Guayaquil <-> Puerto Lopez

Our next destination was Guayaquil, (pronounced 'why-a-kill'). Guayaquil is nearer the south of Ecuador, beside a large estuary and is heaps hotter than Quito.

While here we stayed in a hostel, which although it had pretty good reviews, was fairly ordinary.

When we got there, again at night, we were greeted by an ugly dog that sounded like it wanted to kill us. We rang the bell a few times and like some dog owners do, they just beckoned us to walk past this thing. In the end they came and got the dog so we could walk past it.

Then we got to our room and it was about 30C with not much air circulation. After the cold of Quito, the air in Guayaquil felt really hot and humid. So we dumped our stuff in the room and went out for a cold beer and something to eat. The beer was really cold and tasted pretty good. Kim had a 'Shawarma' to eat, which is a bit like a souvlaki only made from chicken. The chicken is cooked vertically, rotated in front of a gas-heated grill. The bloke who was grilling the chicken's name was Antonio so he must have been a good bloke. He didn't leave the grill for the hour or so that we were there. He tended it almost obsessively, turning it a bit, cutting off a few small burnt bits. It was almost tiring just watching him.

After that it was time to hit the sack and try to sleep in the sweltering heat. Outside there were alarms going off and inside there were mosquitoes buzzing around our ears for most of the night, apart from when they were biting us. While we were here the charger for the laptop decided to pack it in. But apart from the accommodation, Guayaquil was quite nice.

Kim organised our trip to another place called Puerto Lopez. The trip to Puerto Lopex was on a bus driven by a maniacal, if not suicidal bus driver. Lots of the travel reviews for Ecuador speak of the maniac bus drivers, none of these are exaggerated. Buses seem to race each other, overtake on crests of hills, and seem to go even faster once one side of the bus leaves the road. People get on and off the bus while it is still moving. Some of the people that get on and off try to sell stuff, like coconut water, cakes and drinks.

There is a bloke up the front of the bus that helps to throw the kids out the door as the bus moves. Somehow everyone accepts this as normal. On the side of the road is heaps of rubbish, nothing like you could imagine back home. By heaps I mean that in some places you can barely see a patch of dirt in between bits of plastic, paper and glass. There is rubbish everywhere on the side of the road, it just varies from lots of rubbish to total rubbish. People on the bus were throwing their plastic bottles and papers out the window, as if it was completely normal to do so. Bits of rubbish were blowing around the floor of the bus and would eventually get sucked out the door. People didn't even look at it as it went past. So much for the tropical paradise.

After four or more hours of this, we arrived at Puerto Lopez, which is a small village on the coast with a distinctly 3rd world look and feel to it. We got in a rickshaw and it took us to our accommodation which had the look and feel of a resort on the coast.

The gardens were immaculately tended and full of tropical plants. Out the front were coconut palms and small shelters where you could relax in the shade. However, we never did see the sun the whole time we were here. It was overcast and occasionally we had misty rain, but it was still nice.

Much of our time here was spent relaxing. Sleeping in until about 9:30 became a priority, fruit salad and eggs for breakfast, a bit more relaxing, then a walk along the beach up to the village, sitting beside the beach drinking beer or fresh juice, walking back to the hostel, the evening meal, then a few games of cards became the ritual of the day. It's a hard life, but someone has to do it. All this with meals and drinks included cost us about $AU190 for four nights.

The walk along the beach was both interesting and disappointing. Each day large open boats would come ashore and blokes would run out and carry back crates of fish and prawns. This would attracts hundreds of birds. Some of the birds would swoop down and steal fish from the crates as they were being carried. Occasionally the birds would drop the fish and pelicans would be standing underneath waiting to grab anything that was dropped. Sometimes the pelicans would fight over these fish and you would see them having a tug-o-war. A third type of bird that looked a bit like a vulture stood around the outside waiting for any left-overs.

Once again the disappointing thing was the rubbish. Bits of plastic, rope, bottles forming a big line along the high-tide mark - a pretty big contrast to Tasmanian beaches. I guess all that having to pick up papers in the playground in primary school has had some impact on our culture back home.

