Colombia here I come!!

So I left off in Quito (not a huge fan). Well I was staying at this hostel which is a pretty fun party place. And I met these two Dutch girls, Marcia and Lizzy who were also leaving for Colombia on the same day as me so I decided to go along with them. But the bad part was not only was the night before I was planing to leave rum and coke night at the hostel (which means they put a big bucket of rum and coke out in the common area and you can drink for free) but I also had to get up at 5am the next morning to catch the bus the girls were taking. So after partying until quite late I woke up at 4am and convinced myself that perhaps there had been a time change from Peru to Ecuador and that maybe I was late for getting up, that maybe it was really 5am. So I dragged myself downstairs to ask the front desk what time it was ( the man at the front desk who was sleeping at the time was somewhat confused as to exactly what I wanted) and then I couldn't fall back asleep worried that I would miss my alarm ( I think I was still a bit drunk) But I got up at the right time and the three of us set up in the misty premorning light. It was almost as if a huge cloud had settled over Quito making it look sketcher and more mysterious than ever. We got to the bus station by taxi and had to wait for a bit for the bus. I was a bit worried again that I wouldn't be able to get a ticket (the girls already had theirs) and that I would be stuck alone in a bus stop in Quito at 5.30 am but the bus was basically empty so we settled in for the 6 hr bus ride to the border with Colombia. It was beautiful. Quito is in a mountain range and we spent the next couple of hours driving from cloud filled valley to mountain top and back down again. We finally reached the Ecuadorian border town named Tulcan and had to catch a cab to the border. We ended up getting a ride in the back of this guy's old wooden tarp covered truck. It was hilarious. There we were in this old wooden truck bed speeding towards the Colombian border in the middle of nowhere, I felt like we were being smuggled or something. We reached the border and after some confusion we exited Ecuador and then stood in line for about 2 hrs to enter Colombia. It was the most ridiculous border crossing I have done so far. There were so many people waiting in this huge line and one man slowly servicing all of them despite the fact there were booths for about 4 other people to be working. And in South America there is quite the culture of cutting the line so there were more than a few occasions were we watched people duck into the front. After we had finally reached the front of the line this woman comes up and asks Marcia if she can just ask the border official one quick question so Marcia says sure, well her question turned out to be "can you stamp my passport". You just had to laugh damn it! I amused myself at one point by looking at all the wanted signs they had posted all over the border (FARC rebels) "I am in Colombia now!" I thought. From the border we took another cab to the Colombian border town and from there we caught a bus to Cali. The bus ride took until 2am (long day) and was on perhaps the windiest road in the world. We spent the entire trip being thrown from one side of the bus to the other and sped around each progressive corner. It was spectacular though. Colombia is beyond beautiful and is about a million shades of green. We started out on this winding cliff road which would have been terrifying if I hadn't already been to Bolivia. The scenery is so lush and there were about a hundred waterfalls along the way. We started up and over a whole other series of mountain ranges. I was dead tired when we arrived in Cali. We caught a cab and after much confusion found a hostel and I hit the sack.

The next we hung out in Cali. Colombia is so modern and developed compared to the rest of South America (or at least Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador) Cali is a beautiful city, really modern yet with a kinda old European feel as well. I guess I have ended up in Colombia during rainy season or something because every afternoon so far it has just poured down rain. We spent the afternoon very happily watching a cheesy movie and then hung out and went out with some other people from the hostel. Good fun.

Yesterday we woke up late and caught a bus to Medellin, the former capital of Drug dealing in Colombia and was home to Pablo Escobar. It took about 9 hours and we got in about 10pm. We are staying at a super party hostel. I think I can only handle it for one more night then I will need some peace and quiet. We went out to a club last night and I cannot describe the girls here. I have never seen so much tits and ass and skimpy cloths in my life, although I do have to admit I don't go to clubs all that often at home so maybe what do I know. Anyway today is a bit of a down day and tomorrow I am hoping to head up to the coast. Sand and sun here I come.

Mancora to Quito with a bit of surfing and paragliding (and a lot of drinking) along the way

hey!

