Mancora. 9pm soon came as we couldn’t take our eyes of the newest documentary taking the world by storm ‘Making a Murderer’ so we made our way up to bus, we had paid $25 dollars ($8 extra for premium seats) and were both instantly ecstatic with what we found.

The bus was a double decker with only 15 seats downstairs which resembled the type of business class seats found on airplanes. They reclined 150 degrees and came with pillows, blankets and dinner. We settled in, watched a film on the iPad and time flew by. We stopped at the border around 1am and that took over two hours as the queue spread out the door and down the side of the road. Finally stamped out of Ecuador and into Peru we rejoined the bus and fell into a deep sleep until we were woken at 6am in our destination. The most luxurious bus journey we had both ever been on and a hundred times better than the previous night buses we had undertaken here and in our travels through South East Asia.

There are many bus companies that run this route and all with varying prices and reputations. We had heard bad things about several of the companies so decided to pay a little bit extra for a recommended one to ensure we had to safest and smoothest journey. The journey on the whole was brilliant, we didn’t feel unsafe or that our belongings were at risk (which many people report feeling or even having something stolen) and we would highly recommend this company for any future travellers attempting this border crossing.

We hope that this is as helpful as some of the blog posts we read before making our journey and good luck. Read about our first Peruvian stop in the small town of Mancora in our next post..

Jonny & Hayley 🙂