Through Ecuador to Trujillo and Lima in Peru

Since the last blog we've been doing a hell of a lot of travelling and seem to only find computers that don't let us upload our photos. egh. We spent a couple more days in Bogota and took the cable car up to the top of an overlooking mountain. Bogota is a bit big.




We then took an overnight bus to Popayan somewhere south of Bogota for a bit of rest in an old colonial town, before heading over the border into Ecuador. We met a Peruvian guy who predictably enough thought that a lot of Ecuadoreans were arseholes, but it meant our border crossing was relatively painless. Niether of us got cavity searches, although an official did put his screwdriver through the backplate of my backpack.

Our time in Ecuador was brief. We'd been on buses for over 12 hours and just slept away our first evening in Quito, and then checked the place out the following day before heading down to Cuaca.

Days of constant bus travelling began to take their toll.

Crossing the Ecuador - Peru border was a nightmare. We picked the shortest way to cross, and decided that despite our guidebook describing it as "harrowing", we would be ok since it was early in the morning, and would be quieter. Annoyingly, our bus to the border arrived at 4:00am instead of 6:30am so the place was in utter darkness, with only the most determined rip-off merchants around, knowing full well that you have no other choice. Getting through the border took us about 2 hours and cost us 17 quid in con-men taxi drivers. But at least we got to the bus terminal with plenty of time, and got on our way to Trujillo in Peru.

The journey there looked mostly like this for me:



And like this for Sophie:

Trujillo is a weird place. We thought it would be a welcome break from the cold weather of Bogota and Quito (2nd and 3rd highest cities in outh America respectably) since it's on the coast. But this place has a cold ocean wind that made it much the same, and almost negligible rainfall. All the farming and errigation is made possible by ancient and not so ancient canal and irrigation systems that collect water from some of the surrounding mountains and rivers. All the houses are mud brick, but seem to be quite sturdy. Especially the walls of the temple of the moon, which have stood for over 1000 years.

So, here's Huaca de la Luna, a Moche temple (coupled with the Temple of the Sun) witch was part of an ancient pre-Inca city. It looks shit from the outside. At least we managed to get a hairless dog in the photo though.


The paintwork on these things hasn't been touched up, its the original colours from 1000 years ago.

And here is another photo of that beautiful dog.


The morning would be complete without me standing in front of a mescaline-containing San Pedro cactus.


In the afternoon we went to Chan Chan, a Chimu city of up to 30,000 people that lasted for over 500 years, before the Inca's took it over in the 15th century. Archaeologists have restored a lot of the walls and such, but when the last earthquake hit, all the restored walls crumbled, and all the old original walls stayed standing exactly how they were. So it seems the Chimu knew how to build sandcastles.






Next stop was Lima, the capital of Peru. We were only stopping there for a rest and for the connecting bus to Cuzco, but had a nice wonder around Miraflores; the old, gringo friendly, wolley-hat-selling area of Lima.