So I got across the border just fine. I actually really didn't like Mancora, I found it really didn't have any good vibes at all, maybe it was the wrong time of year to go there. First there were no waves so I couldn't go surfing and secondly in the 24 hours I was there three people got mugged at gun point right outside my hostel which didn't really endear the place to me. My hostel was in kind of a bad location I guess. It was set back off the main street by this deserted stretch of road. And it was in this no-mans land in which all of the muggings took place. I hate being places where I don't feel safe going out alone at night. Anyway so I decided to leave town and head up to a beach town in Ecuador named Montanita which I heard rocked. So I woke up early and paid for my hostel and then had to cross the no-mans land alone in the wee hours of the morning, not an exciting prospect I will tell you. So being the coward that I am I took of at a lopping gait and reached the other side save and sound and in record time. I wandered into town and found myself a collectivo (a collective bus) to Tumbus the last semi big town before the border town Aguas Verdes. In Tumbus I found a bus that would take me all the way to Guayaquil, the biggest town in Ecuador where I could catch another bus to Montanita. It worked out perfectly the direct bus left 45mins after I got into town giving me time to change my money (they use the us dollar in Ecuador). And then on the bus and across the border no problem. I didn't find it sketchy at all yet we stopped in Aguas Verdes and a British guy got on the bus and he had just been totally fleeced crossing part of the border. He had ended up in this cab with a bunch of locals who demanded money and threatened violence and he had to give the border guards money too, pretty shitty and he was pretty shaken up. After that the bus ride was really nice, we drove past more banana trees than I thought existed and lots of mountains and villages, I saw a bunch of cock fighting pits, it is a big sport here, but no actual fights. We finally arrived in Guayaquil after about 6 hours on the bus. Guayaquil has the most modern bus terminal I have seen in South America so far. It was crazy almost like being in some western shopping mall/bus terminal. From there I caught the nicest bus I have been on since Argentina to Montanita. It was full of gringos since Montanita is a real hippy surf town. It was nice though I met a bunch of people who I hung out with for the next couple of days, especially this couple form California, Laura and Ramie, who ended up traveling to Quito with. Anyway back to the story at hand. We rolled in to Montanita at about 9pm (it was a long day). Montanita is a really funny place. It is such a little gringo mecca. There is one main strip that is about three blocks long, chock a block with restaurants and bars that offer 24 hr a day happy hour, two for one deals. So I proceeded to get my room, shower and then go for a drink! It was a great way to end the day, we even went dancing. The next day I woke up late, wandered around, got breakfast and ran into Laura who invited me to go paragliding with her and Ramie so I said ¨fuck ya¨ and half an hour later we were off and heading down the beach to a cliff. It was an awesome experience. It was tandem paragliding so really you are just attached to the guy who is actually flying the thing, but it was so much fun, we soared up above the cliff and the beach spread out below us, a long golden strip that slipped into the beautiful blue ocean. He also did all of these really sharp turns which kinda throw up to one side or another. I just loved it. I was amazing just to be hanging there up in the sky, no engine noise, just gliding on the breeze. After that we headed back to down got some lunch and a couple of drinks (damn they were cheap and tasty) then really just hung out on the beach the rest of the day and went out again at night, it is kinda the only thing to do there. Although the next morning I groggily awoke from my drunken slumber at 5:30am to the sound of a complete marching band parading up and down the main strip, I still have no idea what they were celebrating, maybe they were just fucking with all the gringos. If there is something I have learned about south america by now is that they love their parades, I mean love them! They have parades for just about any occasion you can think of, and on top of that they love to have parades at very inappropriate hours. I have seen them early in the morning and late at night and have often woken to the noise of a parade but this was by far the earliest parade yet!

The next day I switched hostels to Laura and Ramie´s and then proceeded to do nothing all day. I read, I swam, the ocean here is warm, not hot so perfect for swimming in and I drank. It was great. The next day I finally got out on a surf board. It was alot of fun to be doing something active and I even got up which for me is all I can ask for. Although I ended up surfing down one end of the beach so I wouldn't get to in the way of people who can really surf but at one point I started thinking about sharks and being all on my own. I hate thoughts like that when your feet are hang down in to the dark waters below. But luckily I surfed for a couple of hours with no shark bites or even nibbles. Then it was back to my old routine of sleeping, reading and drinking. The next day Laura, Ramie and I rolled out of town early on our way to Quito. It took from about 9am to 12am to make it there and by the time we arrived I was dead beat and ready for sleep. I am not a huge fan of Quito as far as cities I have been in it doesn't rank high in excitement or beauty and about a person a night, sometimes more, from my hostel is mugged on their way back to the hostel. Which makes a place slightly less appealing. I haven't really been up to much since I have been here. Mostly just hanging out with people at the hostel (a really nice group) and I went up a cable car to the top of a near by mountain. You can see down on to all of Quito and it looks pretty huge and spectacular from up there. I also went to the equator today which was interesting. It is funny though they have two monuments. One was put up by the French I think and is wrong, not actually on the equator, but it is the bigger of the two and the more visited. Then there is a little museum on the real equator that was cute and kitchy. They do all sorts of little experiments, one where they drain a sink of water on the northern hemisphere and it drains counter clockwise and on the southern hemisphere it drains clockwise and on the equator it drains straight down. Lonely planet says it is all a lie that you cant see the difference so close the equator but to me you could really see it so I choose to believe my eyes! I also balanced an egg on a nail right on the equator and got a certificate for doing it. One of my highest achievements to date! Anyway I am off for Columbia tomorrow and another slightly dubious border crossing but I have so many under my belt now I am sure I will be fine. I am excited about Columbia I have been looking forward to this for so long.

