Loja, Ecuador
March 29th, 2009
View the trip so farWe arrived in Loja around 9am yesterday, which was nice. The first thing we did after checking into the hostel was to look for info regarding Peru. Jens had lost my Peru Lonely Planet guide somewhere a day or two ago. I spoke to a travel agent and decided on a route to take. Eight hours, eight bucks, (the price of the trip here seems to equate to the number of hours you will be on the bus), to Piura Peru. I was only able to find one hostel online there, so I will check it out when I get there.
Loja is a lot bigger than Zamora, and feels just as safe. We spent the day taking care of day to day things, laundry, re-organizing, you know, the normal stuff. We walked around and checked the town out. Its pretty nice. We tried finding a nice place for dinner last night, since it is my birthday today, and I wanted something other than rice, beans, soup, and meat. Everyplace that we tried to go was either closed or no longer around, so we ended up having dinner at this ¨pizzeria¨ and had lasagna. We then went to a bar and had a few drinks, and headed back to the hostel because our stomachs were not feeling too well. Not sure what we ate, but I didn´t have a fun night last night. I am feeling a lot better today.
The plan was to stay one more night. I would head out to Peru and Jens would head out to the farm that he will be working on for a month. However last night when he called them, he found out that there were no buses, and that the roads where really bad, due to the rain the night before, and that he would have to leave today and catch a ride from some people. After breakfast he headed out. I went to the bus terminal and bought my ticket to Peru, and just hung around town. I had a really nice birthday by myself enjoying Loja.
I leave tomorrow morning at 7am.
Farewell Ecuador. I spent more time here than I imagined, becuase it was a great place to visit. I can easily spend my three months here, but its time to move on.
