Huanchaca to Lima - Our first taste of Loki

From Porto Lopez we continued our journey south, there were a couple of buses involved, a stop over in Guayaquil which was so insignificant it doesn´t get a blog entry, just 1 night in a cheap hotel and we spent most time watching TV. Sometimes TV is a godsend and others a curse, I can happily take it or leave it, I much prefer to sit and watch movies, I don't like having to flick through channels to find something watchable and then Haven to do it again every 30 minutes when the show finishes! Gini on the other hand would I think be happy to stay anywhere if there were a TV in the room where she can get her fix of trashy TV and bad sitcoms.

Now we have heard from a few people, actually most if not all people, that the border crossing from Ecuador to Peru is notoriously bad, in that there is about a quarter mile between the 2 immigration offices that has a market there and if you travel by night there is a very high chance you will be mugged. One guy told us he was with a guide who picked up their bags and started running as fast as he could to avoid the would be assailants. Once he was safely past the dodgy market he drew a finger across his throat to indicate that without him something bad would have happened!

And poor Beth, an English girl we travelled with for a couple of weeks had an episode where someone grabbed her rucksack and tried to wrestle it away from her. Now most rucksacks are between 13 and 20kg, not the easiest target for a bag snatch! Anyway the thief was unsuccessful and left Beth lying on the floor complete with her rucksack, like a turtle on its back. It has also been known for people to get into your taxi and demand you go to cash machines to withdraw money for them. You´d think border crossings would be safe what with armed guards at either side but hey, this is South America baby!

The funny thing is theres another border crossing about 100km away which is scenic and pleasant according to reports and The Book. Don´t get me wrong I´m all for adrenalin rushes and trying new things but I don´t see the point in putting us in any unnecessary danger, it´s pointless when for another hour or two on a bus you can be safe as Larry, whoever he is.

We went the slightly longer way. Our border crossing was at night but there isn´t a gap between the 2 sides, just different offices on either side of the road. This was a really good thing as we had taken some sleeping tablets about an hour before we got there, actually they may have been tranquilisers, not sure. The result was that we were slightly less than compos mentis when we had to get our passports signed. That's Latin you know, it means "in Control".

All was good and we arrived in Huanchaca at about midday. Gini describes Huanchaca as Blackpool beach without the lights. It´s a place for surfers to go, the beach isn´t great but the waves are. This was another place we didn´t learn to surf in, the water looked cold.

We spent a couple of days wandering the streets, looking at tat and eating in different places, it was quite sad really, there are lots of restaurants and stalls but the place was quite deserted and people resorted to almost begging to to eat in their place. The fella at a surf lesson place kept offering me weed every time I passed, like 3 or 4 times a day!

Lima, the capital city of Peru and the home of the first Loki hostel. Any place that we visit can be judged on how good the hostel is, it doesn't matter if a place is shit, if it has a good hostel then it will make all the difference and we will stay for a few extra days. Sometimes we can be at a hostel and not even venture outside for days on end!
We had heard Loki was a good hostel and we weren't disappointed, with table tennis (which I love) a pool table and big movie room, we were happy bunnies!
Not really a great deal to report about Lima, didn't get out much, watched a lot of movies and veg'ed around a lot. We did go on the piss with some Americans to a club, drinking something called Pisco Sour, a cocktail made from Pisco, egg white n some other stuff, if it's mixed right it's ok, if it's not it's really bad! These were ok, we drank, danced and generally had a good time and got plastered.

Puerto Lopez - Whale fish, Whale fish

Happy, happy, joy, joy more buses - Not sure if we have mentioned about the buses and driving skills of the average Central/South American?they are just crap. There is no regard for safety at all. most buses have a wall and door between you and the driver so you can´t see out of the window which is a good thing. Overtaking on blind corners is a national pastime and not just one car at a time. So our time had come to take our lives in our hands once again and take the 6 hour journey to Puerto Lopez which in fact took 8 hours and 4 buses, each dodgier than the last as the buses deteriorated so did the roads. At one point our 3 ´drivers´were discussing which side of the road to drive on to avoid the crater sized potholes in the road in pitch darkness. Now this was bad enough, our tolerance was strained to say the least but add to it that the seats were designed for midgets with no legs and a curved spine and that the guy behind me decided to shout Hi at the top of his voice every time we went over a bump (and we went over may bumps). His theory was that when a Karate dude falls on the floor he says Hi to lessen the blow. I am not sure if he was just socially retarded or just plane retarded cause he at one stage started shouting ´what is happening´to his friend when we stopped to let some people out. Oh god how I hate other people sometimes!!!

