Phase Two: Peru!

It seems like an eternity since my last post. I've been to busy to really get anything out, and the few times I tried, I never quite felt the motivation so hopefully this will catch you up to where I'm at now. I'm also sorry to say that I have almost no photos to show for these weeks, I got lazy with my camera so you'll just have to use your imagination whilst reading this, or if you really want you can do a Google image search to satisfy your curiosity.

These recent weeks have involved spending many hours on buses, eating some great seafood for next to nothing, drinking beers whilst watching sunsets, playing beach soccer and watching world cup games with extremely passionate fans from all over the world, trying to keep my dignity whilst attempting to dance salsa in clubs in front of locals, but perhaps the best part of it all, meeting many more new amazing people at every step along the way. I've found many times now that the down side of this is having to say goodbye to people nearly as fast as you meet them.


Every time I meet a fellow traveler, it only takes one brief conversation before we find a common ground, forming a friendship and trust for each other which would take weeks to form back at home. Everyone just seems to be grateful and enjoying their own unique experience of what their travels are bringing them. There have been many times where literally within minutes of meeting someone, we're talking about where our travels are going, and whether we can find a way to spend some time together on the road later on. Everyone I meet brings me something in some way. They mite have some great advice about the next place I'm going, they mite have a contagious sense of humor when I'm missing the basics of home comfort, they mite have a voice or a musical talent that I can collaborate with, or they mite put me in the vulnerable situation where I have no choice but to put my Spanish knowledge to practice. The city of Cuenca was my first point of arrival after leaving Banos. I'm finally ready to begin telling my story now so I guess I’ll lead off from here. Once again I have a lot to catch up on so I'm sorry if this gets a wee bit long.......

I was hoping that I'd arrive in Cuenca before dark, it’s a big city and I'd already learnt that big cities are a lot more intimidating when you see them for the first time during the night. I'd also learnt that bus schedules in Ecuador can't always be relied upon, so it was now looking inevitable that this was going to be my experience once again. However this ended up being a lot smoother than my Quito experience. A friend of mine had arrived a few days earlier and given me the address of a good hostel, so all I had to do was jump in a taxi and point him in the right direction. It was a place called Hostel Cigale, which also had a restaurant which was popular for the locals.

As I stumbled through the door with all my gear, everyone briefly stopped their dinner conversations to watch me struggle to the counter whilst juggling all my gear. The staff here were also locals, and only one of them spoke any English, but I'd stayed in enough hostels by now to know the lingo on making reservations. This hostel had a real social vibe to it which I was happy about. I'd just left behind some people whom I'd become close friends with in Banos, so I was looking forward to finding some new people to hang out with for a wee while.

My original intention was to stay about three days in Cuenca before moving on to see some places further south, but it seemed to suck me in. I quickly found myself a bunch of guys to hang out with, and also the city was by far the most beautiful out of all the other places I'd been in Ecuador. I even became mates with one of the locals that worked there. Apart from my Amazon experience, he was the first friend that I'd made that only spoke Spanish. He had a lot of patience with me when it came to those moments of searching for the right word to use in the middle of a conversation.


One night we all went out to one of the clubs together. It was me, a bunch of local guys from the hostel, and a few girls that were also staying there. As we approached the bar the local boys went straight up to the bouncers, shook their hands, and wondered straight on in. "How good it is to be hanging with the locals I thought to myself." The girls all went on in getting a kiss on the cheek from the bouncer as they went by, then as I approached he looked at me and put out his hand saying, "you have to pay three dollars." I tried to refuse to pay, but everyone pretty much told me that I had no choice, it just so happened to be one of the things that comes with being a gringo guy. I handed him the money, which was going to be my two beers for the night, carried on into the bar, and stood there, stewing in my anger & frustration. I was able to somewhat forget about it later on, but you can only have so much fun when every song is Regaton. I've learnt that in many situations you need to put your music standards aside if you want to have fun in Ecuadorian clubs.

