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Juicy Shoot Around the World
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It was Friday the 13th when we crossed the
Peruvian border in Huaquillas and maybe that's
why it went a bit wrong... It was indeed
our worst border crossing so far, a lot more
difficult than any border we had crossed
before... Our bus from Cuenca dropped us
off at the Ecuadorian migration office, in
the middle of what looked like a motorway...
From there we had to take a taxi to the Peruvian
migration office to get another stamp and
into another taxi to go way from the border.
Little did we know that the taxi driver was
trying to rip us off by taking us to Tumbes,
12 km further, when what we wanted was a
collectivo (shared taxi)... We argued with
him for a bit until he agreed to lower his
price and we eventually got to the muddy
town of Tumbes where we took a bus to Mancora...
From one bad thing to another, we arrived
in Mancora hours later because of a police
check that lasted for ages, only to find
out that this supposedly pleasant beach town
was just a very touristy muddy and ugly little
town! To top everything up we found out that
some of the notes we had changed at the border
were fake... Great!
But that's not all, we stayed in the
worst hostel ever, with a bed that had more
the shape of a hammock, in a room full of
mosquitoes... Needless to say we did not
sleep much and left first thing in the morning...
Our first impressions of Peru were not all
positive to say the least...
Things got better when we arrived in Chiclayo,
further down the Pacific coast, and the road
on the way there was also quite spectacular,
with landscapes switching from deserts to
rice fields...
We spent a couple of days there and visited
the impressive Sipan and Tucume sites. At
first sight it all looked like mountains
of mud guarded by strange hairless dogs,
but as we got closer we could see that these
hills were actually temples made of bricks...
We also visited the Museo Tumbas Reales de
Sipan showcasing the actual tomb of the Lord
Sipan himself and where we learnt a lot about
pre-Inca civilizations such as the Chimu
and the Moche.
These sites were a few kilometers away from
Chiclayo and on our way back, we shared a
collectivo minibus with some local workers
who had been burning fields of sugar cane
and were as black as coal miners!
Overall it was a really interesting time,
with our first real taste of pre-Inca culture
and archeology... But much more was still
to come in Trujillo, our next destination!
16/02/2009
         
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