Getting to Mancora and being left by the side of the road at a godforsaken hour!

So lets see my last blog entry left off with us arriving to Lima. We loved Lima, I think not so much because it was Lima but more because it wasn't Puerto Maldonado. It was big and the area we stayed in called Miraflores was very modern and you could even buy English newspapers (Anna almost fainted with joy, especially over the combination of English news papers and good coffee). So we spent the first day just chilling out in our new hood enjoying the finer things in life, like chocolate mouse. The second day we were set to head on into the centre of town. We thought this was going to be easier than it was and it ended up involving a lot of yelling at buses asking them if they went to the centre and then a lot of people on buses shaking their fingers at us. It is a thing here, only north of Cuzco I think, but it is as if you are almost too stupid of a no or a shake of the head so you receive a wag of the finger as if we had been very naughty indeed to even ask. We finally found our bus, climbed on and spent the next 45 mins watching the driver veer dangerously in and out of traffic alike a maniac on some sort of caffeine rush, I witnessed about a dozen almost accidents. Finally making it down town we happily exited the bus and found our way into the centre of town. Being that it was Anna and I, we scoped out the first food joint we found, which turned out to be basically an old parking lot converted into more than a dozen food stands. At the very back we found this place that served fried calamari so we ordered ourselves up a plate and I don't even know how to describe the joy that exploded within us at what we received. It was the hugest plate of fried calamari and fish that I have ever had and man o man was it AMAZING! And I am not even a huge seafood person but I now consider myself a convert to the ways of the sea! There was this dipping sauce as well, I cant even describe it! Anyway we polished it off pretty quickly and then talked about how great it was for the next 12 blocks, and all for the low low price of 10 soles. I know I know much of this blog has been a long description of different foods I have eaten but you know what, it´s what makes me happy. They also have another delightful seafood dish here called Ceviche which is raw or hardly cooked fish in this citrus sauce, also amazing. Ok so moving on. . . . . We looking around the down town for the next couple of hours, finally finding ourselves in some crazy warehouse district where you can by any cloths and shoes that you want for super cheap in these enormous air hanger like buildings. After shopping for a bit we headed back to get more calamari (yes I know we have one track minds) and ended up running into our old friend Kaye who was only in town for a day, so we had some coffee and chilled out and then headed back to our hostel together (minus the calamari they had closed for the day). The next day Anna was not well. She had spent the night with a high fever and throwing up, it was terrible. So after making her as comfy as possible I headed back down town to do a little exploring by my self. I ended up some what rashly deciding to get a tattoo since I had little else to do! I love it! It says ¨I have everything that I need¨ in Spanish on the side of my foot. The idea came from this book I read while down here, which included Taoist teachings and one of them included this idea that we all already possess all that we need, anyway I feel that idea really symbolizes much of what I have learned and been through on this trip so now it is on my foot, cheesy I know but I never confessed to be otherwise. After the tattoo (and some more calamari, shit I know I am like a broken record) I headed back to Anna who was doing no better. She had another feverish night during which I had to put wet towels on her to keep her cool. The next day she was a might bit better and I had to leave to travel up the coast, yet i was starting to feel a little unwell myself. Saying our goodbyes after all this time was hard and then I headed off to catch my bus. I ended up meeting up with this girl I had met before named Sophie and we spent a pleasant 10 hr bus ride chatting and making fun of the terrible movies they decided to show us. At about 10pm we rolled into Trujillo a town about halfway up the northern coast. I was feeling pretty shitty by our arrival and was very happy to lay my head down when we had found a hostel. The next day we slept in, got breakfast and then headed out to some ruins near town called Chan Chan. It is the ruins of a great city (the capital of a northern Peruvian civilization) that was conquered by the Incas. We got dropped off at the road in but really it only looked like some abandoned building site with piles of dirt and half destroyed adobe walls everywhere. After walking about 2 km into the site we bought out tickets and looked around. It actually turned out to be pretty interesting and the site was pretty well preserved with intricate carvings in the wall and this one enclosure in a mud and sand landscape that held a big lagoon. After that we headed to the Chan Chan museum and then on to a smaller surf town in the area where Sophie was looking to volunteer for a month. I started to feel shitty again so after a walk down the beach I headed back and started the epic mission to by a bus ticket up the coast. The first two companies I went to had nothing, or didn't go up the coast so after a slight bit of panic that I would have to wait days and days to leave town the third company had seats for that night, so I booked. It really makes little to no sense to me but they only have buses that do the trip up at night so you start your journey at about 8:30pm have a shitty restless night and then roll into town at 5:30 am which it is a stupid time to arrive anywhere. So I get to the bus station a half an hour before I am supposed to and soon start to realize that perhaps I have chosen the shady bus company which would explain why they still had room on their bus. Checking in I not only noticed a whole row of pictures of criminals to watch out for behind the clerk´s desk but I also had to give them my finger print as part of the check in process and then before the bus left someone came around the bus and filmed every ones faces, this was for robbers the girl next to be explained. Great, just great! I thought. So not only was it a terrible uncomfortable, hot as hell, drive during which my sickness returned but I was also super worried that something was going to get stolen. I finally fell asleep on and off and woke up just as we were about to pull out of Mancora, my destination. So stumbling out of sleep I made my way off the bus, gathered my bag and was tossed unceremoniously onto a dark and deserted street alone at 5:30am. What Now? I asked myself so I pulled out my lonely planet page on Mancora which didn't include any sort of map and decided that I should just start walking since I was attracting the attention of some very unsavory characters. A motor cab slowly pulled by me loaded with 4 creepy dudes, shit I thought I might get mugged but I have found that it is best just to start moving and look like you know what you are supposed to be doing. A minute later another motocab pulled up and I got him to take me to the first hostel on the lonely planet list, I just wanted to be off the dark and sketchy street! Well of course no one was awake at the hostel since it was so god damn early in the morning but some dude staying there let me in and I slept in one of their hammocks until one of the staff woke up and put me in a room with some German guy. Thankful that I made it and had not been mugged I fell asleep happy. Now I am just wandering the town. Which is pretty deserted, I thought I would be able to surf but it is the wrong time of year I will have to go further north, although I did learn how lucky I was last night since only yesterday at dusk this girl near my hostel was mugged at gun point and that was only at dusk not in the middle of the night! I think I might travel on pretty soon, even tomorrow. I think my shitty arrival has really ruined me on this town. And I seem to have ants in my pants and a need to keep moving on, despite the continued state of sickness. So wish me luck since I have no idea the best way to get to Ecuador and it is suppose to be the worse most corrupt border crossing in South America, weeeeee!!! I just have to remember I have everything that I need!!!!!