Off the bus we get and trudge down the length of the town to a hostel that was recommended by the guys in Canoa, we should of know that the place would be a little run down as the stoners had said that it was great cause the owners son was running the place and just got stoned all the time. It turns out that the the local drug dealer lived just outside the hostel on the beach in a tent.

But we were here for one reason on one reason only Humpback Whales. We had arrived just towards the end of the mating/migrating season when the Whales swim up the coast of South America and just kinda hang out around Puerto Lopez. During this time you are basically guaranteed to see at least one. We were told by a girl studying them that the best group to find is either a mother and calf as the calf is very excitable and they jump a lot or a female with 2 male admirers as they are trying to show off to get the girl.

We booked a trip with the girl in the hostel and the next day we were up bright and early to go out on the boat. We stood on the beach while we watched all the other boats get full and leave and there was no sign of ours. Great the one thing I really wanted to do and it wasn´t going to plan. Finally our boat, captain and the rest of our tour turned up. We headed straight for the front of the boat sure we would get wet but we would have a great 360 view.

I was a little nervous as I had heard stories about whales coming up really close to the boat, while that would be really cool I think I would poo my pants if this happened. ------->

We travelled out for what seemed like ages crashing over waves and getting drenched but then we stopped and waited. It was very surreal ,very quite and everyone was holding their breath, and then I saw the first whale of the day. I pointed, shouted and squealed like a little girl. I was so excited, we had come across a little family, a mother, calf and another female travelling together. There was alot of breaching the water with either their heads, backs, tails or fins and blowing water. Then we were treated to the most amazing sight, a full out of the water, up in the air back flip. It was amazing, I have never experienced a group of about 20 grown ups audibly sighing in unison before. We were treated to about 3 more hours of searching the horizon spotting then and going in for a closer look. It was great just as we were about to head off we had one more massive back flip just at the place I was looking, now that was really cool. The hard thing about it was that there was just so much water to look at and you didn´t want to miss anything so you are flipping your head back and forth seeing what the other boat were looking at.
There is not really more I can say about it without repeating myself although I will just state how amazing it was these are not the most beautiful creatures in the world but you just felt like you were seeing something wonderful every time even just their backs breached the water. I have always been fascinated with Whales and dolphins and I have seen them both on this trip in spectacular form. I have definitely seen my something majestic.

Baños & Canoa - The lost week

Oh god we are so behind on this thing it is not even funny. I am sitting here trying to remember where we went and what we did. The answer springs to mind Canoa and not very much at all.

But before that we went to Baños, a place that is named after toilet. Honestly if my town was called toilet I think I would petition the council to change the name.

Saying that it is a really nice place, we felt really safe (coming from Quito), you could walk round at night. There is a really big volcano there that has been on the verge of erupting for years, supposedly most insurance companies will not cover you in baños in case it goes. Most nights there is a real spectacular lava show. We went for 2 days one night. It was really nice being out of Quito and being able to go outside after dark. We had a fantastic steak dinner wandered round the town for a while then headed back to our hostel.

We had decided to escape dorm life for a night. Dorms are great if you like being woken up at all hours seeing ugly people in various states of undress, dealing with smelly bodily functions (but in all honestly I think most of them come from Stu, some thing may have died in his shoes), the bain of dorm rooms plastic bags, people who just can´t whisper and speak at full voice all the time and snoring. We have been quite lucky that we have only had 2 snorers on this trip but boy were they bad. The first was in Mexico, this guy slept all day so you couldn´t go into the room to do stuff and snored all night so you couldn´t sleep. The second was in Lima, it was the weirdest snoring I have ever heard it was like he was blowing raspberries and then he would sigh to get the last of his breath out, it was great. I shook his bed, thought about throwing things at him and shone my torch in his eyes when I was searching for my ear plugs (if you are coming to South America bring some with you cause weirdly they don´t sell them here). So double room with en suite here we come.

