Quito

Day 1 – Back in thte Clouds – Elevation 2,850 Metres

We woke up at a reasonable hour and went for breakfast which wasn’t too bad apart from the teeth achingly sweet fruit juice, after which we had most of the day to kill until we caught our flight to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, later in the day.

The remaining part of the morning was spent researching, reading and blogging until it was time to get packed for check-out time at 12.  When I put our bags in reception and asked the owner (Shelley pronounced Chelley) about booking a cab for 2.30, kindly she said we could keep our room on until 2 as the cleaner would do our room last.

Returning to the room I had noticed that the TV had some sports channels on it and as luck would have it they were showing the West Ham v Man United game live albeit in Spanish) – result.  Whilst I screamed and shouted at the TV, Shell continued to read.  As it turned out, due to some very dodgy referee decisions (honestly) West Ham lost 2-0 but I wasn’t too disappointed as they had played well.

It was then time to wait for a taxi to take us to the airport, we had left plenty of time as we thought we would draw out some cash and get a bite to eat there.  We were picked up and driven about 15 minutes to the airport, but when we arrived we thought we had been taken to the wrong place as it seemed tiny and also a bit shut!

After our driver had a word with one of the staff, he told us we were indeed at the right place which was a bit of a shock as the terminal was little more than a marquee tent.  On entering the tent/terminal we noted that there were a few benches and nothing else, no ATM or food place.

Therefore we had to kill the next 2 ½ hours just reading until check-in opened and we went through to another part of the tent (where we did manage to score an ice-cream) until we boarded our flight.

 

 

The flight was only a short one of 50 minutes and we were soon arriving in the capital where we were supposed to be meeting someone to transfer us to our hostel.  After not seeing anyone we wandered over to international arrivals where we found the guy with our names on a board.

I quickly got some cash out of an ATM (we had read that it was pretty dodgy using the ATM’s in the city, with stories of people getting followed and mugged) and then we got inside the taxi to take us to the centre, we noted that it was quite a few degrees colder in Quito than it had been on the coast. 

 

 

The taxi journey was longer than expected, it must have taken 45 minutes until we pulled up outside our hostel.  The hostel itself seemed very nice, if highly gated, we checked in, made our bags safe and then headed out to find some food.

Getting directions from the hostel guy we walked a short way up the road and found a square/area that was full of bars and restaurants, which we thought was handy (well done Shell for putting us in the right location).  We checked out some menu’s and noticed with horror that the beers were more than 3 times more expensive than where we came from, I think we had found the equivalent of Leicester Square!!

As it was getting late and with Quito having the reputation of being a bit dodgy at night we thought we would suck it up and just go into one of these establishments.

We got a couple of large beers and ordered some pretty bland food (Pizza – Glenn, Wrap – Shell) which fed us but nothing else.  Whilst we sat there, the square was descended on by the Quito police force which did nothing to alleviate our concerns about safety in Quito.

After we finished our food and drink, with it being fairly quiet as it was a bank holiday we thought it would be safer to call it a day and have an early night, so we went back to the hostel to hit the hay.

Day 2 – Ill

Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling too clever and had been coughing, tossing and turning all night, which didn’t make for a great night’s sleep for me or Shelley (tiny bed).  We decided to miss breakfast and try to get some more sleep, but it wasn’t happening so we got up, showered and then just relaxed for the morning.

Neither of us were feeling particularly great but we had to go out to sort out our booking for a 4 day jungle adventure, which we had provisionally booked with a company in town.  First off though we decided to head for an English bookshop where we hoped to buy/trade a guidebook for Central America.

Wandering round for a bit we found the bookshop and when we entered we were greeted by a nice guy from Essex, Mark, who had lived in Ecuador for 27 years (he even offered us a cup of Yorkshire Tea – how English!!).  We quickly saw that he had the guide we were after, but he seemed keen to chat to some fellow Brits and give us some useful tips whilst in Ecuador/Quito.  After a while we asked him to keep the book for us and we would collect it later and then headed out to sort out our trip.

We had taken Mark’s advice as he told us we could most probably get the trip cheaper if we checked out the local agencies and he had recommended one for us to try.  After walking round in the sun for some time (still feeling tired and unwell) we could not locate the agency that he recommended, so we decided just to check one out at random.

The guy at the agency was very helpful and pointed out some issues that had not been pointed out to us by other agency, he also gave us a cheaper price than what we had been quoted.  We told him we would need to think about it and headed to a nearby cafe where we got a drink to cool off.  After chatting together we had slight reservations about the agencies itinerary as there were a couple of points we did not like.

Whilst having our drink Shell tried to connect to the bar’s wifi so we could do some google research on the agency/trip.  However she could not connect, but  on checking the connections available the agency that Mark had recommended came up which meant it was very close, on looking around I noticed its name on the second floor of the building opposite.

