This Desert Life

After some imensely amusing arguements about seats on the bus, in which a Ecuadorian man threaten to call the police over a dispute about seat reservations we departed the Ecuador -Peru border and travelled for two hours through some impressively, expansive and vacuous desert land, strangley enough arriving at customs. Why customs is located two hours from the border baffled me - if anyone can throw some light on this, I would be most grateful.

Our first stopover in Peru, was two nights in the beautiful beach town of Mancora. Mancora is apparantly Peru's principle beach resort, which makes it all the more surprising that it was such a laid back little village. Being still relatively near the Equator the weather was perfect beach weather. The hotel/hostel we stayed in was a series of lovely wooden huts, and has Luke spent the majority of our time in Mancora in bed with a bug, I spent most of my time (when I wasn't mopping his brow) either relaxing in our hammock or swimming in the pool. Due to Luke's illness and my laziness, we missed the first drunken madness amongst our fellow travellers on our intrepid trip. I won't mention names, but the gossip I heard involved some nudity, some fist waving and teeth nashing, and security guard watching over a sleeping drunk by a pool til 4am.

Before and after his 24 hour bug Luke did manage to join me for Mancora's highlights. The first being a fantastic fish restaurant where we had huge steaks of fortuna a local fish, during a blackout. The second highlight was, for me, a highlight of our time in South America so far. Setting off at 7am Luke and I, along with three others and the lovely Intrepid guide Daniela, took a small boat with a captain and a whale expert out on to the pacific ocean, in search of whales.

And we weren't disappointed, we saw dolphins, turtles, sea lions, blue footed birds and pelicans, but the real highlight was the humback whale and it's baby. I'd like to say that it was my quick and brilliant photography which captured the beautiful animal's tail, but I will credit Jen, the lovely Kiwi travelling with us, the credit she deseres for her good photography. The trip was made all the better by the enthusiastic and knowledgable Chichi.

After a wonderful trip out on the boat, and a return trip in the odd but charming moto-taxi, we set off on a relatively painful 10 hour bus journey to Huanchanco. I had the only seat on the bus where you couldn't see the telly, but was sat under a very loud speaker. I was assured by others that Spanish dubbing didn't make Poltergiest 3 any better. The only stop the bus driver allowed was at a grubby bus station in the outskirts of a small town. There were two small shops, one of which you could only order through a barred windowed. That shoud have been enough of a clue as to the kind of area we were in, but if that wasn't enough, the hooded man with a knife who was shopping at the same time as us was.

Huanchaco, a traditional fishing village, come tourist destination, was our next destination on the Northern coast of Peru. With a lovely sandy beach and a sea dotted with traditional fishing boats, it is a picturesque town. Made famous, for it's Chan Chan ruins. A pre-Inka civilsation the Chan Chans built a whole city out of adobe (fancy mud) in basically desert, and were into fishing. Whilst some of the ruins have been "restored" (what we would call rebuilt), they were still impressive, if only impart for their vastness and remoteness.

After visiting the ruins we had a great night out in Huanchaco. Barbequed fresh fish washed down with a couple of litres of cheap wine on the beach, where there was a local festival involving dancing, fishing boats and fireworks. After the local festivities were over, we had a campfire and music played by local musicians, organised by the wonderful Daniela.

It was then like a little piece of paradise when, accompanied by hangovers, we bordered the luxury bus for the eight hour journey to Lima. It was truly magnificent. The seats were similar to club class on a plane - like sitting in a comfy armchair and fully reclining. We got pillows, blankets, films and food. To be honest I didn't want to get off!

On our first night in Lima we went to the centre of Miraflores, the Gringoland of Lima, it has a whole street of pizza restuarants where we enjoyed pizza and pasta. Considering the wine consumption from the night before we could've done without accidently ordering two jugs of beer instead of two glasses, but we soldiered on with a little help from our travelling companions. It's a tough life!

Finally I should say that after three weeks it was our last day with Daniela, so thanks Daniela for being so great!

Lots of Love,

Louise & Luke

(Posted by Louise)