On our second day we decided to go quad biking. I was a little nervous having never done anything like it before and Stu didn´t help, I think he was more nervous that me about me driving. So we hired one and headed out of Baños and off the the waterfalls. Being the boy Stu insisted on driving (I didn´t really mind that much on the main roads the drivers over here are just so bad) but as we got out of the town I had to bully my way in the the drivers spot. I was doing really well, the views were really great (only some times did I move the quad when I moved my head!!) At some of the waterfalls there were cable cars that you could travel across the gorge in. These look about as safe as a garden gate so they were off the agenda. Then we came up to a bridge where everyone throws themselves off, it is like a big swing. Stu was contemplating it but he chose not to go for it; I of course didn´t even contemplate it and didn´t like even standing on the bridge.

Then it was time to head back I hopped on the front and began the drive home. Before we left the hire place the guy showed us a map and told us that we were not aloud to go through the tunnels (or at least we thought that was he said) it turned out that they had a one way system where you went up on the side of a cliff and back through a dark long tunnel. I was happily whizzing down the side road until I had to merge into a main-ish road with other traffic. That done I was very proud of my self, then there came the tunnel. Fear started to set in, I was thinking of going down the up road but if we met a car coming in the other direction one or other of us would have gone over the cliff. Not good. Through the tunnel we go. Lights on (or so we thought, the switch was on but no joy!) and in to the long dark tunnel with no overhead lighting. Fear turns to panic we are in the dark scrambling for the lights, can´t see anything in front or behind except blackness and then we hit the wall! Oh Shit on most roads there is a gully beside the road for drainage and yes were were in it. Panic turns to shear panic - we get off the quad and we had to try to bump it out of the drain while cars are coming behind us. I frantically start waving them down (a la The Railway Children but not with my red knickers) so they don´t plow into us. We got the quad out and then I lost my flip flop not the best time to be scrambling on the ground for stuff. Jump back on the bike and I relinquished my driving seat and we head for home, the only injury was Stu had a cut on his finger which bled all the way home and I scratched my leg.

Again before we left the hire place the guy asked us to look at the quad to see that there was no scratches or dents or anything and told us that a faring would cost $60 if we did anything to it. As we are driving home in the rain we are trying to see how we will get away with the big scratches on the faring and on the handle bars and hope he doesn´t see the big scratch on my leg. We get back to town and thankfully the guy we hired it off was underneath another quad doing some repairs. We handed the keys back the the woman behind the desk got our passports and ran. Then it was tme to leave Baños to go the Canoa and meet back up with the guys from Quito.

We took a bus from Baños to Quito, sat round in the bus station being bothered by a drunk guy harmless really but by the 40th time he told us that his "English is little" it became a bit boring. In retrospect I think when Stu told him to "Vamos" it confused him, he wasn´t conjugating properly and was saying "lets go"instead of "you go" ie. sod off (which would have been "vas"). Then an overnight bus to Canoa, the guys had given us the name of the hostel that they had stayed in before and we headed there. Unfortunately Alex had failed to mention that they were having drainage problems and that the place had a powerful smell of shit about it. But they did have Eggs Benedict so it kinda evened out. As we arrived the guys were just about to head out on a whale watching tour, one of the main reasons that we came to Canoa, they had dragged themselves out of bed at the ungodly hours of 9.30am to be told that all the whales were gone and the tours were not being run anymore. Maybe a little note on the door of their room would have been nice as they had organised it with the girl on reception the night before but hey that's Ecuador.