The following days in Cuenca involved just enjoying the freedom of traveling. I had two weeks in between projects so I decided that I would spend the time going with the flow, having no agenda in mind. I didn't even know where my next destination was going to be. After thinking about various options I decided on Mancora in Peru to be my next destination. I never managed to get to the beach in Ecuador, so the idea of sitting on a beach with some hot sun for a few days strongly appealed to me. I ended up taking an early morning bus. My original plan was to take a night bus, but as I arrived at the bus station at half past ten on my final night, I found that they’d cancelled that bus, so I spent one more night at the hostel and took an early morning bus instead.

As I sat on the bus I acknowledged that the first stage on my journey was over, I'd past through my first South American country and I was about to yet again go somewhere new. The first two months seemed to have flown by so quickly, even though I hadn’t seen a huge amount of places, I felt I was ready for my next taste of South America. After six hours we'd reached the boarder, the crossing was a lot easier than I thought it would be. As we pulled up in the immigration there was a bunch of small offices, but they only had one guy doing the passports for a big bus load of people. After filling out the form, he simply took my passport, stamped it with ninety days, then handed it back to me, no questions asked.

I'd been told by several travelers in Ecuador that going from Ecuador to Peru shows a very big contrast in landscape. I noticed it for myself nearly as soon as we got across the boarder. In Ecuador there was always green everywhere, whether it was the Amazon in the low lands, the Cloud Forest & farms of the mountains, or the banana plantations close to the boarder, but in Peru there was very little green to be seen anywhere. As soon as we crossed the boarder, we went straight into desert land. Even though it wasn't as "pretty" as the lush greenery, it still seemed to fascinate me, I really enjoyed to remaining two hours of my bus ride. When I finally arrived in Mancora, it was completely different to what I'd left behind in Cuenca.

I was freezing when I jumped on the bus, but now the sun was the hotter than anything I'd felt so far. Everyone was wearing jandles, board shorts, and most guys didn't even bother with the top. The taxis were now tuk tuks, or "motor taxis" as the locals called them. It was my first experience of a South American beach town, and I was looking forward to digging my toes into the sand. I'd chosen a hostel called "The Point." This place was meant to be a good party hostel, I figured if I'm only going to be here for a wee while, I mite as well get in with the party scene. When I rocked up, I was welcomed by the site of a pool, a beach volleyball court, and an outdoor bar & pool table. After checking in, I made my way straight to the beach. As a sat there I realized that this had been one of the simple pleasures that'd missed from home. Once again, my original plan was only to spend three days here, but I knew immediately that it would probably end up being a week.

Like every other hostel I'd been in so far, this ran on a tab system. Everything from your room, to all your food & drink, is put on a tab, which you don't have to worry about until the end. This is always good during the time of the stay because you never have to dig around for loose change, but it's always a shock to the system when its time to check out. From the first night I arrived, I knew that my liver was going to take a wee bit of a hammering this week. Each night had a theme of some sort. The first nights theme was the beer Olympics. This involved three drinking games; beer pong, flip cup, and Roxanne. However everyone got so involved with the first two games, that the third one wasn't really necessary. Some of the other nights included a camp fire, an ABC party (anything but clothes), and a chilled out movie night. There were also a lot of very passionate soccer fans here, from around the world, England in particular, so every morning the big screen TV was showing all the world cup games.

As I predicted, I did end up spending a week here. It was just too relaxing and to fun to leave. But after all the drinking, not eating properly, and getting only a few hours sleep a night, my body really started to feel it, so I decided that I had to move on to my next place. I was meeting the team from my next volunteer project in Huanchaco so I made my next destination Trujillo, a city just a short distance away. I'd been dreading the time of paying my bill, and when I found out the amount, I was indeed shocked, and happy that I was now moving on, spending about three times more than I'd hoped to spend. I did however make many more great friends, and it was the first real "party week" of my trip, so I convinced myself that it was money well spent.

After spending a stop over night in Trujillo, I was finally on my way to meet the team of Otra Cosa. I'd organized this project many months prior to going on this trip, so it was a crazy feeling knowing that in a few days I'd finally be beginning the project. Huanchaco was also a beach town, but it had a very different vibe to Mancora. Where I'd come from was very hot, and it had many tourists looking for a place to party in the nights, and sun bath in the afternoons, but being a lot further south, here was to cold for sun bathing, and it had more of a very relaxed surf town sort of feel. There weren’t so many tourists because of the off season, but after being in Mancora I was more than happy to chill out for a couple of days before heading to the mountains.

