What happened since that special border-crossing experience?

Hey everyone!

Sorry for not writing for the last few weeks - so much going on I never got to it. I am even really behind with the pictures although a good excuse would be the extremely slow computers in Peru and Bolivia... You wouldn't believe how huge the difference is between those countries and Chile! I arrived in Santiago 2 days ago and now feel almost like back in Europe / of course except the prices which are about a fourth or less of the ones I'm used to in Germany. But lets start with some update on my trip...

I was in Mancora for 3 days and found it really hard to leave again. I mean - white beach, perfect weather, nice people... Including a pirate night which "forced me" to buy earings extra to go with the outfit. There's some really beautiful and cheap jewelry made around here, hard not to buy out the entire shops!

Well, I took a bus to Lima from there and was lucky to meet up again with the dancing group from the school where I was teaching who had their final competition the same day I happened to be there! Unfortunately, they didn't win any prize but for me they were the champions!

After getting very little sleep I took a train to Huancayo - well, it was THE TRAIN. Beautiful view and about 8 hours of ride in a train that goes to the highest trainstop of the world - 4380m. To be honest, one train in Tibet goes even higher than that but doesn't have a station :-) Huancayo is a nice city to be in but not really a MUST. However, getting to know the trian crew made this place lots of fun. The return journey 2 days later was also nice but it went in the middle of the night so almost nothing to see outside.

What then? Went to Huacachina (if you ever go to Peru, this is a must), a little village around a lagoon in the middle of sand dunes... Sounds interesting? This place was a paradise! Swimming pools in almost all hostels, sandboarding down the dunes, buggie rides and watching the sunset after climbing up a dune thinking you will never make it all the way up and then having this great view of the surrounding that totally rewards you. I'll be getting the pictures soon, then you can decide on your own :-)

The next destination was Arequipa (named after its founder Harry Keeper ;-) which was probably the most beautiful Peruavian city - many cathedrals, much more green and a great hostel. Thinking it would be better to organise an own trip, me and Ronnie went to the bus station just to find out that due to national holiday we won't get a bus till 5 pm - making the Colca Canyon experience rather short. Still I got to see a condor and the canyon looked amazing... Yet having bought a ticket from Arequipa to Cuzco made this a rather stressful experience since nothing went on time or as we've been informed... But then again, one should not be sursprised by this in Peru...

Next destination - Cuzco. WOW. I spent a day in this town to see some ruins surrounding it, including the Saxsaywaman also known as Sexy woman because of the pronunciation, and the centre of Cuzco which shows signs of beeing the most important Inka city in the past. And the next morning ... INKA TRAIL!!! What an experience! Spent 4 days hiking on old inka roads (they really loved steps and caminos as steep as possible), slept in tents and got to see many amazing ruins on the way all building up to the most amazing one - Machu Picchu. It's hard to describe any place that mystical so wait for the pictures... One more party night in Cuzco after this trip and I headed to Bolivia.

The most obvious differences between Bolivia and Peru is basically that Bolivia is even poorer, cheaper and that you will not be given totally "gringo" (foreigners) prices. I only got to spend 4 days there though, taking an overnight bus to Uyuni and then going on a 3 day desert tour that would finish in Chile. Beautiful but honestly, the drivers there like to get drunk although they drive next day and if one from the people on the bus hadn't reacted quickly, we would drive off a road on a steep side of the mountain... Our jeep driver managed to first drive backwards into a wall, then have microsleep 3 times while driving and since he didn't tie our backpacks on the roof proparly, one backpack fell down and we were just really lucky that one of us noticed... But nevermind that, sleeping in a hotel completely made out of salt (walls, table, bed, etc.), seeing flamingos and at other places everywhere you'd look just blindingly white salt desert was an unforgettable experience.

After the first busrides when 10 hours seemed like a long time, I can now proudly write I can do 22 hours on a bus to Santiago plus no showers for 3 days and still feel almost fit... And so I just managed to update my blog up till today, pictures will follow hopefully soon...

Many hugs to everyone and just in case although it is a little too early: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Those bastards - or the Peru-Ecuadorian border in Huaquillas

This day seems to get worse every minute... After writing a nice long blog post, it just dissapeared.

Good news of the day - I arrived safely in Máncora. Bad news - about 30 dollars lighter. It all started with many stories from other people telling me about how dangerous that border is and so I asked the bus company (went from Quito to Huanquillas, last stop) to help me out at the border. Which they did - cost me 2 $ to get to Ecuador border to get out of country and I was then taken to some wierd "taxi" that was supposed to get me to the Peru border. Believe it or not, those are around 2 km apart... This taxi wasn´t official at all and I would have to listen to all the bla bla about how they try to promote safe tourism etc. Yeah, right...

