Loja, just passing through...

Shar and I enjoyed our time in Loja, short as it was. We literally blew into town, wandered around with all of our gear until we stumbled upon a restaurant that greeted us on the sidewalk and ushered us right on in to a nice open air court. Of course not one person spoke the least bit of English, but we were hungry and they had nice pictures of all of their dishes, so we communicated the best we could and got ourselves food, Coca Cola and bottled water. We were set! We were so stoked! Here we were in Loja, Ecuador, after 6 years of reading about, researching and just plain old day dreaming, we were here and felt right at home. We happily enjoyed our meal and consumed our Coke and water as we religiously consulted our Lonely Planet guide to get our bearings. By the time that we had finished our meal, we knew which direction that we needed to head in in order to reach the bus station. We thanked the very nice family that ran the restaurant and out the door we went to hike through Loja to the bus station.

  

  

The hike through Loja was very impressive. It was difficult to resist the urge to be the typical tourist and not take pictures of all the incredible surroundings. We knew we were better off staying focused on reaching the bus station and securing tickets to Vilcabamba, otherwise, we were stuck in Loja! As we approached a traffic circle with some impressive art work, we saw several buses roll by and knew that we were getting close.

After walking our way around the traffic circle, our goal was in sight! We could see the Loja bus station, and we had made it before the last buses ran. We hiked into the bus station passed armed guards and a multitude of locals trying to get transfers to their desired destinations and proceeded to the counter where we quickly purchased two tickets to Vilcabamba. We had about two hours before our bus was due to load, so off to find a bar and an ice cold cervaza! There was a nice bar just across the street from the bus station, so it would do for now. Much to our surprise, nice and clean with a friendly staff and .85 Pilsener grande, score!

We enjoyed our much earned cold beverage and back to the bus station we hiked. As we entered the station, we had to squeeze past a Militia fully armed with an Uzi and a Kevlar vest to reach our platform. As we cautiously slipped by he smiles and in a very friendly voice says, "Hola!". We smile and say Hola in return but keep walking quickly as we had a bus to catch and well, he had a gun. We found our bus without any problem and the driver actually came up to us and checked our ticket and helped us get on the right bus. As we were the first ones on, we were delighted to see a slice of home as we both laughed at a sticker of "Brain" from "Pinky and the Brain". We met a local lady who made every effort to communicate, despite our lack of Spanish. The bus filled about half full and away we went to Vilcabamba. We hope to spend more time in Loja next time as it seemed to be a very interesting city with a lot of history and music.

Next time, we finally get around to all those Cuenca pictures! We both agreed, that if we had not fallen head over heels in love with Vilcabamba, Cuenca would have been our home! We had a blast and are looking forward to putting stories to the pictures...