After finishing our drinks, we headed for the agency across the square and had to negotiate two security doors we had to be buzzed through to get in. We had a chat with them about what they had to offer.  Most of the trips have the same itinerary but different types of accommodation, the one this agency was representing looked nicer than other ones we had seen and it was in the location we wanted to go to.  We decided that we would book with this one and after some good negotiation from Shell we ended up getting the trip for about $60 cheaper than the one we had provisionally booked with.

That sorted we went to a nearby bar to get a bite to eat whilst we decided what to do.  I was still feeling ropey though so we decided go back to the bookshop and then go back to the hostel for a kip.

Book sorted with a promise to come back and visit Mark to trade our South America book against a Columbia book (Our next and final destination in South America) we then got back to the hostel to try and get some much needed sleep.  However it wasn’t to be and I continued coughing which led to vomiting which was not ideal.

As I was feeling so rough and Shell not that great also we ended up feeling sorry for ourselves and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching TV with a brief trip out to buy some plain subway sandwiches for our dinner, before trying to get some sleep.

Day 3 – Still not Great!

Waking up after another rough night we popped down for breakfast and made an executive decision not to do the Quito walking tour but extend our room instead so we could relax for the day.

So, the rest of the day was spent in our room watching films on TV, a bit of blogging and trying to get some more sleep.  Although we had not really done anything in Quito we knew we were returning after our jungle adventure for a couple of days so we could explore Quito then.

We were due to get an overnight bus to our jungle adventure at 11pm so around 9 we ventured out to get an evening meal to kill the time before we left.  Searching around for a bit we found a café/restaurant and ordered some food and a couple of drinks, which were very cheap compared to the fodder we had got in the main square.

Doing our best to try and stay there until we caught our bus we took our time, but were pretty much kicked out as they cleaned and stacked chairs around us.  As it was raining we had no option but to go across the road to what seemed like (and was!) a hideous karaoke bar.  Once again, we did our best to eek out a beer whilst listening to ear splitting awful Latin American karaoke singers.

Finally, it was time to catch our coach from what seemed quite a vague pick up point, but we were reassured by a random bloke that the coach did go from here.  Ten minutes later and the coach turned up, which was good as it was tipping it down.

Boarding the coach we were joined by a German guy called Sebastian that we got chatting to, apparently he’s fallen in love with a Ecuadorian lady and he is considering moving to Quito.  We chatted for a bit until the bus started off, it didn’t seem like the most comfortable of coaches and was freezing cold (no full/semi cama with blankets here!) and we were very dubious of how much sleep we would be getting tonight!

Manta (Not the Rays)

Day 1 – Stop Over

It was finally time to leave our Christmas retreat and get back to this travelling marlarky!  So, after packing up we were picked up by a taxi  (the only option as buses weren’t running) at 11 to take us to the town of Manta.

The journey took around an hour and a half and was pretty pleasant as it followed the coast so we got to see some nice scenery along the way.  Approaching Manta, we had a slight detour as the driver had been told we wanted to go to the airport, after a quick conversation we were then heading to our hostel.

Once the driver had located our hostel we had to wait for a short while whilst our room was made ready.  Our room was fairly nice and looked out onto a small swimming pool, we had booked this as we knew we had to wait around for our flight the next day.

We unpacked and had been told that the only places that would be open for food and drinks would be next to the main beach so we decided to make our way there to get some food.  Only problem being the receptionist was nowhere to be seen to order a taxi so after hanging round in reception for 20 minutes we managed to find the button to release the front gate (very secure in Ecuador!), so we could walk to the beach instead.

 

 

The walk was about a mile but it was blisteringly hot so we kept to the shade as much as possible until we reached the beach.  It was pretty busy there with locals as it was a Sunday and the next day was a public holiday.

The beach was pretty big and seemed quite nice and after a quick stroll we found a beach restaurant to get some lunch.  Shell had some more ceviche (not as nice as Ayampe’s) and I  just had something plane as I was not feeling great due to the effect of a slight cold.

 

 

After lunch, we went for a wander around, there was some street entertainment going on which seemed to be a comedy routine involving a transvestite and a dwarf.  It seemed to be entertaining but we had no idea what was going on so we walked on for a bit.

As it was very hot and I wasn’t feeling great we found a restaurant where we got some shade and some drinks.  For the rest of the afternoon and early evening we stayed at the restaurant people watched, which was quite entertaining.

Not having read great things about Manta we were pleasantly surprised that it seemed quite a nice city with a fairly nice beach.  We had only decided to stop over here so we could catch a flight from here to Quito instead of yet another gruelling coach journey, also it would have been an overnighter which isn’t recommended in Ecuador.