Ecuador has lots of potential but the glossy magazines do tell a lie.

Click here to see Guayaquil

Click here to see Puerto Lopez

The middle of the world

After spending many often harrowing hours on buses we decided to increase our carbon footprint and take a plane to our next destination, Quito, Ecuador.

On the plane there are the usual in-flight magazines and they have a way of presenting everything with hyper-real photos with super-saturated colours, everyone is smiling with ultra-white teeth, even the exotic animals look happy. Ecuador is billed in these magazines as one of the most bio-diverse countries on Earth so you get the impression that you are coming into some kind of tropical paradise. After the deserts and the dust of Chile and Peru it makes a nice change.

So we arrive in Quito airport in the dark and go looking for an automatic teller machine. On the way we walk past a few military or police that have machine guns. Somehow the sight of these guns makes you think about what it would be like if they opened up on you - not a good thought. The other aspect is that you can feel safer around these people, because if they are on your side then anyone out to get you probably doesn't have much hope. Then we get some money out of the ATM and to our surprise it is all US currency. Ecuador doesn't have its own dollar but it does mint some of its own coins, just not the notes.

Our accommodation was really good and the people that ran it were friendly and helpful. Quito is spoken of in two parts, the old city and the new city. We were in the new city, which is meant to be safer. However the people that ran the accommodation were advising us to get taxis at night even if it was just for two blocks.

The suburb, or district, where we stayed was called the Mariscal, otherwise known as 'gringo central'. Gringo is a latin-american term for a white person, usually referring to people from the USA. This area has narrow streets, heaps of small eating places, night clubs and discos and there are hundreds of people out on the streets. We were about four blocks from gringo central and decided to take the risk and walk.

One night we went out to an Indian restaurant that was packed with locals watching a soccer match. You could get three large bottles of beer for $US2.50, probably $AU2.80 as the current exchange rate. It was worth watching to see how excited the people get. Most people were wearing their national colour, yellow, and when a goal was scored everyone jumps around. One of the waiters got showered in beer but he seemed to enjoy it. The waiter was also selling people cigarettes, individually from his packet, which was a bit unusual by AU standards. After the game we stayed and had a curry which cost about $3 each for two curries with rice and naan, as well as pakoras for entree.

Quito is a fairly large city that is surrounded by mountains. It is a fairly high altitude, enough to cause a bit of breathlessness. However, I must be getting more used to altitude now because I don't get the headaches that I used to anymore. The other thing is that it is close to the equator (hence the name ''ecuador"). So that means it is reasonably cool, sometimes cold, because of the height, but still with monsoonal rains. The days start off fine and the clouds build up through the day. One day it rained extra hard and there was a huge deluge. It bucketed down for about half an hour. We were at an indoor market at the time and were trapped there for a while.

One day we went and visited the actual equator. I thought it would be an ultra-kitch thing to have a photo of stepping across the line. The strange thing though it seems is that there is more than one equator. Apparently in the 1800s the French came here with the best instruments they had at the time and determined that the equator was about half a kilometer from where it actually is.

A huge monument was built on the pseudo-equator with a park and shops surrounding it, a line on the ground was made with bricks. All of this still exists and people still come here and get their photos taken stepping across or standing on the line, which isn't really anything. You even have to pay to get in to participate in this farce. Apparently the natives had a much better idea of where the real equator was.

There is another spot that you can go to where the real equator is, also with a line on the ground made with bricks. This site has several gimmicky things set up on it, like sundials and water troughs. Most people know that water spirals in an anti-clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere when running out of a trough, and the opposite in the Northern Hemisphere. At the 'real' equator this was demonstrated to us. Surprisingly the trough only had to be about two meters from the line for this phenomenon to occur. Right where the equator is, there was no spiraling at all.

I'm not sure why, but apparently it is easier to balance an egg on a nail head right on the equator than it is elsewhere. People were given the opportunity to do this and most failed. I got it on my second attempt and was awarded a certificate for doing so. Something I can be eternally proud of I suppose.