We soon found out that there was not much to do in Canoa but be there so we strung up our hammocks and swung to the sound of the waves. The beach was right across the way but it was cold and we were being wimps so no swimming was to be had. The main pastimes in Canoa are drinking and getting stoned. We took to it like a duck to water. The guys there were culinary geniuses and cooked up a wicked rice crispy space cake, which was enjoyed by all to the comic genius of Spinal Tap. This for us went on for 2 night straight, for the others it was 4. As you can understand this is why there is not much to write about Canoa as there was not much done there and what was done was forgotten.

Quito Photos

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Quito - The most dangerous city we have visited.

Ecuador is quite small compared to some of the other countries in South America but reading the Lonely Planet - Which I have come to treat like a despised necessity by now, their definition of
"a cleanly hostel with friendly staff in this beautiful building restored to it´s former glory"
is very different to mine, when we turned up at the hostel that this was describing we thought it was a bit of a shit hole, the staff were ok but the owner was a knob and the building was half brick, some concrete and wood, our room was a hovel.
This was back in central America though and doesn´t have any bearing on this bit of the blog other than to emphasise that I don´t hold much in the descriptions of hostels. What I cannot ignore however is when the book advises us that the capital city of Ecuador that we are heading towards is, in their words "a bit sketchy" and that you need to keep an eye on your belongings when at the bus station, when walking down the road and pretty much all the time day or night. It also advises to take taxis at night as it isn´t safe to walk around, but make sure they are the correct licensed taxi´s or you might get kidnapped and forced to go to cash machines.

This might make the place sound unpleasant and dangerous but really this is common sense in all the cities and most of the small towns we travel to. The poor people are very poor and it is easy for them to resort to petty theft, and as rich tourists (in their eyes, in mine I´m a skint traveller) we make the perfect victim. Most of the places we visit have warnings of this kind, the worst in Mexico as I have mentioned where it´s common for the bus to be hijacked at gunpoint and all the passengers to be robbed of their belonging. The beautiful villages of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala are very cool but we were advised not to take a walk on the road between the places as there are numerous armed robberies.

I have actually heard 3 different stories of armed robberies on the same road there, the locals jump out of the trees with machetes and guns to rob people. Why the police haven´t done anything about it is anyone's guess.

So yeah, Quito. It didn´t really sound much worse than other places. That was until we started to talking to some of the people that stayed in the hostel. Apparently it was common to be mugged just outside the hostel, about 15meters from the front door!! Despite the fact there is a security guard outside. Now Security guards have a way of looking at things that I can´t figure out if I agree or not, actually that's not right, I do disagree with them but I can kind of understand. They will happily do there job and guard the building they are working for, if anyone were to try and break in to the hostel he would be there to stop them, however it isn´t their jobs to get involved in the mugging that is happening 10ft away. They are working in a city that is reputedly dangerous and the gun laws, if there are any and not adhered to, not to mention everyone owns a machete. Is it worth them risking themselves to help someone who is victim of a mugging?? Not in their eyes at any rate.
There was one fella at the hostel who told us about his ordeal.
As he left the Internet cafe 2 streets away from the hostel with his bag on his shoulder (containing his laptop) he was grabbed in a choke hold from behind whilst 2 men jumped out and went through his pockets, he tried to fight back but was either hit over the head or choked into unconsciousness. He came to moments later having been relieved of his bag, his chap stick(?) and some other items from his pockets but they had neglected to get his wallet? go figure!
There were people walking around, on the same street, there were security guards over the road who had watched it happen. They all were very helpful and told him which way the muggers had run!

Needless to say we were very vigilant with our belongings and stayed in the hostel at night.

