Huanchaco, Peru

The last few days have been a little uncirtain and we have headed through Peru at a slower pace than we initially wanted. Both because we needed the time to decided what to do next considering the earthquake in Peru, and becasue we wanted to put a little more time between us and the date of the earthquake before arriving in Lima. Our original plan was to go south after Lima, but due to road blockages and more importantly, continuous after shokes, that is no longer possible, and we have decided instead to fly to Cuzco straight from Lima.

Anyways... back to the story of my life.

Leaving Cuenca we headed down to Loja, our last stop in Equador. We stayed there only one day, with the aim of going to see the near by national park. We met an American couple on the first evening with the same plan in mind, and the four of us set off together the next morning in a taxi, undaunted by the continuous (and increasing) drissle. The taxi however, after arriving at the national park enterance refused to take us up the road to the main tracks, and we had to then walk the 8.5km (and then back down later) before we actually got to the park!! And on top of that we had to pay five quid for the privillage - apparently not eveyrhting is cheap out here!! So yeah, after the 2.5 hr hike up the hill we were all pretty drenched and tired so we decied to do two hikes - a 700m one and a 400m one, yes we were a bit wussy, but you have to understand it was bloddy miserable up there!! We then trudged back down the hill only for the rain to stop half wa y- grrr. At the bottom we then hitched a ride in the back of a pick up truck back into town. An eventful day, thought not quite as nature filled as we had planne,d we got some good excersize walking 18km (a grand total of 1.1 of which was in the national park).

Yeah so that was an interesting story, not. We continued from there to Piura in Peru, a town the lonely planet promised to be nothing more than a transport hub. We arrived at 3pm, by 3:30pm we had seen Piura. We met two couples on the bus who ended up in our hostal and drank beer with them until 10pm (this is similar to 2am when you got up at 5:30am the previous morning).

The next day we headed out to Trujillio and from there to the coastal town of Huanchaco, where we are now. After all that bussing and not much stopping we decided to stop here for a few days. Yesterday we saw the ruins of Chan Chan, and today we saw two ancient temples, which were quite cool, and thankfully nothing like the buddist temples I saw too many of in Thailand and China... It was all really interesting - they had a weird way of building stuff and then when they wanted to rebuild instead of knowcking it down, they filled everything in with bricks and then biult more on top, so loads of the art was really well preserved under the bricks. They have only be excavating th sitessince 1990, so loads of stuff was still under sand, but it was very impressive never the less. The king of chan chan apparently had 90 wives, all of whome were burried with him when he died, at the ripe old age of 30, including his head wife (who was in fact his sister). There were some lovely stories.

Whilst I did say this was a coastal town, we are actually in coastal winter at the moment, so there isn´t really much scope for swimming in the sea. Thought one Engish guy we were with did decided to go for a dip this morning, maddness! Thought as Jon commented, only the English would do that in this weather - having said that, I didn´t see Jon swimming.

Tommorrow we are off again. This time down to Lima. Lima is only on the very edge of the earthquake zone (for those who are worried) and there should be no issues there. And we are then flying to Cuzco, not getting the bus - so we will only be in the earthquake zone for about a day, before we are safely on the other side of Peru. Next time I write, you will be hearing about Machu Pichu.

xxxxx