The day of my orientation involved meeting up with the team who were working on various projects in Huanchaco and Trujillo. It didn't take long before I felt part of the team, even though I knew that in a few days I’d be all on my own. I was really looking forward to getting into a bit of work again. The last couple weeks had been a lot of fun, but I was now happy about being faced with a new challenge again. I also felt that I was ready for another Spanish immersion. My Spanish had come a very long way since staying at The Amazon, so I was eager for the opportunity to take it to the next level. One of the down sides to the last few weeks was that I got very lazy with my Spanish. When staying at hostels there is almost always at least someone that speaks English, and naturally, of course I tended to gravitate towards those people.

After spending my final few days by the beach, it was finally time to make my journey to Leymebamba. When I applied for this project, I had no idea that it was so far away from everything else. It started with my longest bus ride yet, a thirteen hour ride northeast from Trujillo to the main city in the area, Chachapoyas. From there the plan was to stay a night, then go the next two and a half hours the following day. I'd become so used to spending a lot of time in buses now, and it's even become something that I enjoy. When I'm sitting in the bus, I always have the strongest sense of really being on an adventure. I never know the terrain that I'm covering, so every moment on the bus is always new and exciting, even if there are times where you have to put up with a screaming baby for a couple of hours.

This was an overnight bus, so I never got to see any of the scenery on the way. I arrived in Chachapoyas at about five in the morning. I had a person to meet me so all I had to do was phone a number, and then wait to be picked up. The scenery was completely different to the dry, barren landscape of the coast. It was nice to once again be surrounded by the green bush. This area was also no where near as touristy as the coast either, which is surprising. There are a wealth of pre-Incan archeological sites here, yet because it is so far away from everything else, people seem to leave it out of their itinerary. Upon arriving at the hostel, I meet a guy who had just finished his stay in Leymebamba, who had finished doing what I was about to start. He was very helpful and gave me a lot of great advice on what to expect during my stay. He assured me that the kids were great to work with, and that they absolutely love music.

As the day of departure rolled around, I felt a wee bit nervous, as I thought about the prospect of once again going into full Spanish immersion. I knew I was as ready as I could be, yet as always when faced with a new challenge; I really had no idea as to whatwas ahead for me. I got a few contacts in Chachapoyas, so unlike the Amazon trip, I had plenty of support close by for this one. As I jumped into the small van, there was no turning back. I was surrounded by town folk of Leymebamba. They all looked at me wondering what this guy mite be coming all the way out to their little town. I introduced myself to an old lady next to me, and as she noticed my guitar, she asked if I could get it out and play a song. I asked her if they had any traditional songs of Leymebamba, and when she replied yes, I said to here, "well if you sing it for me, I'll play along some music for you." She started singing it, and we had a wee jam together. It's just as well I have music. There have been so many times on this trip where it's been the only way that I can purely express myself, and have my expression felt.

The journey to Leymebamba was the most scenic that I'd yet seen in Peru. It was a very windy shingle road, which put everyone asleep after an hour, but I was once again fascinated with the ever changing landscape, and the little villages that we occasionally passed through. As we got closer, my nerves got stronger. When we finally got to the town, I realized that this is it. When I got dropped off on the street, my next step was to find "Casa Hogar," the house where I was to meet the man who was to help me out during my stay here. After asking five different people the same question, I finally found the house.

When I met Meibel my nerves settled a wee bit. He led me a few blocks up the street, to where I'd be staying for the next month. I was going to be staying in the same area as about six other people, they were all owned by a friendly old lady. As I opened the door, I realized that this next month was going to consist of very basic living. My room was quite big, but only had an old wooden slap bed, a table, and two chairs. The showers were cold water, and there was no washing machine. I sat down on my bed and thought back to when I was at home organizing this trip. The idea of living in the mountains with a small town grabbed me straight away, I don’t know why, but I guess I’m about to find out over this next month.

Well there it is, your somewhat caught up to where I'm at now. I'll try and keep the posts a bit more frequent over the following weeks so I don't have to make them so long. Hope you enjoy.

Rob