Peru - sin fotos!

Hola!

So began today by taking a early am walk along the Huanchaco beach with the Pacifico Oceano crashing in. Love walking along the beach early in the morning, that fresh salty air smelt so sweet...Opted out of a swim as the water was freezing! A shame, would have been nice.. Did have a chat with some fisher dudes and got offered some extremely potent moonshine they called 'Vitamin C'! Stuff was rocket fuel.. Also checked out the one man Torta fishing boats lined up on the beach. The boats are made out of the torta weed and have been made the same way for 2500 years! True...They actually paddle them out through the breakers, catch the fish and then surf them back in making them the oldest surfers.

As i mentioned im in Huanchaco, which is just outside Trujillo which is halft down the peru coast, 8 hours noth of Lima..Its been a made couple of days with many, many bus ks under my belt..Note i must work out how many solid weeks i've spent in buses in SA...I reckon its at least two!

Ok a quick run down:

From the Galapagos i jetted in to Guyaquil, ecuador with new swiss friends Karine and Seb. We had the best sushi i've ever had in Guyaquil (the main reason for going there) before busing up to the southern highland town of Cuenca. Cuenca was a cool colonial town with funky bars, great gringo restaurants and huge shopping malls with multi-cinema complexes! That would put Indooroopilly to shame back home.. Total indulgence...Went and saw the quirky 'Little miss sunshine' and ´The illusionist' both in english with spanish subtitiles.

From Cuenca it was down to Vilicamba, a tiny town in the southern highlands, close to the peruvian border. In Vilicamba we stayed at this great German run traveller resort with swimming pool, bar, cafe with great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys for 8 usd a night including breakfast with fresh fruit, yogurt, homemade bread, and eggs and bacon! Sometimes its good to live it up and go gringo! While here we did a horse trek up into the mountains with a kiwi guy, Gavin that runs overnight trail rides to his cabin in the mountains..It was a top trip, my horse was big mountain beast and powered up the hills..Gavin put on a great spread including cocktails...He seems to like a drink or two as we counted no less than 300 vodka bottles stacked up on the side of the cabin. He is planning to build a cabin with them.

Also caught a funky colombian band playing at one of the cafes in Vilicamba. I was relieved to see that they had no pan pipes. Apologies to those pan pipe fans out there but i've been over dosed on pan pipes!

So after 5 days that was only suppose to be two i finally left the German resort with the swissies and caught a overnight bus to peru with a 3am Border crossing! Something different. On the ecuadorian side we had to wait for an hour in the rain and mossies for the police guy to get his computer working then we had to wake up the Peruvian guy. He didn't seem so impressed but let us come in to his country anyway.

So almost there. Arrived at the coastal town of Pirua, said goodbye to the swissies who opted for a flight to lima and then cuzco..Not bus fans like me. Smart.. Then i bused on down to Chacalayo, which has some impressive pre-inca ruins one of which is the famous king of Sipan's tomb that was only discovered in 1987. Went to a impressive museum and checked out the huge find of jewellery, weapons and other aterfacts. There was even dressed up robot indian manicans playing instruments!

Finally today i went and saw the mud city of Chan Chan, a huge 40 sqm site with huge crumbing mud walls, that once contained 10000 structures from huge walk-in wells, canals and temple pyramids to royal places lined with precious metals. Sounds impressive, it was!
Tonight guess what? I'm catching another overnight bus to Hurraz, in the mountains home to some of the best trekking and mtbing in Peru! Then Lima and cusco to some place called Macchu Picchu..

I fly back to Greece on the 18th where i have a skippering job with a Canadian adventure tour company waiting! See www.gapadventures.com should be able to get a mates rate if anyone wants come! Meet the GAP guys last year when i was working for FYLY and got offered a job a couple of weeks ago. Always nice when the work finds u! Actually as much as i'm looking forward to seeing Southern Peru i can't wait to work again and nor can my bank balance!

Ok so that's it...until next time..hasta luego!