 

 

We found one last bar for a couple more drinks until we were the last people sat there and the staff were cleaning up around us, so we headed back to the main road where we caught a taxi back to our hostel for the night.

Ayampe

Day 1 – Casa Azul, our own little Beach House

Okay so I’m not going to dress this up, the next few blog entries, other than today, are going to get pretty repetitive, boring and finally dwindle out!

Our plan was to book a little holiday home in the middle of nowhere and do nothing. After being on the road for so long we were both desperate to have a bit of a holiday from our holiday and just chill out and relax. There’s only so much you can say about getting up late, going to the beach for a swim and then lazing in your hammock reading. Pure paradise but it doesn’t make good copy….

The day had arrived which we had both been looking forward to, we would be moving into our AirBnB, a little beach house (£17 p.n) for a week to spend Christmas.

Our plan was to catch a bus from Montanita which would take us over the mountain and into the next bay of Ayampe. However, it was an absolute scorcher and we had noticed that the bus stop had absolutely no shade and nobody could really tell us when the bus would turn up. This, together with the fact that google told us that it would take 2.5hrs by bus and 20 minutes by taxi was the deciding factor, we would treat ourselves to a taxi.

We weren’t due to check into Casa Azul until 12 so we got up and had a lovely late b/f and smoothies before packing up and jumping in the taxi.

The journey took us past some stunning scenery and it wasn’t long until we were turning into the dusty one horse town of Ayampe. Following the directions the owner gave us, we quickly found the beach house (wasn’t difficult, you just found the road by the sea). 
 

 

We were greeted by Teonila, the lady who looks after the house on behalf of the owner, Pepe. Teonila speaks absolutely no English but very VERY fast Spanish! Despite my ‘No hablar Espanol’ and Glenn asking her to slow down, she babbled on at a pace and we were quickly given a tour of the house.

 

The house was a little more basic than we had anticipated. Firstly, no cooker, only a hob which quickly killed our ideas of cooking a proper Christmas dinner. We also couldn’t find the advertised Washer/Dryer. That was until we went outside and around the back where we discovered a sink and a washing line and presumed this was it.

But, what we did have was our own space! Air conditioning, a downstairs kitchen/living room, bathroom and a little porch outside with a hammock. Another hammock on the upstairs veranda, a huge bed with a much-needed mosquito net, plus another bathroom. Heaven!

 

After a lot more babbling and showing us the little private gate that led to the beach, Teonila finally took her leave! We spent some time excitedly jumping up and down for a bit, did the usual opening and closing cupboards and drawers, before deciding we needed to head out and get some supplies.

Ayampe is a sleepy small village with a handful of restaurants and hostels. It doesn’t have a supermarket but one general store where we were told we could pick up most things. Pepe also told us there was a fruit and veg van and a fish van that came around daily, perfect!

The village proper was only 5 mins walk and we were soon outside its only general store which was closed! Peering in, it looked like the owner was in the middle of having lunch so we decided to do the same. We found a lovely little restaurant where I managed to convince Glenn, who isn’t a big fish lover, to try Ceviche. Marinated fresh, it took a while to turn up so we treated ourselves to some ‘welcome to Ayampe’ beers.

 

After the Ceviche (Glenn now a convert) we headed back to the now open store to get some supplies. First things first there were beers which was a relief. However, there wasn’t much else in the way of fresh produce. After poking at some meat that looked like it had seen better days, we opted for tinned tuna and a salad (not knowing that tuna was to feature quite heavily on our menu).

We dragged several bags of beer and a small bag of groceries back home and as it was now dusk, decided to save our dip in the sea until the next day and crack open some ‘welcome to Casa Azul’ beers!

The evening was spent chilling on our veranda, watching the sunset and drinking ice cold beers out of the fridge. We like it here!

Day 2 – Puerto Lopez

The morning was spent doing some much needed washing in a bucket and the outside sink, before heading to the next town to see if they had better meal options available.

We were told you could get a bus at the top of the road so that where we headed. It wasn’t long before we boarded a lively local bus blasting out Salsa and cruising along the 20/30 minute journey to Puerto Lopez.

 

Puerto Lopez is a largish coastal town with one supermarket, we headed there first to get an idea of what hob top meals we could muster together. Pretty good, as it had mince for Glenn’s now famous Chilli but no chilli Peppers so we went off to find the fruit and veg market we were told about.

After a lot of searching we finally gave up and settled on buying a bottle of hot sauce, that sorted we went for a wander along the front and to find a bar to have our ‘welcome to Puerto Lopez’ beer

 

The beach was clean and had a few cabana’s selling fruit juice and cocktails. We settled in a bar opposite which looked cooler where a lively waiter called Antonio kept us supplied with ice cold Cerveza’s and tried to tempt Glenn to a bottle of the local hooch, he declined!

