...and into deepest darkest Peru

well i have left Ecuador just when it looks like they may do better than England in the world cup!!! Football fever well and truely took off just before we left it was quite amazing just how popular it is over here.
Our passage into Peru wasn´t just any border crossing, we decided to take a new route through the mountains/jungle which meant that after 12 hours of travelling over unmade roads we had gone about 100miles!. Our journey began in Vilcabamba at 6am when we got on a local bus travelling south, we got about 45 minutes into our journey before the road surface had become mud. At midday, 6 hours later we arrived at our first town and time to change buses, this time for one with no sides and only wooden beaches inside destined for the border town of La Balsa. At La Balsa we had to go through Ecuadorean immigration, this was a friendly man sat behind a make shift desk in a wooden hut on the side of a dirty track! We then walked across the bridge that separated Ecuador from Peru through 'no mans land' towards the collection of huts on the other side. ¨Bienviendos a Peru¨ read the sign that welcomed us, now all we haveto do is officially check in to the country, how difficult can that be?
The first 'building' we went into was customs, no nothing to declare- we need to see the guy next door at immigration, so off we wander. The next guy tells us that we need to down to a building beside the river to fill in a form. again we wander off along the dusty track into the bright sunshine. At the next building we are indeed in the correct place, we need to fill in a form and take it to the first office. Once again in the first office our forms are stamped and we are told we must return them to the office beside the river, so much to the amusement of the local children we return to the building by the river and are given our entry visas. We now cramp into a taxi with several locals and head for the nearest town which is only a 2 hour drive away! Along the way we travel down perhaps only a few miles of tarmac roads, the chief purpose it seems for roads in this area is as a flat surface for drying recently picked coffee beans, so we swerve our way towards San Ignacio around piles of coffee beans and huge potholes and arrive at 6.30pm after exactly 12 hours of travelling. very tired.