South American adventure

before leaving Cajamarca i decided to get my hair trimmed and was very happy when we found a salon that cut my hair for 5 soles, $1.60. cheapest haircut ever. we took a night bus to Trujillo, got in before the sun came up, waited in the busok  station very sleepy and uncomfrotable. once the sun came up we took a bus to Huanchaco which is the beach town about 30 min from Trujillo. We arrived to a hostal recommended to us by friends, but there were no rooms and in the camping in the back only space for 2 more people. we took it and walked back to find about 20 people sleeping in tents with a communal kitchen. they provided us the tents, blankets and pillows and as we were laughing because we could not believe the accomodations, we decided to accept because it was cheap. we spent 3 nights in the tents, cooking our own food and spending our days in hammocks and reading or on the beach. we went running on the beach, found a fisherman pulling in a catch of crabs and we bought a kilo of crabs, 12 in total, some medium and some quite large, for 4 soles which is $1.30. we got back and shared with the others from the hostal, including 3 travelers who just graduated from SUNY Geneseo and one who knows my old roommate Patty. one of our last days we went to Chan Chan which was the capital of the Chumi civilization that inhabited Peru and preceded the Inca empire. it was a beautiful ruins of the capital city where the nobility lived, they are restoring other parts of it but much of it was open to walk through. we went to the museum, met an Argentine couple that gave us some good tips for wine tasting in Argentina which we have decided will be the celebratory end of our 9 months of traveling together and reward to ourselves for our service work, when we get there in april or may.

we took another night bus friday night from Trujillo to Lima, in the morning we swtiched buses to another to go to Pisco. After staying on too long by accident because of the loud action film and not being able to hear the bus attendant, we got off an hour too late, but they switched buses for us and took us back to Pisco no extra charge. we got in here yesterday with Pisco Sin Fronteras which is a grassroots org that helps rebuild Pisco after the devistating earthquake of 2007, the one that happened just after i left Ecuador the first time in august 2007. much of this city is still destroyed. tomorrow we start work, manuel labor which Al is looking forward to. the people here are very friendly, and they will feed us during the week, we can use the kitchen and cook for ourselves on the weekends, which means that finally tonight i will get to try my hand at cooking pizza in a frying pan. i will be going to the market soon with a new friend from Maine that lives in Argentina for the year. Al is playing RISK with 2 young men from Australia and another from Connecticut that graduated from Clarkson U. the RISK game is in spanish and it is funny listening to their bad pronunciations of the countries.

although everyone here speaks English more than i  like, they are friendly and i have decided i can overlook that if the service work is really good. but there are a few people that speak spanish and i have been able to speak with them.

later we will look for an evening Mass as well. the church in Huanchaco was wonderful, the priest gave us a blessing and i played their keyboard for a while which made me miss playing Bach, so a few hours of the bus between Trujillo and Lima i listened to the Bach preludes WTC Book 1 which makes me happy and miss the piano at the same time.

todo bien aqui, espero que Uds. esten bien tambien. feliz empieza de la semestre nueva!

all is well here, i hope you all are well also. happy start of the new semester!

after leaving Puerto Lopez we took an all day bus to Cuenca where we spent 2 nights in this beautiful colonial city. after meeting a swiss couple and a spanish couple in the hostal and borrowing their guide books for advice, we made a quick decision to head for peru on wednesday a bit earlier than planned. We’ve been in Peru now for a couple of days.  We crossed the border in the late afternoon Wednesday.  It was quite a zoo, very confusing and crazy but we made it across without any hassle or visa problems.  We ran into a small hiccup in Huaquillas with exchanging dollars for soles in that we received some fake bills.  But when we got to Tumbes we went to an exchange house where Annie exchanged the rest of her dollars exchanged for good bills in soles.  Needless to say, we’ve learned to never again exchange money on the street, no matter how reputable the person appears to be.

That was the only problem we encountered when crossing the border.  We both got 180 day visas for free.  We made it to Mancora, the beach resort town of northern Peru safely later Wednesday night, found cheap lodging and ate breakfast on the beach the following morning.  We went to the market and bought bread, mangos, apples and bananas all for less than $2 then spent the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing and walking on the beach.  That night we decided to leave on a night bus instead of staying the extra night and the hostal was nice to let us pay half the fee for the other night because we stayed in the room until 10pm. The exchange rate for soles to dollars is about 2.80 : 1.  Everything is cheaper here and we like it a lot, except for the buses which are a bit more expensive than Ecuador. Al is proving  to be better at math in his head when thinking of how many dollars is 10 soles for example. we round up to 3 to 1 and try to divide all prices by 3 to see how many dollars everything is. eventually we want to be able to think of things in soles but right now we have to convert to figure out if it is expensive or cheap.

Last night around midnight we caught a bus out of Mancora that passed through Chiclayo at 6am, and we caught another bus there to Cajamarca, where we are now, after 13 hours on bus today. Our legs hurt!  This city is so gorgeous, it could almost be Mediterranean.  This is where Francisco Pizarro captured the Incan Emperor Atahualpa.  Tomorrow we are going to visit the house where Atahualpa was hiding before he was caputred. Sunday we’ll go to the Inca Baths and eat at a New York style pizzeria to celebrate Als birthday.  Monday night we’ll be catching a bus to Trujillo and then take a taxi or walk to Huanchaco near the beach to see some more ruins and hiking. Trujillo is rumored to be more dangerous a city, so we’re going to stay in Huanchaco, a smaller town on the beach that is much safer and has Incan ruins near by.  We’ll be staying there just about until we go to Pisco to start volunteering for a few weeks.  We will only be passing through Lima in the bus station.  Everyone tells us that there is not much to see etc., so we’ll just pass through. 

we ate the largest lunch for the cheapest today, it was 3 soles which is about a dollar for soup, the main plate of a mixed rice with sausage, chicken and vegetables and eggs, and juice. que barato.

chao a todos!