Border Crossing, Ecuador to Peru (Aug 2006)

Cuenca is just as beautiful as everyone told me it would be. It also happens to be really boring, an intensely Catholic city that rolls up the streets at dusk. Oh, it’s lovely to wander about during the day, gawking at architecture and wandering through the museums, but there’s no way it has enough to hold my interest for the next three days before I head back to Quito to fly home.

After three weeks in the Andes, wearing sweaters and demanding extra blankets in July, I am ready for something different, it is summer and I am in South America and I want a beach. Problem is, the closest beach in Ecuador involves almost two days on a bus to get there. Mancora, on the other hand, is ironically much closer—it just means I have to cross the border into Peru.

I’m nervous about this. Somehow, magically, I’ve managed to bump along here in the third world, all by myself and not understanding any Spanish. Ecuador’s good for that, prices are generally fixed, people are generally nice, and it’s generally safe. None of that holds true for Peru, as I’ve heard from travelers coming up north from Macchu Picchu. To compound the matter, I don’t have a guidebook for Peru—I’ve been clutching to my Ecuador Rough Guide as if it is the Alpha and Omega of my trip, it’s filled with notes and color-coded shiny stars and sticky pieces of paper, this has been my Bible for the past three weeks and I can’t imagine venturing into a new place without it.

But it is really boring in Cuenca.

The first thing I have to check is the immunization information—I didn’t need a yellow fever shot to come to Ecuador, and I don’t need one to enter Peru from Ecuador, but I might well need one to re-enter Ecuador from Peru, internet information is a little fuzzy on this and I don’t want to get stuck there when I have a plane to pick up in Quito. The woman at the tourist information booth on Cuenca’s main square assures me that I will be fine. I question her again, she’s not a guidebook but she seems convinced, even though she hesitated at first. If I get stuck in Peru I am going to blame her.

I met some German girls who had come up from Peru a week before, and I borrow their Lonely Planet, wishing all the time it was a Rough Guide, I trust those guides more than the LP. Their guide has two pages on Mancora and how to get there, so I take a few notes on the bus transfers required and write down a couple of hostel names. There are a couple of ways to manage this border crossing, everything seems to indicate that I should go through Huaquillas and there are a couple of transit options. I am tempted to go the total shoestring route, local buses all the way with multiple transfers and a couple of combi taxis in the mix. Now that would be an adventure.

Ultimately though, I chicken out. I am tempting the gods quite enough by striking out from my Ecuadorian safe space, I will take the luxury bus. I have to come back to Cuenca anyway, and I don’t want to take the whole backpack with me across the border, I’m tired of carrying it and also the bigger the bag, the more vulnerable you are, so I buy a small duffel bag in the market and pack for a beach weekend, just a bathing suit, flip flops, towel, and a couple of tank tops. To the main Cuenca bus station and I’m off for the first leg, Cuenca to Machala.

Machala is still in Ecuador, so this is the easy part, we pull into the central bus station and I learn that I have an hour or so until the luxury bus leaves. I buy a quimbolita from a street vendor, I love these things it’s become my favorite bus snack, a dense cornbread wrapped in a banana leaf and sometimes filled with meat. There’s an internet café across from the bus station, so I go over to see if I can avoid backtracking this entire bus route on my way back, maybe there’s a hopper flight from Tumbes to Cuenca, no luck it seems I’d have to fly from Tumbes to Lima to Quito to Cuenca and that’s just ridiculous, maybe if I’d brought my pack with me but I didn’t so I am resigned to busing it all the way back after this little weekend adventure is over.

Time to board, and the luxury bus is really quite luxurious indeed, it’s a double decker with reclining seats and footrests, there are TVs playing movies and it’s comfortably air-conditioned. It’s about twice as expensive as the other options, but the bonus here is that the bus will take me all the way through to Peru, making the necessary border immigration stops, rather than getting dropped off on the Ecuador side and having to manage the crossing myself, then picking up transport on the Peru side. Huaqillas is supposed to be one of the easier border checkpoints but as at any border, you’re vulnerable and exposed and there’s a whole battalion of people hovering to take advantage of that.

We reach the border and the bus stops. I don’t really know what I need to do so I just follow the slightly impatient lady from the bus company, and trail off into the station after everyone else. I’m the only gringo and I get in the wrong line, everyone else is waiting in the line for Ecuadorian or Peruvian nationals and I am obviously neither. The immigration official hands me a piece of paper, it’s in Spanish and so are his instructions, he grimaces at me wearily and waves me off to fill it out after a few failed attempts to explain it to me. I step uncertainly to the side and try to puzzle this out, and while I’m all apuzzled a local guy rushes up to me and says, “I will explain you, I will help you.” He takes it away from me, I was already halfway there with my name and passport number but he insists and I don’t have the wherewithal to reject his insistence, I’ve heard about this happening, he’s next going to insist that I give him money for assisting me but I just won’t, that’s my solution, and I’m just too confused by this whole process to stop him. I wish I spoke more Spanish.

All the paperwork is filled out now and the guy leaves while I get my passport stamped, maybe he was just being nice after all. I leave the office and head back to where the bus is waiting, no such luck here’s my new friend or really jackal as he should be known, or coyote and he is demanding that I give him twenty dollars. I wave him off but he follows, I laugh at his twenty dollar request, it’s an absurd amount of money for this part of the world. He did help me, though, so I give him two dollars just as that slightly impatient lady from the bus approaches, she’s seen what’s going on and she chases him off, guides me back to the bus, stupid gringo.

