After Puyo - the need to move quickly through our planned itinerary became apparent and although there were several more places we wanted to visit in the south of Ecuador we realised which would need to prioritise and focus on ensuring we kept moving so we would make some important sights further down the track.
This was unfortunate but inevitable as even though some of the best times we had were off the beater track a little and we had plenty of fun bumbling our way through with broken Spanish in the slightly less tourist oriented places there were a few others that we wanted to visit in Peru that were "not negotiable" (e.g. Cusco, Nazca, Arequipa, Titicaca)and we realised we would have to hurry along to get to them.
We travelled from Banos to Riobamba, passing the famous volcano "Chimobrazo". Again, like Cotapaxi we got some terrific views of it, but decided not to trek or climb any closer to it mainly due to time constraints. We stayed in the Hotel "Tren Dorado" which was very conveniently located near the train station from which we were intending to catch the "Devil's nose train". This train had been the subject of much discussion amongst fellow travellers as rumours were rife of foreigners who had been riding on the roof (as was a strong part of the attraction) had been seriously injured and therefore this was no longer allowed.
Not being able to ride on the roof was not deterent enough for us to miss the apparently beautiful ride, but as it turned out for us after lining up twice a the ticket office we were informed that in fact the train wasn't even running the particular day were there due to mechanical failure. (They had not been sure about this the first few times we asked and we had to bide a few hours between visits waiting for updates.)
We took the bus to Cuenca (which folloed a similar route to the train anyway - and had magnificent views) the second biggest city in Ecuador, it was vibrant and interesting. We visited the main town square and a beautiful cathedreal where we made a wish and burned a candle. The hotel Milan we stayed in was noisy and overpriced though it did have cable TV and was showing a favourite movie of mine "Good Night and Good Luck" with George Clooney.
We headed on from Cuenca to Lajos early in the morning where we spent a few hours looking around. It was a nice place, obviously wealthier than many of the places we had visited in the north. We decided not to stay though and jumped on a night bus heading for Piura in Peru.
The border crossing was not too complicated but was time consuming because they were closed when we arrived so we had to sit around waiting for them to open. The immigration official was there in his office and sat at his desk looking at the Internet while we queued outside his window tired and freezing waiting for the clock to tick over (almost an hour later).
Something rather strange was going on with an official looking car that seemed to have an alarm going off every fifteen minutes or so. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on, but a uniformed man approached the car from time to time - seemed to be deliberately setting off the alarm by banging on the window and then going away leaving it screaming.
After about 45 minutes later he went over to the car, got in it and drove it away. Surely he wasn't making the noise just to keep those in the bus trying to get some sleep awake ? We couldn't work it.
It crossed our mind that a competent travel writer like Paul Theroux or Ted Simon would have been delighted by the amusing anecdote it would give them to tell - for us, we were cold, tired, impatient and annoyed.
It was at this stop we first met Dan - A german from Munich who had been studying in Cambridge and was holidaying before starting his first job in London and Ellen from the Netherlands. We ran into Dan many times over the next couple of weeks.
In Piura we had some breakfast from a street stall, spent some time walking around a market - then jumped on the next bus bound for Trujillo.
It was very interesting to see the change of landscape - after weeks in the mountains we were now on the coast. The desert scape was arid and would have been beautiful in its own way if not for its allocated use as a rubbish dump.
We arrived in Trujillo and made our way to our Hostal - "Casa Clara".
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