Lima to Colombia via Equador.

Our next destination was Lima where Beadle´s trip ended and he flew back to London. We weren´t expecting much from Lima and so only stayed one night before a massive bus journey from Lima through Ecuador and on to Colombia. The whole journey was very grueling but as we had not planned to go to Colombia originally, we hadn´t enough notice to buy a cheap flight ticket.

We spent the next week on a bus staying in random little towns and crossing the most remote and needlesly complicated border crossing going from Peru in to Ecuador. From Lima we had to travel to Chiclayo, Jaen, San Ignacio, get a 3 hour taxi to some little town I forget the name of (which I can´t find on google map either it´s that remote) to get another 3 hour taxi to the border town of La Balsa in Colombia. I can´t find La Balsa on google map either or a recognised road although these were dirt roads through the mountains which may explain it. From here we then had to get a truck to Zumba which was delayed due to a land slide that put 10ft of dirt in our way. Then when we did arrive in Zumba we had to wait for 8 hours to get a bus to Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba also does not appear to be on google map but Loja is which was 1 hour north of Vilcabamba. From here it was on to Cuenca, Riobamba, Quito, the border town of Tulcan over to Ipiales in Colombia and on to Popayan where we did finally spend a day looking around the very scenic city.