After too many welcome beers we went back to the supermarket, cleared them out of wine and caught a taxi back home.

 

It was time to check out the beach. After negotiating with the many keys, we finally found one for the lock and was on a pretty little surfers beach with just a handful of surfers catching waves.

Now hungry, we headed back home to shower and enjoy Glenns home cooked Chilli (the hot sauce worked!). The rest of the day was spent chilling on the veranda, sunset and beers!

Day 3 – Chilling

So, here’s where the blogs start getting shorter. Today was spent chilling in hammocks, a dip in the sea, a bit of exploring over some rocks, trying to get rid of Teonila and her daughter who turned up to check how we were and discovering the fruit and veg van which had chillies!

 

We did attempt to hire a surf board but after discovering how expensive they were ($20 for 2hrs), we opted to come back when the surf looked a bit better and we had more energy.

The evening was spent on the veranda, watching the sunset…….

Day 4 – Christmas Eve

We headed back into Puerto Lopez to pick up supplies before the Christmas shut down. The bus seemed to be operating on a xmas timetable so after waiting for about 40 minutes, we decided to jump into a shared taxi, together with a couple of tourists, and head for town

 

There, we picked some supplies, it’s going to be Chicken Fajitas for Xmas dinner, and quickly caught the bus back home.

The rest of the day was spent, lazing in hammocks, going for a dip, sadly discovering a huge dead turtle being attacked by vultures (we liked to think he was an old fellow who died of natural causes), sitting on our veranda, blah blah blah

 

Day 5 – Merry Christmas

Our Christmas pressie to each other was our little beach house. So, with no pressies to open, we made the most of it by playing Christmas tunes, laying out bowls of crisps and chocolates and loading up the freezer with ice cubes, ready for our Christmas dark rum drinkie pooh’s.

 

Just getting ready for our Christmas dip (much warmer this year), Des and Mum managed to connect with us on skype and we were soon toasting each other over the camera and merrily chatting away and catching up. That was until Teonila turned up!, Christmas bloody day!.

In an attempt to get rid of her, I explained I was talking to my folks in England and introduced her to them on camera. She didn’t budge, in fact she started to look around for a chair to settle in, fascinated with the technology and seeing herself on camera. Next, Glenn tried to make her shift, explaining that everything was fine and she should go and spend Christmas with her family, nope, she helped herself to some crisps and stood over as I chatted with Mum and Des.

Finally giving up, we said our goodbyes and after Teonila waved to mum and Des, we switched off Skype and she promptly left! Ah well.

We headed to the beach for our xmas dip and watched the Pelicans dive into the sea to catch fish, pretty amazing to see. There were a few surfers out having a xmas surf too (we must hire that surf board soon!)

 

Back home, we showered off and I managed to connect and have a chat with my dad ahead of the agreed time when we would be speaking to Glenn’s Family.

It was lovely to see Sandy, John and the rest of the family on camera and toast each other. Technology is great! You don’t feel so very far away from your family when you are able to skype each other and share in their Christmas celebrations.

The rest of the day was spent eating our Christmas Fajitas, drinking our xmas rum and sitting on the veranda, watching the sunset…….

Day 6 - Boxing Day

The only notable thing that happened today was that we decided to extend our stay in our little beach house until after the new year. Neither of us fancied the idea of heading back to Montanita, or heading to the capital, we would see the New Year in at the beach house instead.

 

Hammock, swim, veranda, blah blah blah

Day 7 to Day 10 – Ditto

Other than still not hiring a surf board, the next few days was generally doing nothing interspersed with the odd dip, veranda, sunset and dealing with Teonilla or her daughter.

 

We did venture out one night for food only to find half the village was in blackout due to a power cut. Tinned tuna featured quite a lot on the menu as we never did see the fish van.

Day 11 – New Years Eve

Waking up fairly early for me (Glenn not Shell) we spent the morning getting the blog right up to date (Shell) whilst I did a few household chores, our last washing load, going to the shop to get NYE beers and repairing the upstairs shutters.

 

In the early afternoon we watched a few documentaries on our pc before going for a walk along the beach and checking out the pelicans diving in and out of the water.  It was also an opportunity to get a few more pictures for the blog as we hadn’t taken many.

 

As it was really hot we wandered around for a short while before heading back to our digs where we had a snack of a sandwich and some nibbles to finish off the contents of our fridge.

Not really knowing what to do with ourselves we decided to stream the xmas Eastenders to see what misery was served up this Christmas, whilst we cracked open some beers.  We actually really enjoyed it and ended up watching a few episodes (sad!) whilst polishing off the remaining beers and bottle of red wine we had left.