After I asked about 10 times how much it will cost me, they mentioned 2 $. Then I got back into that car after getting my visa done, thinking we go back to town (another 2 $ or so) where I could get a bus to Máncora. Wrong... they headed of to Tumbes explaining there are no buses on sundays etc. Of course there are but they first made their intentions obvious as we were at some place best described as dangerous and middle of nowhere. What could I do? This was apparently also the best time for them to tell me it will cost me 35 $ till Tumbes. Bastards! I could handle it down to 23 $ but that is still nothing even close to a good deal. And that doesn´t even involve the "being scared" at the back seat of a car that is not a taxi and going to somewhere I didn´t know just hoping there will be a bus station at the end of the journey...

Well, got off in front of the wrong station, had to search for a different one and then as I payed (still being rather shocked by the experience), didn´t notice they didn´t give me change after I bought the ticket. Another 3 $ extra.

Well, enough of my frustration, best to forget it now. I just wish Peru would be safer - they manage in Ecuador! Good news is: 30 C and I´m going to swim in the sea...

Máncora

I got to Máncora yesterday and fell in love with this place immidiately... White beach, palms everywhere, the hostel really beautiful and many nice people, music, party etc. Oh, and of course around 30 degrees! So many people have spent more than a month here - not too difficult to understand if you see it yourself. I know I will have hard time leaving tomorrow as I will head off to Tumbes...

Well, as expected I was not really able to leave Máncora so quickly and ended up spending 3 nights there. I mean, how can you leave a place like that just after few hours... One night I was going with a friend for dinner to town and saw the sun go down. I recall us talking about if we have been robbed so far - well we didn´t which was about to change soon...We were heading to town for dinner (forgeting we shouldn´t be walking at the beach when it gets dark and enjoyed the sunset) as 4 men approached us and surrounded us. The wierd thing about it was we kind of expected it to happen so weren´t surprised or scared at all. They took his bag and searched me as well. Imagine, they didn´t find anything on me although I had like 10 Euro cash... It was worse with AJs bag though as he had his Visa cards as well as money inside. Fortunately I was able to speak to the guys in Spanish and asked them politely if they couldn´t leave us the bag. And they did! Searched it for a while unable to find money (which was in a big vallet, how could they not find that???) and giving us the sign not to look. After they managed to find about 3o Euro in his vallet they let us go. What a wierd experience, it just felt so surreal! Especially the dinner we could still get afterwards and a taxi back to hotel after being robbed :-)

You do get to think more after an accident like that though so as I crossed the border to Ecuador and had to get off the bus to get a different one and wait for like 2 hours I was quite suspicious although everything went well... Now I´m about to leave Cuenca for north (taking the train to Riobamba, hopefully still some space left on the roof) and then heading off to Baños...

Oh, and for those who worry about me - Ecuador seems much safer then Peru!

Cajamarca and around

Cajamarca and the surrounding area really have a magic about it. It kind of reminds me of the Alps, yet you can see a cactus or eucalyptus around... I arrived on Friday morning and had time to look at the downtown, watch some waterfalls and go to the Baños del Inca which was quite relaxing - especially the massage. Today I met some more people and we made a trip to Cumbe Mayo (I hope I spelled it right) with its beautiful scenery and then continued to the ventanillas in Otuzco. I really love this place... See for yourself:

. I will upload also some pictures soon, just happened to be in an internet caffè that doesn´t support the upload process :-( Now I found out it is usually like that so I will have to cut down on the pics I upload...

Short version of the days after: went to the Baños, Ventanillas de Otuzco (not that interesting) and Cumbe Mayo (awesome).

Last day in Monsefú

Today is/was my last day of teaching as I will head off to Cajamarca for a few days and will then continue to Ecuador, making a stop in Máncora, Túcume, Machala, Guayaquil and then to Quito... Might not get online often, don´t worry if I don´t write. And since pictures say more then words... here a movie:

Second week of teaching

I just finished the second week of teaching and am preparing the material for the classes this week... I was thinking of doing the topic "weather", however that gets rather difficult - just one example - most of the kids here have never seen snow as it never gets below 0 degrees in this area. It is now "spring" and I already got sun burnt... Oh, I was looking up on the sky the other night and it looked really beautiful. It made me think of a fairytale yet there was something disturbing about the picture... the moon was in the shape of the letter U! (instead of C or D)

Anyhow. This week I haven’t done that much new. I went to Trujillo with the 4th grade (the kids were really good during the entire trip). The meeting time was at 5am (yes, which means I slept around 2,5 hours) and we got back by 11 pm which was much later than expected caused by a damaged bridge on the Pan-American road... This bridge was being repaired this month as the rain season will start soon but due to global warming (at least that’s what everyone believes) there were showers in the mountains and so the bridge is not safe to drive on anymore. Just imagine - the next bridge is about half an hour up the river and there is no road from there - we drove almost an hour through the desert and all my bones got well shaken. But it had something adventurous about it as we drove at the speed of 50 km/h on this very uneven road...

