In Vilcabamba I met Simone again, who was heading south, too. So we decided to travel together to Peru over the small border at La Balsa. Nice that I did not need to travel all alone. Thanks Simone for asking! I did not know that it would be such a small border…

We went to Zumba by bus first. From there you have to take a pickup to the border in La Balsa. Small roads in a nice mountain region. After arriving in La Balsa, we were greeted by a man sitting in shorts and shirt in front of one of the few houses. It turned out that he was the Ecuadorian border officer. We got our exit stamp and walked over the “Puente International Integration”. Once in Peru we found the Peruvian border officer in another small house. He had to interrupt his playing of ”Age of Empires” to give us our immigration stamps in the passport. We have been the only two border crossers in hours as there are not too many busses from Vilcabamba to Zumba. Never travelled such a small border checkpoint before. Funny!

The first night in Peru we spent in San Ignazio, a little town. A lot of Rikschas in the streets. Thought that I would find them in Asia but apparently they are used in South America, too. Next day was filled with a lot of bus and taxi rides again. At one point there was a police control. As our taxi driver did not have all necessary papers, he forced us (and two Peruvian passengers) to get out of the cab before the control and pass the control as “hikers”. Luckily, one of the Peruvians was telling the cops a story about being our hiking guide for a day trip, so we were allowed to pass, met the driver a few hundreds meters behind the check point and arrived with cab, driver and our luggage in Chachpoyas finally.

Greetings from Peru
Michael