It was now getting late so we thought we would head out to see if anything was happening in town.  We sat down in a restaurant only to be told it was just shutting.  There appeared to be a party for locals but nothing else so we went to the local shop to get a couple more beers to see the new year in with.

 

Going back to the house we then headed through our back gate to see if anything was happening on the beach.  It wasn’t so we just sat on the beach for a while and had our beers.  As there was literally no one on the beach and NYE hadn’t actually been that exciting we decided to resolve this by having a NYE skinny dip.

Stripping off and leaving a torchlight to guide us back we strolled down the pitch black beach until we hit the water which was still pretty warm.  Running back up the beach we finished off our beers before going back into the water for one final dip before we left Ayampe the next day.

We then headed back to the house where we showered and then finished the dregs of our wine off on the Veranda, seeing in the new day, with a couple of fireworks in the distance,  before heading to bed.  Happy New Year everybody

Montinita

Day 1 – Stop-Over

Getting up early again we went to book a taxi to the bus terminal to be met with a pretty decent breakfast of fresh fruit juice and scrambled eggs.

A quick 10 minute taxi ride to the bus station and we were pleased that we had done a reckie the day before and could go straight to the ticket office and get a bus ticket to Montinita which was leaving in around ½ hour.

We went to the bus stop which was on the 3^rd floor and waited in the heat for our bus to turn up, fortunately it turned up on time and we were pretty pleased to be boarding an air-conditioned coach.  Also, we were pleased that this was only due to be a 2-hour bus ride.

 

Pulling out of the terminal it took some time to drive through town until we reached the countryside.  Along the way, we read and checked out the views, passing through small villages until we pulled up in Montinita.

Our first impressions were that it was a very dusty/rustic town but was quite a travellers town with plenty of hostels, restaurants and bars.  After a quick conversation with a local for directions we found our hostel for the night which was just off the main drag.

The hostel was quite quaint and had been built out of bamboo and we were given a choice of rooms.  Once again, I think we may have been the only people staying there.  The room was quite spacious with a small balcony and a very hard bed.

Once unpacked we headed downstairs where we had a quick “welcome to Montininta” beer before heading into town to try and sort some stuff out, money and a Sim card.

We found a small shop that did Sim cards, but whilst we managed to get it understood that we wanted a Sim card, we had other problems.  Despite roping in various people that allegedly could understand English we could not get them understand that we wanted the card set up with internet data.  After a frustrating hour we were getting nowhere so we had to give up and try somewhere else.

Leaving the Sim card to later, we wandered down to the beach which was lovely and you could see why it attracted travellers and surfers alike.  We then had a wander around the streets trying to find another Sim shop (without luck) and a cashpoint to get some currency out as we knew the next place we were going to did not have ATM’s.

 

Cash on hip we wandered for a bit more before finding a restaurant/bar where we could get a cold beer to combat the heat (I’m finding excuses now!!).  We sat there for a bit fending off the odd hawker with jewellery and straw hats, before considering getting something to eat.

We left in search of food, but instead of taking the easy option of one of the nearby tourist restaurants we found a small road where the locals seemed to be eating.  Sitting down in one of them we found they had a set menu, where Shell had a Ceviche dish where I opted for some curried mixed fish and rice. After some nice little starter’s the main courses turned up and they were both pretty good.

As it was boiling hot and we had no specific plans we then headed back to the hostel for the afternoon to relax and cool down in front of our fan, it must have been over 90 degrees.

In the evening as it was a bit of a party town so we headed out to check out the action, we had a quick drink outside our hostel before hitting the streets.  We walked around for a bit then found a quite noisy street with lots of little stalls serving cocktails.

 

We didn’t think it was wise to hit the cocktails, even though it seemed the thing to do (most probably cheap?), instead we found a bar nearby.  We sat outside the bar and had a few beers whilst we people watched, although it did seem that it was still out of season as it was not too busy and a lot of the bars were still shut.

A few more beers later and feeling a bit tired we headed back to the hostel as we were quite excited about moving on to our Air BnB the following day.  We did think that Montinita was nice though and we may consider coming back here for New year’s Eve as we thought it would be lively.

Ecuador – Guayaquil

Day 1 – Getting to Ecudor

Finally leaving Trujillo at 2am in the morning we quickly settled down into our 180 degree coach seats and tried to get to sleep.

Waking up in the morning, we were still in Peru and waited for our breakfast.  We made very slow progress and we figured we would arrive in Ecuador very late in the evening.  It wasn’t helped when we reached a check-point where we thought we had reached boarder control, we hadn’t.

 

 

Instead we had to wait in a queue of buses and then get off and get our documents checked whilst officials checked out the bus, I’m guessing a smuggling check?  We waited around for another ½ hour and then got back on the bus before setting off again.

