San Ignacio and La Balsa

An early rise as we had a long journey ahead from Jaen in Peru to Ecuador. We took a taxi collectivo (taxi which does not leave until it has 5 passengers in total) at 5am and drove for about 3 hours onto San Ignacio (first hour was paved, the last 2 were a collection of pot holes and mud). From there we took a moto-taxi (similar to a tuk-tuk) downtown, where our rucksacks were almost grabbed from the taxi as there were a few eager taxi drivers wanting to take us to the border town of La Balsa, another 2 hours north. As we had left early, we decided to have breakfast in town first, much to the disappointment of many taxi drivers. As we were having our breakfast, one of the drivers parked his car in front of the cafe (with 3 passengers on board already) and decided to wait for us to finish our breakfast. We took it easy and made clear that we were in no hurry to leave. It did not seem to bother the driver:-) After 20 minutes, we were ready to leave and were told to get into the trunk with our bags. Well, we have gone through many painful journeys by public transport in the past months, but there was no way we were going into the trunk for another 2 hours on an unpaved road. So the driver told one of his passengers to move into the trunk, he did not seem to mind, and we took off. Around the corner we picked up another passenger (we were now with 4 in the back, 1 in the trunk and 2 on the passengers seat) and hit the road. You would think there were enough passengers on board, but the driver decided to pick up two more, who went into the trunk.. The journey was quite impressive as it took us passed coffee ´plantations´ (each family owns some land on which they grow coffee, most of it for export) and beautiful scenery. After two hours we reached the border town of La Balsa (10:30am), nothing more than 4 restaurants and an immigration office. We had our passports stamped and had to wait for a truck to pick us up on the other side of the bridge (Ecuador) at 12:30. So we had a coffee and crossed the bridge into Ecuador, where we had our passport stamped again.