The hostel was cool, we met some great people and spent a lot of time watching TV and drinking.
If you manage to find a good hostel it doesn´t matter what goes on outside, we have actually just left Lima, the capital of Peru after 4 nights and we only went out of the hostel once to see the city!
We played on the equator!
The funny thing is there is a massive monument with a small theme park type thing there and a line on the floor running through the whole place, people come from all over the world to visit it as it´s one of the only places along the equator that isn´t up a mountain or in the jungle somewhere. Everyone takes pictures and it´s kind of cheesy but fun.
Then GPS was invented. Oh how they must have laughed when the modern technology that is GPS showed them (not sure who "them" actually is) that the actual equator line is about 200 meters away, just outside their theme park!!
There is another, smaller visitors centre set up here that does little tours and shows experiments and sure enough on one side of the line the sink of water drains clockwise, on the equator line it doesn´t swirl at all and on the other side it goes anticlockwise, that's all the proof I need! Apparently it´s also the easiest place in the world to balance an egg on the head of a nail, something to do with gravitational swirly stuff too.
I bought a bottle of Vodka for $3 one night, we met a couple of people from England and played cards and proceeded to get very drunk, good times.
The hostel had a great plan, make sure all the guests get so drunk that it´s impossible for them to leave! It worked really well, every other night the hostel gave a huge bucket of rum and coke to the guests, 12 litres of the stuff! there were 5 bottles of rum in there! Impossible to stay sober.

Bogota Photos

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Bogota and the Salt Mines (sounds like a Harry Potter book!)

After 30 hours on a bus and we arrived in Bogota. 30 hours you say but why is that? Cartagena is only about 16 hours away, well I will tell you... Another part of Colombia that we had been told was beautiful and really worth going to was Santa Marta. Unfortunattally the town was 5 hours north of Cartagena and a bit too much out of our way. So we got to bus to Bogota only to find the ocean on the wrong side for 5 bloody hours. And where was our first stop yes you have it Bloody Santa Marta. So after the 10 hour detour we were finally on our way to Bogota. Thank god for sleeping tablets.

The scotts Angela and Craig that we met in Cartagena were in the hostel next door. We felt a bit bad cause every time we spoke to them it turns out that they spent a lot more money on things that we both had done, our flight from Colombia was 1/2 the price of theirs, our rooms were cheaper and our bus from Cartagena was too. It wouldn´t have been too bad but they were really focused on their money and missing things out so they could streach out what they had saved, saying that, they had double what we had. We have now devised a philosiphy after meeting them. We (within reason) will not miss out on someting great because of the money it costs and then when the money is gone we will simply go home having great memories (of which our sand bording adventure is a testement to but more on that in another post).

Our main activity in Bogota was the Salt Cathedral I was really looking forward to this after seeing Helen´s amazing photo of it. Just outside Bogota is a massive Salt Mine and for some reason or another (probably available on google) they decided to build a Cathedral inside it. So we set out on a cold and drizzly day to the Mine. We have been really lucky on our days out always having great sunshine apart from gettin home from the volcano bording, again we were lucky the weather was bad outside so we didn´t mind going underground. We waited for our Spanish speaking guide (great) and were looking at a huge cross carved from salt rock for each of the 14 Stations of the Cross. These were pretty cool but once you have seen 6 salt crosses that is about enough. Then we came into the beautifully carved statues, angels and the full nativity scene and a full church it was amazing. It has pews and an alter and everything. I think they use it for special masses sometimes, it would be amazing to see it full and used for the purpose it was made. And incase you are wondering yes we did lick it and it was salty!!!

Our other day out was to the police museum it was really cool. The museum revolves around Pablo Escobar who was a massive Drug barron (kinda the first one) who was so rich that Forbes magazine listed him as the 7th richest man in the world in 1989 now that is rich from drugs. He is responsible for killing 30 judges, 457 police, and other deaths at a rate of 20 each day for 2 months! Now that is a lot of killing. We were shown around the place by a young Army recruit (all boys in Colombia have to do service) he was working in the museum showing people round, he said that he prefered this to what some of the other recruits have to do, namely go out and fight the guerillas in the jungle. I would pick the museum too. He showed all the exhibitions relating to Pablo and told us all about how the US helped to capture and kill him, funny how they help when the drugs are running into their country isn´t it? They also had a huge cashe of arms that was donated to them by Germany after World War 2. I thought that was a bit strange but El Floato liked posing with them.

Cartagena Photos

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"Is this the bus to Cartagena?"