We visited the Chan Chan (very famous, world heritage) and Huaca del Sol, de la Luna and Arco Iris (pyramids). There is a bit more description with the pictures. We also had some time to look in Trujillo but the bus driver was rather annoyed all day and so we had to run back to Monsefú. I guess he got such a bad mood when we had to wait almost an hours for the last student who overslept - the teachers wouldn’t leave without him. How nice :-)

Yesterday I tried out the local disco and had a wonderful time. The music played around here is quite different and I had some hard time in the beginning copying the steps but seem to have done well when they told me I dance quite OK for someone from Europe... Do the Europeans have such a bad reputation as dancers? I remember being told the same in Africa... :-)

I also went to a local manicure. This place is great! I got even little flowers painted on my nails just to pay 7 Soles (1.75 Euro) for that! I really need to go to that place again and get a massage as well... If I only had more time. I will be teaching just 4 more days in the school and then head off to Cajamarca which is supposed to have really steep streets and some wonderful sites in the neighborhood. I really need to buy a repellent first though; the mosquitoes around here seem to be into European blood...

First week of teaching and other stories

It is now sunday, 7 pm and I just got back from a trip to Túcume and Lambayeque - what an experience! But to start chronologically, I'll get to that later...

Teaching in the "Carlos Weiss" School in Monsefú is the best start of my backpacking trip that I can imagine. The kids here are very nice to me, the teachers the same. So far I had classes with 8 different grades and I can say that teaching can be fun. Well, to be honest, I prefer the upper classes - a group of almost 40 kids in the age of 6 years are not easy to handle :-) They get so excited about everything that they run to the front of the class to tell me personally which makes it rather difficult to teach. I've noticed some tricks though that seem to be working - make them write - a lot. That way they are too occupied to do anything else. But it's got to be said that I'm glad about the way they treat me - just imagine coming to class to teach english and all of the kids start jumping because you finally also came to their class!

In the afternoons I spent my time going to a class of dances. After I've seen them in the competitions (they were the best) I wanted to be able to do the same. Well, I overestimated myself or underestimated the dance. It's so hard! Try to find "tondero Chiclayo" in youtube. Unfortunately, I couldn't find theone they are dancing, but the steps are similar. They have a very good teacher, Julio who studies dances in Chiclayo. When he explains steps I'm not able to get even a half of it... I'll upload the pics soon - they are on a different camera. The group competed this saturday again, this time in Chiclayo and - big "surprise" - won again the first place!

Oh, now a rather embarassing story - Friday was the 120th anniversary of Monsefú. By the end of the day everybody would know me. Why? Well in such events all of the schools march to the main square dressed up and carrying music instruments, flag of the school and of course the flag of Peru. The oficial time to start was 9 am but just as anything around here, that is not the time it will actually start. I think by 10.30 the party could begin (and yes I got sunburned). Now imagine - first the Peru hymn, than the one of the area and finally the hymn of Monsefú (which goes: yo soy de Monsefú). Than, we would all march down the square in front of a tribune where each school would be announced. Now, Tannia wanted me to march along. Neither she or me could expect that as I walked close to the Tribune, they would announce me as "Lucia de Alemania"! Well, I'm not German but anyhow - how did they get the info of my name and place?!? This town is small, but not that small... And it will get even better - the next thing they said was "viva la Republica de Alemania"! I still have to laugh when I think of that :-)

And so, to get to my today trip, after a full week of teaching, dancing, going to dance competitions, one concert and one presentation of a bank about the world financial crisis and its ifluence n Peru, I had a day FREE and decided to spend it in the Museums nearby. I took 4 different "collectivos" - which is something between a combi and a bus and is (honestly) ment for about 23 people - to Túcume to see some pyramids. Now, if you expect the pyramids to be anything like the ones in Egypt, you'd be surprised. To be honest, it took me a while to realise that the hill I was looking at was a pyramid - changed by weather it looks very much alike... Another interesting aspect of this museum was that half of the time I was not sure I'm going the right way - there were almost no signs... From there I took another collectivo to Lambayeque (capital of this region) to see first the "Brunning museum" founded by a German and then to "Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán". The first one shows artifacts from all periods and I could take pics in there, the second one shows the period around 100-300 AC.

So now I could catch up with some culture over here and can start another week of teaching - having 7 year-olds tomorrow. I hope you´re doing all well and if you find some spare time, drop me a few lines about how you´re doing.

Besos, Lucia