 

 

About an hour later we actually reached the boarder where we had read it was a pretty simple affair to get through as the Peru and Ecuador border control were in the same building.  It would have been simple if it wasn’t for the very long/slow queues, the whole process took about an hour to complete.

It wouldn’t have been so bad but we had to wait around until the whole coach had been processed and then had to wait a further ½ hour until we could board the bus once again.  Just to rub salt into the wounds before we left boarder control we were all kicked off the bus again and made to stand around in the blazing sunshine for another ¾ hour.  It appeared that our coach had been singled out for a customs search, most probably checking that a consignment of Peruvian marching powder was not accompanying us on our journey.

Finally, we were on our way again and we got our first glimpses of Ecuador and on first impressions in looked very hot with jungle type countryside.

Once across the border the journey continued for about another 4 hours until we got to our destination which was the large city of Guayaquil at around 8.30pm, about 18 hours since we started our journey.

The bus station was absolutely huge and once we had retrieved our bags we hunted around the station trying to find the office to buy our tickets for the next day.  After some confusing conversation exchanges with some ticket desks we finally found the office we needed on the top floor, but it was closed so we will just have to take our chances the following morning.

Gauyaquil was not really our end destination but we could not get a bus connection to where we wanted to go the same day, so we had just booked a hostel for the night to break up the journey.  So, we jumped in a cab and went to a small hostel that was run by an elderly couple and we appeared to be the only guests staying there.

The room was OK, but we were keen to get out and get some proper food to eat so we quickly locked up our bags and got some directions from the owner to some nearby restaurants.

Walking around the corner and not spotting any bars we noticed a parilla restaurant and as it was getting late we decided to give it a go.  The food when it turned up was bigger than we expected and we wish we hadn’t ordered a side dish, but it was welcome after our days coach food.

We stayed at the restaurant for a bit but were a bit concerned at the prices of their beers, we hoped this was restaurant prices and not standard for Ecuador!  Once fed and watered and a bit tired from our travelling we headed back to the hostel for the night.

Shell's Peru Round-Up

Shell’s Peru Round-Up

 

Loved loved loved Peru, Machu Picchu, Jungles, stunning Spanish cities, good food, the odd mummy and lots and lots of history what’s not to like? Well the Mosquitoes and the altitude for a start but we won’t go there again!

 

There’s lots to do here and we certainly didn’t cover everything. If I was to visit Peru as a 2/3 week holiday and not have the luxury of traveling, I’d recommend combining it with the best bits of Bolivia. Whilst there are Cholita’s here, they don’t seem very authentic. Most are carrying a lamb or pulling a Llama along to get a paid photo opportunity, Bolivia will give you the South American authenticity.

 

One of our most favourite things was the Nazca lines, something a lot of travellers we met didn’t do. Its only when you see it from the air that you can really get a sense of how very perfect the diagrams are, and nobody still knows why they are there. If you go, don’t opt for the cheaper excursion to the tower, it’s well worth the $85 flight

 

Glenn was really impressed with Machu Picchu and I enjoyed it too but in all honesty, I was far more blown away by Las Huacas del Sol y de la Luna from the Moche period. Built around 100 AD, its 700 years older than Chan Chan and 1100 years older than Machu Picchu. It’s much more intact, offers up a lot of history and a lot of questions as they simply can’t get the funding to excavate further. It’s currently off the tourist beaten track so nobody really knows it’s there, we didn’t!  The Inca’s get a lot of credit for their agriculture and medicine but here we can see that Coca leaves were used back in this period too.

We loved the cities, especially Arequipa and to think we almost missed this town. It was only when we noticed it was closer than Cusco so headed there first to break up our journey. It’s at an altitude you can live with, lovely weather and in beautiful volcanic surroundings. The Spanish influence is very evident with lots of beautiful plazas, cobbled streets and pretty buildings. Well worth a visit. We both preferred it to Cusco.

A couple of useless facts we may have missed in our blog: Like in Bolivia, Coca Cola is their no. 1 drink,so much so that Coke has brought out an alternative flavour named Inca Cola. A bright green, very sweet fizzy drink that tastes a bit like cream soda. In fact, (we were told) Coca Cola originally contained extract of Coca leaves and was created by a pharmacist as a medicinal drink. However, you won’t find any cocaine in it today as the ingredient was removed back in the early 1900’s.

 

The other thing that we never got explained but you could hazard a guess as to why: Every time you board a bus, a guy comes around the bus videoing you so he has a record of each passenger on board. A bit disconcerting!

 

We’ve also broadened our culinary palates tasting Alpaca, Llama and guinea pig, although neither of us would be in a rush to try guinea pig again.