I’m a little shaken, I thought I was tougher than that but I was wrong, see what happens when I don’t have my guidebook? Thank god I decided to take the luxury bus.

Now that we’ve passed immigration, we have to actually cross the border. We can’t do that on the bus, so they drop us off in the town and point in the direction of Peru; they’ll pick us up on the other side. The area around the bridge is frenetic, merchants and food vendor stalls crunched up on top of each other and sideways in this dusty, hot town with nothing to recommend it other than it’s fortuitous position between countries. I’m meaner than I need to be, probably, as I snarl at everyone who tries to talk to me, tries to sell me something. Over a simple footbridge and now I’m here, I’ve arrived in Peru. I follow my fellow busmates and we board the bus again, the next stop is Peruvian immigration and for the next few hundred meters I am not anywhere officially, I have left Ecuador but am not yet in Peru.

Peruvian customs is much easier, and we get back on the bus and go on to Tumbes. From there I need to find a bus to Mancora, but I also need to get some solas, the local currency, all I have is dollars from Ecuador. There’s a guy on the bus with me and he has already guessed I’m headed to Mancora, where else would I be going on this bus from Machala to Tumbes, if I wanted to go to Lima or Cuzco from Ecuador I wouldn’t chosen a different route, maybe through Villacamba. He speaks pretty decent English and he’s very patient with my non-existent Spanish, I ask him where I can go to get solas and he looks at me, the earnest and inexperienced, perhaps slightly dim tourist, and says that I should go to the money exchanges. This is not terribly helpful.

I disembark in Tumbes. I don’t have a map of this town, no friendly hints as to the best or safest places to change money, and worst of all there are no central bus stations in Peru, the bus companies are all spread out around the city. The city I don’t have a map of. I have no idea where I’ll find my next bus to Mancora.

There are tuk-tuk drivers swarming the bus as we get off, they drive auto-rickshaws around the city as a cab alternative for short distances. I’m overwhelmed and mostly I just start saying “No” over and over again, have to get clear of these parasites. My new bus acquaintance directs me to one tuk-tuk driver, I don’t trust him really but what else am I going to do? I’m at the mercy of these people, I just want to get to my next bus as fast as possible.

I tell my driver that I want to find a money exchange and the bus to Mancora. He drives us around for a while, everything I wanted was probably within walking distance of where I got off the bus but I don’t know that for sure and I don’t know what direction it’s in. He insists on talking to me in Spanish even though I’ve explained repeatedly that I don’t understand. I change some money and then he takes me around to a bus company, he says this is the next bus to Mancora and I really have no choice but to believe him. I made a mistake though, we didn’t agree on a price before I got in and now he’s telling me that I owe him 20 solas, I don’t know anything about this place but I know that the going rate for a tuk-tuk ride in town is about 2 solas. It’s too late now though, maybe if I’d taken him up on his offer to be my Peruvian husband I wouldn’t be getting ripped off now.

I snarl at him, letting him know that at least I’m aware I’m getting ripped off, I may be a clueless gringa but I know that much. He leaves, and now I just want to get out of this place, it’s dusty and dirty and hot and these people suck. I go into the bus station and they tell me the next bus will leave for Mancora in 6 hours. What the hell am I going to do in Tumbes for 6 hours??

I don’t know where anything is here, I could choose to just hover close to this miserable bus company office for the next six hours waiting for the bus that will take two hours to get to Mancora, or I could venture forth all defenseless into the teeming flocks of tourist vultures that nest in Tumbes and try to find another way.

I’m not a particularly patient woman, so I venture forth, keeping careful track of how many blocks I’m going and what turns I’m taking so that if nothing else at least I can backtrack to the six hour wait if I have to. I find a couple of other bus companies, but no one is going to Mancora any sooner than the one I just left. I’m about to give up when I hear a tout shouting, “Mancora, Mancora!” It’s a combi taxi, which means it’s a minivan with people crammed into it, he’s going to Mancora and leaving right now. I go over and ask how much, it’s 6 solas and I climb in. I think that I’m the last one in because it’s so full, but no another two people and their boxes and bags squeeze in, I’m hunched into a corner in enforced fetal position and really damned glad that I don’t have my backpack right now.

We leave a few minutes later, and it’s a uncomfortable two hour drive down the PanAmerican Highway. Pretty though, with the desert-ish scrub out the left window and occasional glimpses of the Pacific out the left. Out of Tumbes at least and now these people seem nicer, I manage to tell them where I’m trying to go and when we get to Mancora at last they make sure that I’m pointed in the right direction to find my hotel, the one whose name I scribbled down from the Lonely Planet guide a few days ago.

I walk in, the hostel is right on the beach. They do have a room available, and I just go ahead and book it for the next three nights, for better or worse I’m staying here. Traumatic enough to get here and I am not going to bother with shopping around for a better or different hostel tomorrow, this place is right on the beach and that’s all I wanted really. I drop my bags in the room and then walk out, sinking into soft sand almost immediately. The Pacific is right there in front of me, and the hostel beachside bar has tables stretching almost to the water’s edge. I sit down, light a cigarette, order a mojito from the waitress who swings by, and watch the sun set into the ocean in Mancora.