Click here to view the slideshow.

Lima

The trip to Lima was highlighted by an adjacent passenger coughing almost continually for the entire trip of maybe four hours. There has been some publicity posters here on buses advising people of precautions not to spread the H1N1 or swine flu virus, so having a bloke coughing each and every 60 seconds was somewhat unsettling. We travelled in the downstairs section of the bus, which is the luxury section and were given blankets and pillows to make the journey more comfortable. At first I tried pulling my T shirt up over my mouth and eventually I used the blanket and kept my mouth and nose covered for most of the journey. It was unbelievable really, I didn't know who to feel sorrier for, me or the bloke coughing.

We arrived in Lima in the dark and got a taxi to our accommodation then went out for a walk. We found a good coffee shop called Chef's Cafe. I ended up having spinach pie for tea and Kim had a grilled chicken sandwich. All good really, I was getting over a spate of diahhorrea and starting to feel better. Kim was getting psyched up for a job interview.

Lima is now the capital of Peru but it has only been the capital since the Spanish conquered the area around 1535. Before that, the capital was Cusco, that was when the Incas ran the show. Lima is the third largest city in South and Central America, after Mexico City And Sao Paulo.

This was our second visit to Lima. On the first visit we arrived late at night, got a taxi through the seediest part of the city and didn't see that much. This time we arrived through the newer part of the city and got to the coast and went to some good restaurants and that made the whole place feel much better and safer.

While we were here we went to a casino and I introduced Kim to blackjack. She really liked it and won about 10 dollars. I won about $30 so it was necessary to go back there the next night as well. Kim had her job interview that night and we tried to get Pennytel web callback working, but for some reason it didn't work. In the end we had to condescend to using Skype which worked quite well albeit more expensive. Now that it is "official", Kim can be congratulated on her successful application - great work Kim :-)

We didn't do that much in Lima worth writing about, just looking around the city, eating out, playing blackjack and relaxing.

Click here to view the slideshow

(11 photos)

Laptop charger is dead

Last night I discovered that the laptop charger has died. Now I have to find a new one which I suspect will not be too easy. If we go a bit quiet online for a while then that is why. By the way the weather is great here, mid twenties to low thirties, sunny and hot. A cold beer is required from time to time to assist with cooling down. We hope to be back online soon.

Pisco - Paracas

After Nazca we headed up the coast to a small fishing town called San Andres, which is near between a tourist resort called Paracas and another larger town called Pisco. Pisco is famous because of the Peruvian drink, that shares its name. Most tourists in Peru get offered a free Pisco sour as an enticement to enter a restaurant. Paracas is like the Strahan of the central-southern Peruvian coast and its sole reason for being it seems is to cater to tourists. This area has been subjected to a massive earthquake and tsunami in back 2007. Putting it in perspective, it was about a magnitude 8 on the Richter scale, about 500 people were killed and these pictures tell the story of the devastation. Today you see many broken or half fixed buildings and long lines of rubble and bricks beside the road where they carted most of the wreckage.

We travelled once again in a fairly luxurious bus from Nazca and arrived in Paracas on a fairly hot afternoon. Our hotel was in the next town so we needed transport and sure enough someone was there to offer us a lift. He wanted to charge us 20 soles, which is fairly steep in local terms but we didn't have much choice and accepted. After we headed towards our destination in San Andres the driver started to tell us that our hotel had been destroyed by a tsunami and there wasn't much to go to as everything was under construction.

Kim had read about scammers making similar claims in the Lonely Planet guide, and we told him that we had made a booking, and he didn't really want to accept what we were saying. He insisted that there our hotel was under construction. He was probably wanting us to stay in Paracas instead, presumably because there might have been some sort of commission involved. He nearly had us sucked in but I asked if we could ring our hotel first and he stopped by one of his friends on the side of the road that had a mobile phone. We called the hotel and the lady that worked there asked to talk to the driver. Sure enough, everything at the hotel was fine and the bloke ended up taking us there. Over here it seems, it pays to be more cautious with people that want to help you the most.

