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Published: January 14th 2007
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Sorry about the last blog, it seems to have been deleted. We have spent the last week travelling from Quito to Lima overland. In hindsight, we probably needed longer as we haven´t had a lot of time in each place we have visited.
We started out in Quito where we met up with Campbell, an aussie we met on new years eve. Bryce, Campbell and Alex (who we met on the Galapagos tour) were all brave enough to dig into the local delicacy which is guinea pig. They had it fried and said it tasted like a mix between rabbit and chicken - a novelty but probably wont try it again, especially if it is deep fried within an inch of its life again.
We headed off on Tuesday to Baños. After missing one bus after attempting to eat a meal with a cockroach in it, we finally made it on to the next bus. Baños sits high up in the Andes so we hired bikes and went for a 20km bike ride through the mountains to one of the most famous waterfalls in Ecuador. It was very spectular and even more so when we saw it from above
taking the cable car across the river putting our lives at risk once again - safety standards have not been invented in Ecuador! We caught the bus back to town and they threw our bikes on the roof of the bus which made us a bit anxious as we were taking the corners around the mountains at great speeds. To relax and wind down we then had a 3 hour pampering session at the local spa. This began with us walking bare foot across bloody hard stones to a river where we had to scream our problems at the top of our lungs. Once that was over, we went into what can only be described as inidivudal steamers where only our heads were poking out the top. When it got almost to hot to bear, they would open it up and pour freezing cold water over the top of us. After about 1 hour in the steamer we headed in for our long awaited massages. This was pure bliss and Bryce and Georgie were in a deep sleep in seconds.
We then caught the bus to Riobamba. At this stage we met Brit, a girl from Denmark living in
Chile so thank god we could finally bridge the spanish gap between speaking max three word sentences to fluent spanish. We were up early the next day to catch the famous Nariz del Diablo (Devil´s nose) train from Riobamba to Alausi to Sibambe. The reason the train is famous is because you get to sit on the top of the train as it winds it way through the Andes. Anyway, having arrived late the night before, we were up at 5am to try to get tickets for the train but they had already sold out. We instead caught the bus to Alausi and hopped on there for the best bit - a loop around to Sibambe and back to Alausi. It was an amzing rush sitting on top of the train and the views were amazing. Back in Alausi, we hailed down a bus to Cuenca from the main road.
Cuenca is a beautiful little city with cobble stone streets and colonial buildings. We spent the night in a hostel we thought was recommended by the Lonely Planet. It actually turns out that the three of us were too lazy to read the name properly and the hostel we
were after (the party pad) was actually two blocks away. Not to worry because we didn´t spend much time there anyway. The next morning we spent two hours looking around the city at the markets. One of the markets was mainly for the locals and sold a range of procude including live chickens and guinea pigs. The other market was smaller and nothing that special. We were all feeling pretty ambitious at this stage so we embarked on a massive 24 hour journey to cross the border into Peru...
We caught a bus to Manchala and changed to head towards Huaquillas. Soon after we had to get off the bus to get our passports stamped to exit Ecuador, back on the bus again and we stopped to enter Peru. The Peruvian immigration was interesting as a couple of guys grabbed our passports as we entered the building and started to fill out immigration cards for us (which we had already done on the bus), we realised that both Bryce and I could take them on (they are not known for their height or strength) so we grabbed the passports back and yelled at them which scared them sufficiently. Back
on the bus again to Tumbes were we got off. It is not a town we would recommend visiting ever if possible. We had to spend 5 hours there waiting for the night bus and in this time, Bryce had his debit card eaten by an ATM, we had people starring at us quite blatently and plotting to rob us (maybe I was a bit paranoid) and some smart arse tried to steal Bryce´s empty water bottle from his backpack at which point Bryce had a quite chat to him about acceptable forms of behaviour towards visiting international travellers. The less said about Tumbes the better.
We then got on the "night bus" to Trujillo. The bus was in fact the worse bus of all time. You would think for a 12 hour night trip you would have a) leg room b) air conditioning c) toilets d) a light to read by. What did have was a hole where the TV screen use to be and a tool at the back who thought it would be appropriate to play the recorder badly for the first hour of the trip and then again half way at one of the "toilet
stops". All this should have been expected when we were paying $9 each. Needless to say we had half a sleeping tablet which knocked us out for most of the journey.
We arrived in Trujillo and got a taxi to the nearby beach town of Huanchaco. Not the nicest beach in the world but a chilled out place which allowed us re charge for 2 days and 1 night. Yesterday we visited Chan Chan which is an ancient city of the Chimus people. It is a pretty amazing place but it could have been a lot better if more money was put towards it as half of the area has yet to be excavated.
We caught another night bus last night to Lima which was about 10 times better than the bus to Trujillo. First impressions of Lima is that is it is very large and poverty stricken city but we are staying in a nice area near the beach. We officially start our 14 day tour to the inca trail, amzon and lake titicaca tomorrow so wish us luck....
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Pat
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what an amazing time you are both having, i'm tired just reading about your days and nights. keep safe and continue to enjoy. luv mexx