Into Ecuador

From Lima we bombed it up the coast.  It's mostly desert so there's not much reason to stop so much.  The road is pretty flat so we managed to do 500km in one day (compared to the 200km a day we would manage on Bolivia's winding mountain passes).  One of our overnight stops was in Huanchaco, where we were able to camp near the beach and wake up to the sound of the waves.  We spent the next day sunbathing on the beach while we waited for our laundry.  That was a tough day.

We'd been um-ing and ah-ing about where to spend Christmas - Ecuador or Peru.  After all the trouble we had getting in to Peru, I was a bit worried about leaving in case we had trouble getting back in again.  But it seemed a waste spending a week or more in one place when we could be exploring another country.  So we headed inland to the Macará border crossing - the frontier is just a bridge over a river, Peruvian immigration is on one side and Ecuadorian on the other side.  

We had no problems at all on either side: Peru stamped us out and kept the van's entry permit, Ecuador stamped us in and accepted our notarised documents for the van.  We're now working our way up through the middle of the country.  We've booked a couple of nights in a suite at a hotel near Quito for Christmas.  We're back to around 200km a day though because we're in the highlands again!