After our amazing trip home from San Blas we headed back to the hostel and had one more day in Panama City to chill. With the words of Cathline Turner (from Romancing the Stone if you don´t know) ringing in my ears I was finally off to Cartagena and Colomnbia. That word had struck fear in me for years and the fact the people with Irish passports weren´t even aloud into the country for a while until about 18 months ago (the story goes that some IRA guys came over and were training the guerillas the government didn´t like that and stopped Irish people from coming into the country). We had heard good thing about Colombia from everyone that we had met so we picked up our gay and decided to go. I rang mum to tell here where we were and before she had time to worry about Colombia I had skillfully distraced her with the afore mentioned Romancing the Stone reference. We said our good byes to the Germans and to Central America and borded our tiny plane. We were hoping to travel to Colombia via boat but it was really expensive and in all honesty we didn´t really look for one. So off we were on the plane.

We arrived in Cartagena and it´s beautiful, we stayed just outside the walled city, which was really cool. We did have out first money mix up though, it is so hard to get your head around a new currency every few weeks. Just as you are getting used to one then you are on to the next one. We went to what we thought was a reasonable priced restaurant and after we paid we (well really Stu, don´t ask me about the money here) realised that we had the exchange rate wrong. Everything was double the price we had thought.( doh that damn taxi ride into town was a rip off to start with and we´d given the guy a tip!!) Oh well as I say it was the first time so I think that was pretty good going.

The next day we went to see this huge fort just down the road from us it was really cool it had different tunnels that were used for escaping in times of war and to get supplies into the fort. You could just imagine it being used, the archers on the turrets and boiling oil being poured down the shoots over the door. They also had the biggest flag I have ever seen. They do love their big flags over here.

I had done some research about Colombia before we left, which is very unlike us, we normally arrive somewhere not knowing anything about the country and just wing it on what we are told by other travellers (and relying on Helen´s blog for tips too) but this time it was different we were going to know what we were doing. I had read about another Volcano that I knew we had to go to. We have decided that the only volcanos that we will go to are ones that have activites on them, bugger just walking up the for walking sake. So we had poking lava with a stick, bording down and now we had a MUD BATH.

There is a volcano outside Cartagena that instead of Lava spues mud, according to the Tayronas, the ancient Indian tribe that once inhabited Colombia's coast, the Totumo volcano once spewed fire from its inner devil's lair; however, the local priest, being quite good at fending off the devil doused the screaming fire with holy water and thus drowning Satan in a pile of thick mud. This myth continues with the origins of the mud, adding that the ancient spirits of the ancestral world heaved forth from the depths of the ground to smother the devil in his unworthy actions. To me it was just a big hole with smelly mud in it. So here we go. The great thing was instead of doing a tour Stu, myself and 2 scotts that we met got a taxi to the volcano so there was only us there thankfully as it is not too big and I have heard of there being up to 20 people in the tours.

So here we go into the mud. It is luke warm and squidgy when you first climb down the ladder and it gets between your toes. I can still feel it now. Immediatly we were grabbed by some Colmbians (hopefully that wasn´t a euphemism that Stu was taking about) to massage us. We got flipped over and rubbed and lay out in the mud. Stu felt a bit uncomfortable so he repetedly asked his guy to stop but he just kepted on rubbin!! So we broke free of our enthustic massures and just lolled round in the mud. It was so weird you just can´t sink I managed to clime up onto Stu but the viscousity was just too much. The only time that someone went under was when Craig threw his girfriend in the air and she got a mouth full of the stuff- nice. Then it was out of the mud and into a slightly less muddy lake to "wash" desperatly holding on to my bottoms as they were so full of mud that they were weighing me down and falling off. Again we had to fend off the enthustic washing ladies at the waters edge. Later I hear someone was told that the lake was described as a christal clear lake, yea right. When you get out of the Volcano you kinda squigy yourself off which sound and looks and sound like cows having a poo and still you are covered. With the amount of mud that I still had on me it would take a jet hose to get it all off this knee deep muddy water. So back into the taxi when we where we were chased by our friendly massures for a tip. No way were were paying to get felt up by Colombians (Stu had that chance in Panama City) so we sped away telling them that we didn´t ask for it.

And that was really all we did in Cartagena, one more volcano story.

San Blas Photos

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