Puerto Maldonado to Lima

oh where oh where have I been. Well I have been in a crazy jungle town named Puerto Maldonado. Anna and I spent a week there dodging the largest number of motorcycles and mototaxis that I have ever seen. There actually seemed to be more mototaxis than people in the town which makes little mathematical or economic sense but then I never claimed to be a mathimagician! The first day it was as hot as hell and felt like you were walking through a big pot of soup, and despite how much I love soup it was an uncomfortable situation. It actually cooled down for the rest of our time there which was awesome. The town was a funny place. Surrounding it is really touristy, lots of jungle lodges and such but the town was almost gringo free, which was a delightful change from Cuzco, which was like being just another gringo sardine getting shoved into a tin already too full of gringo sardines (did anyone actually enjoy that analogy) Anyway, we ended up finding our selves one gringo friend. A dude named Ceri from Britain who became our partner in crime for the week, and helped us polish off a cheap bottle of Pisco in the park the second or third night. We flew out today but really had nothing but bad luck at the airport. We arrived early for our flight yesterday (we thought an hour early but it turned out to be 24 hrs early) And we were shocked to find no one manning the ticket desk and finally, angrily, found a someone and demanded to be put on the plane until the gentleman pointed out that our tickets were in fact for the 6th of may not the 5th and that we should consider returning the next day, where in we might have more luck catching our flight. So very embarrassed Anna and I exited the airport only to find the same mototaxi driver that drove us most of the way to the airport already, then returned to town for my hat that had been left behind, only to drive us to the airport again and now back to town AGAIN! Today we headed out to the airport, this time I remembered my hat which was lucky because despite the fact that our tickets said that our flight departed at 12;15, and we arrived an hour early, our plane was almost ready to taxi down the runway on our arrival. We luckily found someone to rush us through the gate and ran out on the tarmac barely catching the plane as it was set to leave. We were very luck since Anna and I both agreed if we had to spend any more time in Puerto Maldonado, we would have probably committed some sort of ritual group suicide. So now here we sit in Lima, enjoying the facilities of the first actual cosmopolitan city we have been in since Buenos Aries.