 

So come to Peru! It’s pretty safe, clean and lots to do, just bring a suit of armour with you to avoid the mosquito bites (they bit through denim here!)

Huanchaco

Huanchaco - Beach Time!!

 

We had visited quite a few cities so decided it was time to hit the beach as we made our way towards Ecuador.

 

We had managed to secure the bus tickets from Cruz Del Sur (The best buses in Peru) online. However, the confirmation showed a much earlier time to the website. Erring on the side of caution, we headed to the bus station at the earlier time and glad we did. It turned out the later time was from another terminal on the other side of town.

 

We boarded the bus for our 10.5 hour journey, settling into our comfy seats. You get your own entertainment system (a bit like you do on planes) so Glenn quickly found a rock channel and settled back to listen to music. Because of this, he was totally oblivious to the 2.5hr gruelling but white knuckle ride out of the city. The driving here is awful! On two occasions we played chicken, once with a local bus and once with an articulated lorry!

The rest of the journey was uneventful but very slow with traffic jams at each large town. We did get fed twice with aeroplane type meals which were edible. Why is it that if you know you are being fed on a plane or bus, you spend your whole time impatiently waiting for the meal to arrive regardless of whether you are hungry or not? The meal arrives and you excitedly rip off the foil and attack the grey/brown meat and veg lying underneath? You then spend the next 20 minutes impatiently waiting for your tray to be removed. Or is that just me?

 

The bus terminated at Trujillo which is a largish and reportedly dangerous city. As we were arriving in the dark I had booked a transfer with the hotel. Unfortunately due to the traffic jams, we were  around 1 .5 hours late and the poor driver had to wait for us.

His name was Douglas, a very friendly grandad type fellow who we were later to take an excursion with. Feeling guilty, we have him a tip when he deposited at our hostel.

The hostel was close-ish to the beach and had a really laid back vibe with hammocks and beanbags. It also had an upstairs bar belting out salsa music which is where we headed after locking up our bags.

We had a few cervezas and got chatting to a Czech guy who was an agricultural student who studied in the jungles of Peru. An interesting if somewhat intense guy who shared some amazing stories.

It was a long day traveling so it wasn’t long before we hit the sack listening to the sound of the waves (and Salsa music from the bar).

Day 2 – Chilling

It was quite overcast so we had a lazy morning, having a bit of a lie in and relaxing before heading out for some brunch.

We found a vegetarian place and ordered some eggs and bread which honestly took around 45 minutes to turn up! We were the only people in the café too! However, when it did arrive it was served on homemade rye bread which was a nice change.

Still over-cast, we decided not to go for a dip and instead wander along the seafront. We stopped and watched various spear fishermen coming in with their catch. Also, ladies collecting seaweed which is edible and they add to ceviche.

There was a ramshackle pier where we had to pay a small entrance fee. On it there were a number of stalls selling fishing gear (a bit like what you use to catch crabs) and a few people successfully catching fish. Well apart from one guy who had a full-on rod and didn’t catch a thing! We spent some time watching them to get our monies worth from our entrance fee.

We then carried up along the front until we quickly came to the end and had to turn back. Still not fancying a swim we headed for a cold drink and a bit of people watching.

Earlier we had seen a really funky surfers hostel which was belting out tunes so we headed there next. We were greeted by Julie who was a really gregarious Texan in her 60’s. there were murals adorning the walls and it wasn’t long until she was explaining the stories behind them.

The first was blond in a car with lots of luggage on top, this showed her journey from Texas to California. The second was a car with a blond head and a dark headed quiff with their feet on the dash star gazing. This, she told us, depicted the time she met Elvis, they didn’t ‘make-out’, just watched the stars and listened to music. The final one was again of a car with a blond and dark head, this captured the time she met Sly Stalone (I believe they did make-out!). I like Julie

The bar emptied as the surfers hit the waves so I asked her to play some rock music for Glenn. Perhaps the wrong decision as we didn’t move for the rest of the day/night.

We met a really nice couple from Canada, Anna and Paul who were around our age. I don’t know if it was the beer but Anna quickly became my new best friend! And I kept telling her so in case she forgot! At one point, I popped out god knows where only to return to see Glenn doing a very loud full blown rendition of a guns and roses track with his new best friend, an Irish guy he had met.

After promises to our bezzies that we would join the surf classes the next day and pouring ourselves in a taxi for the 2 minute journey home, we said our goodbyes.

Day 3 – Ouch!

Our heads hurt, I was a mess! Deciding we weren’t going to do anything more ambitious than eat and breath today, and certainly not surf! So, we lazed around and Glenn did some blogging until hunger got the better of us. 

We found a place a few doors down for some food before quickly returning to our room where we read and slept. As it was a Saturday night we felt obliged to leave our room in the evening but could only make it as far as the upstairs bar.