In the end our hotel was excellent and the people that ran it were very friendly and nice. It was right on the waterfront. You could see hundreds of birds in and around the water, occasional dolphins, islands on the horizon and fishing boats moored close to the shore.

It was really peaceful and scenic so we walked up the road and had a cold beer or two and took it all in as the sun set on the horizon. The intention was to come back for tea. However, when we did come back, everything was closed; at around 7:00 pm on a Saturday it was a bit surprising. So we tried to get transport into Pisco in these little vehicles that are best described as motorised rickshaws, driven frantically by blokes that look about 12 years old (seriously), but no one would take us after dark. In the end we found a taxi that would take us to Pisco, and when we got in, there were two other passengers in there also going to Pisco. It seems the taxi has to fill up before the trip got under way.

We asked the driver if he would recommend a restaurant to us, which he did. Once at the restaurant we also asked for a recommendation as to what to have for tea. What we got was something like squid stuffed with prawns, but it didn't really smell right. Both Kim and I tried some of the prawns, but we could both probably only chew the prawn twice before having to spit it out. It tasted like it had been off for days. After that the smell just wafted up from the plates making us feel more and more crook. We had to apologise to the waitress as both of us could not eat anything but the chips that came with it. She was OK about it and didn't charge us for the main meal, which was great of her under the circumstances. I'm not really sure if the prawns were off or not because anyone who has smelled fish sauce, a common ingredient in Asian cooking, might know what the smell was like. However, I was fairly crook for the next couple of days anyway, not so much in the guts, but with plenty of activity around the back door, if I might euphemistically say so. Kim was fine, but she is suffering a bit today.

The next day we took the boat tour out to the Ballestas Islands. On the first stop we saw El Cadelabro, which in English means the candelabra, another huge geoglyph carved into the ground by an ancient civilisation, the Paracas, about 2000 years ago. Once again mystery surrounds this 183 m high carving, but one theory is that it represents the San Pedro cactus, which is used even today by Shaman to induce a mystical experience in religious rituals.

After that we visited more islands where thousands of birds live. In addition you get to see a fair few seals, which the guide refers to as sea lions - I can't tell the difference. There are so many birds living here that they actually mine the 'guano' or poo. You can see loading decks and sheds on the islands that are almost white from the poo.

The islands are pretty spectacular with rock arches and jagged formations poking out of the sea.

In the afternoon we went on another tour, saw some fossils and got a bit of a spiel about how the earthquake had changed the coastline here. The guide seemed to know his stuff but had a strange accent which was somewhat amusing.

Finally we were shown some pretty spectacular coastline and cliffs before stopping for lunch.

Our taxi back to the bus station only cost us 12 soles, despite it being booked first - a 40% saving on our entrepreneurial friend that picked us up on the first day.

Click here to view the slideshow

Nazca

After Arequipa we headed up the coast, this time on a much more luxurious bus. We stayed one night in a place called Ica and two nights in Nazca (Nasca). Nazca is famous for large lines and drawings on the ground that are so large that they can only be seen in entirety from the air. There are unanswered questions about these lines and figures, for example, why draw something so large that it can only be seen from the air when it is not possible to fly to see them? what purpose did the lines serve? Erich von Daniken, in Chariots of the Gods, proposed that these lines and figures were evidence of contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence.

However, the proposed explanations seem much less bizarre than that. But, it is interesting that one of the geoglyphs is named 'astronaut'.

While we were here we took a short flight over the Nazca lines and got a bit of a information about them, as you do when you're a tourist. The lines and figures were created by the Nazcas just by picking up the rocks and putting them to the side. The rocks are a dark reddish-brown and the sand underneath is light grey, so removing the rocks leaves behind a light patch relative to the surrounding area. If you wanted to make a long straight line then simply using 3 sticks and lining them up will allow you to do that pretty easily. Perhaps a long bit of string between the sticks to assist with where to pick up the rocks. It turns out that many of these lines align with the sunrise at the winter solstice. Others point to water sources, while others may have just been ancient footpaths across the desert. The lines are between 1500 and 2000 years old. What they do reflect is the intelligence and advanced thinking of people that had a pretty hard life in one of the driest parts of the world.

