Advertisement
Published: February 19th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We flew to Lima on valentine´s night. One way to measure how good a time you've had in Lima is to count the number of credit cards and bags that are missing at the end. Not known for it's safety (most hotels send a designated driver to the airport to pick guests up directly) - ours didn't of course - we locked our taxi doors and headed to our gated hostal.
We only had a few hours to see Lima the next day before flying to the Peru-Ecuador border town of Tumbes. We did manage however to take some pictures of the main square, the military tanks guarding the government building as well as being warned by a random woman in the street that we should immediately turn around and walk two blocks south having wandered into a dangerous neighborhood. Lovely.
Leaving Lima with all our belongings we flew into Tumbes late. The only reason to go to Tumbes is in order to be able to leave it again the next day. We stayed in a hospedaje that makes a Las Vegas motel look like the Belagio. To give some idea, the room had fluorescent pink walls, cockroaches in
the bathroom and in the morning I had to debate with the guy at reception about giving us running (cold) water. This was likely Tumbes' top hotel!
We went for dinner that night in the main square. Once again some locals were kind enough to tell us not to walk more than a block left or right of where we were due to the risk of being robbed. We were joined by a guy called John from Yorkshire who was making the same trip as us. As we ate, the most horrendous storm came in. Within an hour the roads were turned into rivers half a foot deep in water - I had never seen rain like it. Left with no option than to simply brave the rain and run back to our hotel some 200 yards away, absolutely dripping wet we made our way back to the comfort of our pink, cockroach infested hostel to get some sleep on our cardboard bed.
It wasn't exactly the night's sleep we were looking for prior to attempting the 'World's Most Dangerous Border Crossing' the next morning.
The Lonely Planet falls short in explaining how to cross this border
easily and make one's way to Quito. To make things tricky the bus we booked ourselves on to take us across the border was cancelled which meant we would have to work through the logistics on the fly. We arranged for a taxi driver to take us to the Peru immigration office. We kept his car keys (our bags were in the boot) whilst we obtained the passport stamps and then he drove us to the Ecuadorian border town about 3km down the road. It's the kind of place where you lock your car door and wind up the window as people tap the windows trying to sell you counterfeit notes and other useful things not forgetting trying the oportunistic snatch of your bag. Our driver tipped the policeman to allow us to drive through the main street as the other option (a parallel street) was too dangerous. It only got us as far as the next (Ecuadorian) policeman who refused us to drive any further. Not even a quick bribe to the (Peruvian) policeman standing nearby to have a word in the ear of his Ecuadorian counterpart made any difference. This was now awkward as it meant we had
Shanty Towns in the Hills
Shanty towns spread up the surrounding hills of Lima to walk about 200yrds on foot with our backpacks, through an area reknowned for picking on tourists, up to and over the Ecuadorian border. Our taxi driver guided us through the street as we clung tightly to our bags.
Another taxi hailed in the street and we clambered into the back to be whisked off to the Ecuadorian control post where we needed to record our entry and pick up the bus for a 12hr bus ride to Quito.
There is now some debate as to whether the taxi driver and his associates had fleeced us by exagerating the risks of the border crossing to us (I would imagine some of the crossings into Colombia aren´t exactly a walk in the park). It cost us USD 20 to have his help, pay for the taxis and our bus ticket all the way to Quito (a 14hr bus ride) but the alternative was not worth the potential price we would have to pay and it certainly saved us some time.
Having safely arrived in Quito we spent our first day going to 'La Mitad del Mundo'. Things were so bad with Sheena that day that I had to
Playing it cool in DangerTown
Crossing Peru to Ecuador (with John from Yorkshire) move myself to the Northern hemisphere for 5 minutes leaving Sheena with the Southern hemisphere to herself! We visited a fascinating museum that explained some of the history of the region as well as some neat tricks that can only be performed on the Equator. Both Sheena & I successfully balanced a raw egg on the end of a nail, we watched water in a sink empty clockwise and counter-clockwise (depending on the hemisphere) and performed various resistance tests where the resistance is less dead on the Equator. My favourite though was a burial ritual whereby if a man died he would be placed in the foetal position in a vase a little like a roman amphora. The foetal position was so he would be ready for the next life and the vase represented the womb of the mother. His wife would be drugged using a hallucinogenic cactus (it was an honour for her to be asked) and placed in a similar vase in the same tomb nearby her dead husband. Only with the presence of his wife would the man reach the next life. The village would then bury the vases, filling the tomb with earth. When the drug
wore off, the woman would wake up and then suffocate in the tomb meeting her own end. I´ve told Sheena that I too am now certain on my last wishes!!
We are now very excited about our trip leaving tomorrow morning to the Galapagos Islands and the final leg of our S. American adventure. Well, we were until we met the other guests - I would put money on some of them being older than the Galapagos tortoises. I think Sheena and I are about to get our first taste of what a Saga holiday feels like.....about 50 years to early.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.23s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 20; qc: 97; dbt: 0.1628s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
abdi
non-member comment
interesting