The Blaus - South America and Europe

10 de Mayo - Trujillo & Mancora, Peru

We decided to make a few stops along the route from Peru to Ecuador, to break up the journey a bit. Trujillo is a lackluster town, but it boasts proximity to Pre-Incan ruins. We spent one night and one full day there exploring the city of Chan Chan, which was the capital of the Chimu Kingdom. The city is said to be the largest in Pre-Colombian America. It was built in the 15th century of adobe brick and finished with mud, and the structures have barely survived erosion from rains and floods over the years, but parts of Chan Chan have been restored and the site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The most remarkable feature of these ruins are the artistic renderings and sculptures carved in the adobe walls of the living quarters, burial places and warehouses. The sculptures depict stylized animals like penguins, fish, sea otters, and birds and also fishing net. There is also a beautiful reservoir in the middle of the complex, which is how the Chimu irrigated their crops in this arid part of Peru. The ruins were very unique remains of the Chimu civilization before the establishment of the Inca Empire.

We left Trujillo on an overnight bus to Mancora, where we spent a few days relaxing on the beaches in Peru. Billy has been fighting a head cold, so we welcomed the opportunity to rest and relax for a few days. Mancora is a sleepy beach town on the northern coast of Peru near the border with Ecuador. As a beach resort town that is located on the Pan American Highway, it is a nice pit stop for travelers making their way up the coast. We arrived in Mancora at 5am, and even at that early hour the weather was balmy and comfortably warm. We spent three luxurious days at the beach. Billy overdosed on ceviche (if that is possible) after eating it for lunch and dinner for days on end. Jen discovered Parihuela, which is a fish soup with a light tomato sauce served with steamed rice. We swam in the warm Pacific Ocean and took walks on the beach from Mancora to Las Pocitas (the neighboring beach resort town). Mancora and Las Pocitas appear to be the places where wealthy Limeños (people from Lima) spend summers. Since we arrived in low season, we found a beachfront hotel with great rooms for $20 per night. Apparently every day is sunny in Mancora, so even winters are warm.

We spent entire days gazing out at the ocean, looking for dolphins, watching giant pelicans fly by with their bellies to the water and hungry vultures circle above the fishing boats. We sat at the beach watching kite surfers and boogie boarders get their rushes of adrenaline. We woke up to the sounds and sights of the ocean and watched the slowly creeping silhouette of a man standing on a raft built of bamboo reeds as he paddled with a thick, long stick. The sunsets are flourescent pink and the sunrises are silver. We go to sleep with to the sound of waves crashing on the beach outside our sliding glass door.

One afternoon while Billy was sleeping, Jen sat on the deck outside our hotel room looking out at the ocean and spotted three dolphins heading south. At first glance she thought that the black fins might belong to killer whales, but she soon recognized the pattern of their movement. The three of them popped up for air, and then dove back down in unison. They disappeared underwater and then reappeared on the surface just long enough for her to track them to where the sun was setting on the water and it was too bright to continue to stare in their direction. Seeing dolphins in the ocean is akin to seeing a shooting star, isn`t it? She felt very lucky to have caught a glimpse of something so uncommon.

We spent a lot of time observing life in Mancora. The town is full of tuk-tuk drivers who chase arriving buses and compete for the fresh off the bus passengers who have just arrived in Mancora. These are the best fares that they can get, because unsuspecting tourists don`t know how much they should be paying for a ride, so the tuk-tuk drivers can charge double. It is a comical sight to see. The tuk-tuk drivers congregate at one spot in town and they sit around and leisurely chat until a new batch of potential customers arrives on a bus. At this point, they jump into their tuk-tuks and race to the bus to compete for those fares. There is no fair play with this ritual. They practically run each other over to get there first. The guy with a produce cart slowly pushes it along the main road making stops to sell his bananas, avocados, oranges to the neighborhood restaurants and markets. The guy in a poultry truck makes his rounds to the local eateries and pulls three whole chickens at a time out of the bed of his truck, weighs them, and closes the deal with the restauranteurs. In the back of the restaurants that line the beach, the fishermen bring in the catch of the day. A dozen huge, fresh fish lay on the table waiting to be gutted and cleaned, and later consumed in Billy`s ceviche.

We met a woman on the beach who was selling necklaces and other items made out of shells. We told her that we were married nearly a year ago and she asked if we had children. We gave our usual response to the question that we often hear here in South America, and she told us that being married without children is like having a garden without flowers. "Un jardin sin flores." We thought that statement was very eloquent. We told her that someday soon we hope to know what it`s like to have little sunflowers or roses of our own.

When we left Mancora and crossed the border into Ecuador, we were not sad to be leaving Peru. We decided that we loved and hated Peru after spending a little over three weeks there. Traveling in Peru was trying at times and easy at other times. The Peruvian people are much more aggressive than other people we have met in South America. This was both good and bad. Since Peruvians are forward, we inevitably ended up having conversations with the locals once we established that we were not going to buy what they were selling. However, we were always on guard when anyone was overly nice to us, because we were waiting to learn about their true motives. It was much more expensive to travel in Peru than it was in Bolivia, and we never recovered from the sticker shock. We often expected more for the money we spent in Peru, but this wasn`t always the case. Peru has incredible cultural offerings, a rich history with amazing ruins, beautiful sights from the Andes to the coast, an interesting political background and people who are friendly and warm. We enjoyed our time in Peru, but we are looking forward to seeing the rest of South America.

We are off to Ecuador, where the official currency is the US dollar (strange that we will be using dollars and American coins for the first time since we left home). The Galapagos Islands are notoriously expensive (we will spend more on our flights to the Galapagos than we spend during two weeks of travel time), but we can`t pass up a once in a lifetime experience to see them and we hear that a trip to the Galapagos is worth the expense. We are flying to the islands in hopes of arranging a last minute boat cruise on the cheap. We will report back once we have seen the islands for ourselves.

posted by The Blaus @ 7:56 PM