There we found a South American band setting up for the evening. The boys were from Argentina and had spent the last 3 years traveling around South America, funding themselves through gigs. The guitarist was excellent and we were treated to various songs from different genres across South America.  The band was a good idea as it meant we could sit and listen and not make conversation, we did this until it was time to turn in.

Day 4 – Time for some culture

Feeling we had wasted a day, we booked Douglas to take us to the various historical sites close by. He met us with a hug at 8:30 and we were soon driving to our first stop.

This was Chan Chan, part of the Chimu empire and the largest pre-Colombian city which was built around 1300 AD (Pre-Inca) and the largest Adobe city in the world (thank you lonely planet).

We paid our entrance fee which also gave you access to 3 other sites and after some debate, paid for an expensive guide. We waited for the tour to start and took a few pics of the Peruvian dogs who were milling around. I think they are quite cute!

The guides English was quite difficult to understand and he spoke as if he was reading text from a book. However, we were glad to have him as there was absolutely no plaques or information available so all you would be left with was walking around walls of mud and trying to make sense of it, and finishing in 5 minutes.

Only one of the palaces has been properly excavated and is open to tourists. There are 9 palaces in total as each new king built a new palace after the death of the previous king. The majority of the palace is dedicated to the cemetery where the king is buried, together with 45 of his nearest and dearest who are sacrificed upon his deathbed so that they can join him in the afterlife. Makes you think twice about being a queen!

The rest of the palace is made up with the royal residence, big plazas where they performed ceremonies and offerings to the gods and a number of tax offices.

Next stop on our ticket was the Chan Chan Museum. It was crap, full of replicas and no information so I’ll move on.

After a coffee pit stop, Huaca Esmeralda was next and not much better, no info available (and not much more if you google it) but it was again from the same dynasty and consisted of an adobe building with a few ramps and not much else. We dawdled so we didn’t return back to Douglas within 5 minutes.

Huaca Arco Iris was our final stop on our ticket, it was a religious and administrative site of the same era. Again, no guide or plaques here again so just more mud walls with some colourless engravings depicting dragons. Slightly more interesting but again we walked around slowly so we didn’t look like complete philistines

To be honest, we had had enough by now but Douglas insisted on taking us to another site. We drove for about 20 minutes before we came to a museum where we had to pay an entrance fee for both the museum and Huaca de la Luna.

 

This was from the Moche dynasty who came before both the Chimu and the Incas. There are actually two Hucaca’s, La Luna and Del Sol. Only enough funding has been raised to excavate La Luna (madness) which is believed to be the religious site where important sacrifices happened and nobles and priests were buried. Del Sol was the administrative site and then there would have been a huge town lying between them.

The museum was very interesting with lots of original artefacts which were excavated from burial sites. It spoke about the many sacrifices done to appease their god which was a mountain over looking the temples. Basically, they sent warriors to battle against each other, the losers were then imprisoned and sacrificed to the gods by decapitating them. Nice!

Next it was time for the tour of La Lunas. This was only discovered in the 90’s by a couple of girls on a school trip. They climbed (what they thought was) a hill and sat down to rest. There they spotted some adobe bricks, did some digging and came across an engraving. The whole temple had been buried under sand for hundreds of years

The Temple structure itself is set out as a pyramid across 7 levels. Each new level is created as they brick up the old temple beneath it and build the new one on top. They are not clear why they did this.  Inside the temple itself, the structure is an inverted pyramid. And has a huge plaza just outside where the warriors were imprisoned and sacrificed.

We really enjoyed the tour, very informative and a lot of it is still undiscovered as some of the site is very fragile from when the Spanish looted it. The outside wall still shows the colourful engravings depicting their god as each new level/temple is built. If ever in the area, I’d opt to see this rather than Chan Chan.

We finished the tour and was back in town around 4pm where we headed to a local’s café for some food. I thought I’d left my sunglasses (yes, another pair) in Julies hostel so we headed there. We were warmly greeted by our new friends and Julie, and both mocked for missing the surfing.

She didn’t have my sunglasses but gave me another pair (We were later to find mine in the pocket of Glenn’s shorts) and had a couple of beers before saying our goodbyes. We had a bus to catch at midnight so couldn’t hang around.

Back at the hostel, we packed and then went to the bar to have a final beer with the last of our Peruvian Soles. Some cheeky sod came up to Glenn and asked to share his beer! He received a polite but very firm NO!

Douglas then took us to catch our midnight bus back in Trujillo. It was a bit disconcerting as there was an armed guard on the door checking and allowing access to only those who had tickets. Well they did say it was a dodgy city!

The bus was almost 2hrs late so it wasn’t much before 2am before we could board and settle down and hopefully sleep through some of the 17 hour Journey.