The other remarkable thing about this place are the mummies. It is possible here to drive to a place where you see human bones piled up on the dirt. While here we did a tour to Chauchilla, an ancient Nazca burial ground. However, in typical display of human red-necked greed, much of this area has been plundered by grave robbers and was only protected 15 years ago. People would dig up the graves, steal a bit of gold or ceramics, and sell them to museums and collectors around the world. Even when we were there we saw European tourists walking off the formed pathways, no doubt, crunching up human bones under their feet.

Some of the mummies are remarkably well preserved. You can see remains of skin, hair and fingernails. Our guide explained how the process worked.

Apparently they used to drain all the fluids out of the bodies, then sit them near the fire for a while to start the process off. After that they treated the skin with 'salts and peppers' to preserve the skin. After that the climate did the rest. It is very, very dry here, almost nothing grows.

The dryness and placing the bodies inside pits in the ground made a stable environment that allowed the preservation to work.

To view the slideshow please click here.

Catching up with the photos

We've spent a bit of time travelling lately in parts of Chile and Peru without Internet connections that we would brag about back home. Now we are in Lima, we have 1.5 Mb download and about .5 Mb upload speed, so I have spent some time catching up with the photos.

So if you have a bit of time on your hands check out these slideshows

The Atacama Desert (94 photos) click here

La Paz, Bolivia (56 photos) click here

Arequipa (51 photos) click here

Nazca (106 photos) click here

Happy viewing :-)

The White City

We arrived in Arequipa after a very long and harrowing bus ride from La Paz. The journey was highlighted by a maniacal bus driver going way too fast. At one stage most of the passengers were airborne after we hit a bump in the road. Also, we had to sit right at the back of the bus where the toilets were. The toilets smelled like they had never been cleaned - ever - and every time someone opened the door you had to hold your breath for a while or risk dry reaching. A little girl on the bus befriended us and Kim gave her some chewing gum. From then on she just stood next to us the whole way just smiling and blowing bubbles. We probably encouraged her by blowing a few back.

Arequipa had a bit of a reputation as there was a documentary on TV earlier in the year where tourists had been kidnapped there in a taxi, and the people were tortured and made to give up their ATM cards and PINs. So we were a little nervous getting into taxis. However, the taxi driver was friendly and helpful and made sure he got us exactly to our hostel entrance. In fact all the taxis were good. The most we ever got charged was about 4 soles - $2 AU - so I tipped most of them a few extra soles. The trick is to use the official taxis, those with ID numbers, lights on top and stickers. The tourists that got kidnapped just accepted a ride from people with the word taxi scrawled on a beer carton on the dash apparently.

Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, after Lima. There are about a million people living here. It is really spread out and looks huge, probably about Melbourne size, maybe a bit smaller. Arequipa is known as the 'white city' because of the Spanish buildings surrounding the central Plaza de Armas. Many of these building date back to the time the Spanish ruled here, maybe 400-500 years.

Recent earthquakes have done a bit of damage to the spires on the church but these have been rebuilt. Earthquakes are pretty common here - so too are volcanoes.

In the distance it is quite easy to see the huge volcano, El Misti, which means The Lord, in the indigenous peoples' language, Quechuan.

We did a fair bit of relaxing in Arequipa and didn't get out much, except to the restaurants. Although I did get my hair cut while I was here. The hair dresser only wanted to charge me 3 Soles ($1.50 AU) but she did an excellent job and didn't get much hair down my back, so I paid her 10 Soles and she was very happy.

We did a guided tour of the city before we left and visited most of the touristy places, including La Mansion Del Fundador, built by the Spanish Conquistadors, dating back to about 1540. Of interest in this picture is that the Roman soldiers that crucified Christ are depicted as Spanish Conquistadors, perhaps an early attempt at self-deprecating humour.

To view the slideshow please click here.