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Published: April 23rd 2008
Hello one and all, how's life treating you?
We have had a low key week so here is a low key blog. Fortunately there are some pretty sunset pictures to liven it all up.
We've mainly split our time between scratching mozzie bites, enduring white knuckle bus rides, and bus ride recovery sessions (aka lying around in the sunshine, which made the bus rides worthwhile).
After leaving the jungle, we made our way to Trujillo, a town about halfway up the coast of Peru, via flight and (reasonably comfortable) overnight bus (although they confiscated our beer on the door - imagine!). Trujillo was one of the first cities to be founded by the Spanish in the Americas and retains many colonial buildings. The main square is one of the prettiest we've seen, and it is a great place for a random wander. Nearby is the beach resort of Huanchaco where I finally got round to trying ceviche (tasty).
The highlight of our stay was a trip to the pre Inca ruins of Chan Chan. Before being conquered by the Incas, this was the most important city of the region, home to approximately 30,000 people of the Chimu
civilization. The site is vast and we only visited a small area. The walls are all built of adobe, decorated with stylized carvings of fish and other animals. Some of the walls are criss cross lattice, which apparently represents fishing nets. Its beautiful and very impressive, and there were hardly any other people there which definitely added to the atmosphere.
Next stop, via a tedious six hour bus journey, was Piura, a city quite close to the Ecuadorean border. We only really stopped here to break up the journey but it seemed a pleasant enough town which was quite lively in the evening. Heading out to the Plaza Mayor to get some dinner, we could barely believe our luck when practically the first eatery we spotted proclaimed itself a ´Ristorante Vegetariano'. Our joy subsided when we took our seats and perused the menu to find that nearly everything on it was meat...hey ho. We settled for our 428th pizza of the trip, and some admittedly tasty fruit juice.
Our final Peruvian destination was Mancora, self-styled 'trendiest beach resort in Peru'. Although that doesn´t say a
lot for the others, we really liked it. It didn´t seem too overdeveloped,
the beach was pretty and clean although not idyllic, the sunsets were magnificent, and there were some nice cafes and places to eat. We also had a nice room right on the beach with very friendly owners and a hammock, which always helps! (Las Olas, for anyone who may be interested...). We also saw the less attractive sight of about 40 carrion birds eating a dead dolphin... that put us off our lunch a bit!
So after four days of listening to the waves crash, reading, and playing the odd game of scrabble (now minus pretty much every letter except a handful of Ms and Ns - which basically makes for low scoring games, and arguments over the proper spelling of the Mnh Mnh muppet song), we booked our bus tickets north to Cuenca in Ecuador.
I think the trip might qualify as our most haphazard yet. We were accompanied by a guy from the travel agent who was using the trip to take some car parts to sell over the border, and who was very random and worryingly frenetic, making us virtually jump off the moving bus to save half a second, hustling us in and out
Chan Chan
Nobody goes here (as you can see), which gives it a certain Indiana Jones chic.of immigration and delivering us onto our second bus and then sprinting away... Maybe he just drinks too much Inca Kola. Other happy characters we encountered included depressed border guards with unfeasibly large guns, psychotic toilet attendants ("only PEEPEE! only PEEPEE!"), and the ubiquitous suicidal latin american bus drivers.
Anyway, on that note, I leave you at the Ecuadorean border for Si to take over next time.
Adios!
Nat xxx
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barrygahan
Barry
Mancora sounds just like what we need...
...when we finish in Huaraz. Hopefully we'll get a chance to stop there on route to Ecuador.