Chiclayo

Chiclayo is a town on the Peruvian coast with desert on one side and and the Pacific on the other. The bus ride took about 6 hours from Mancora, but I didn't feel it because I was sleeping the whole way. There is really nothing to do here, the previous hostel owners were perplexed at our choice of location, but there are supposed to be great archaeological relics and finds here.

While there are relics and remains here. I wouldn't call them great. And I don't think this stopover was entirely worth it. Close to Chiclayo was a tomb of the leader of the Sipan tribe. In this tomb was more gold than they even found with King Tut in Egypt. So I was hoping to get a glimpse of the gold. Disappointment is what I found. But there were still some pretty cool relics.

The first museum I went to had very few gold relics, but a lot of ceramics and textiles. Which is cool, to a point. The second museum didn't allow you to bring in your camera, which I really don't understand. Museums around the world allow you to bring in your camera. But not here. What makes them so special? As it turns out, not very much. There was a reproduction of the tomb in the museum, but there was not much gold. I don't know where they are hiding it. But this side trip was not worth it.

Peru has been highly disappointing so far because the people here act with no class. They want your money and will lie, steal and cheat to get it from you. Colombia and Ecuador, although poorer, were not like this. As a result, I'm shortening my itinerary here and trying to get to Bolivia as quickly as possible. It's really quite disgusting. Here are a few examples:

- taxi guy charging $10USD to get me and a few other people to our hostel (it should be $2)
- bus ticket vendor writing the wrong time on my ticket then not offering any refund or anything to fix the problem, even said it wasn't her fault (lost another $12USD)
- getting back to the hostel the cab driver wanted to overcharge for the cab (right afer being ripped off by this lady and furious about it). But I sat in his cab and told him to take me back downtown for free if he wanted to keep the change. He finally gave me back the right change.
- taxi driver at this new city telling me my hostel is closed, that I should go to his friend's place
- breakfast place at this new town gave me the wrong change and say their prices are not right on their billboards (liars)

I'm disgusted with the people I have met so far. Hopefully, I will find some redeeming people. The owner of the current hostel is really nice, but even he overcharged when converting from the USD price on his website to Peruvian Nuevo Soles. Ah well. Peru, the land of the cheat.

It really sucks. I was most excited for this place.  

Mancora

This beach paradise is the most popular beach in Peru. The waves come rolling in regularly and make for some good surfing. There were a lot of people learning while I was here. The water is cool and refreshing after a long walk in the blazing hot sun. It's a nice spot to relax.

The hostel I'm staying at considers themselves a party hostel, but there's no real partying going on. The music plays until 2am, but it's not so loud that it disturbs my sleep. There's nothing really to do here except drink and surf. After all the other things that are going to happen in Peru, it feels like a calm before the storm.

Street to the beach

Beach bars

One thing that's not calm is the traffic. The PanAmericana highway runs right through the town. This highway stretches from Ecuador to Chile. There are buses, cars, trucks and tuk-tuks. Check out the video below to find out what a tuk-tuk is...

Peru!

I've been looking forward to Peru most of all on this adventure because it has the most ancient civilizations of all South American countries. I really like archaeology. The Incas are just a footnote in history. I arrived in a small beach town called Mancora today. It was a horrible overnight bus trip from Cuenca to here. The driver took the mountain roads like a madman in the darkness. The border crossing was not too bad, but the Ecuador side was extremely slow. The Peru guy just registered me into the computer and I was on my way.

I arrived at the town of Mancora at 5am, the moto-taxi guy ripped off me and the people I was sharing with charging us $10USD for a two minute ride. Ah well, we made it here safely...and started ringing the bell like crazy people for about 15 minutes before someone came and answered the door. Instead of just taking us to our rooms, he gave about a 10 minute speech before we got placed.

It's now 9am. I've been awake for about 5 hours. Hopefully a quick dip in the ocean and a nap and I'll be good as new. Gotta love the backpacker life!

As per the norm when entering a new country, here's my (planned) itinerary:

• Mancora, a beautiful beach town where you can learn to surf or learn Spanish (I probably won't do either)
• Chiclayo, where there is the Sipan tombs
• Chachapoyas, a quick day trip from here takes you to Kuelap (a fortress in ruins that rivals Machu Pichu built by cloud warriors)
• Cajamarca, the site of the imprisonment and execution of the last Inca
• Trujillo, known for it's Chimu civilization temples and Chan Chan (another ancient civilization)
• Caral, which has the oldest known pyramids in the world
• Lima, the capital and colonial centre of Peru
• Ica, which has sand boarding and dune buggies and Huacachina (an oasis in the middle of the desert)
• Cuzco, the starting and ending point of the trek to Machu Pichu
• Canon del Colca where you can watch Andean condors catch the updrafts in a canyon double the size of the Grand Canyon in the States
• Arequipa, a chilled out town to end my time in Peru before heading to Bolivia

It's going to be an interesting and educational time here. Have a great day people!

Ingapirca

About two hours north of Cuenca is a city called Cañar. Just outside of this town are the best-preserved Inca ruins in all of Ecuador. There used to be a grand castle, fortress and temple here. The Spanish knocked it all down because they thought there was gold hidden in the walls. Holland actually has the Inca crown. Why they don't return it back to the country where it was stolen from is beyond me. It's like England and their crown jewels being stolen from India.

Anyways, the complex is shaped like a puma. The puma was one of the Incas secondary gods. The sun temple was placed at the brain of the animal. When the Incas conquered this part of Ecuador, there was already a tribe living here called the Cañari. They had temples and buildings here as well, but the Incas knocked them down and rebuilt it in their own style. Anything circular or eliptical seen is from the Cañari, and anything rectangular is Incan.

When looking at these photos, you have to remember that these ruins used to be walls and buildings with roofs and doors and windows. The circular containers below were used to hold, store and dry out grains.

This part of the complex housed the ceremonial baths. There were aqueducts running throughout this place and the priests or whoever would enter the temple would cleanse themselves before entering the temple. The smaller half-circle was gardens and the bigger one outside of it was various agricultural crops.

The Incas would use the magnolia flowers and cups and drink their drinks and drugs out of it. They would make a fermented corn drink called Chinchi which is still made and sold here today. 

Me with the Incan ruins!

This stone is a calendar. The Incas were master astronomers and had the same 365 day calendar that we have. The stone would have been in a building with a special opening in the roof that let moonlight in. All of the holes would be filled with water. Wherever the light reflected, that's how they knew which day of the year it was.

Most of the builidings at this site are reproductions so that tourists can get a glimpse of what it might have been like back then. However, this wall is the original structure. It wasn't knocked down. The Incas would cut, sand and polish the stones into the shape they wanted and arrange them in such a way that no mortar was ever needed. Look at how tight the joints are in the second picture. It's amazing to think of all the things they knew back then.











It's easy to see why the Cañari and the Incas chose this site as a fortress. It's at the top of a mountain, 3160m above sea level and you can see anyone coming from miles away. It's just gorgeous countryside now.

Part of the actual Inca Highway is still intact and preserved here. It led straight to the sun temple. It's at the end of the video below.

The re-creation of the sun temple obviously looks nothing like that wall above, but the archeologists did the best they could with the materials available. A lot of the original stones were taken by local people to build their houses and especially to build the churches. The guide told us that the government is trying to buy the 500 acres surrounding this place because the gold from this temple was never found. Legend has it that when the Inca Atahualpa was imprisoned by the Spanish, he sent word throughout the kingdom to hide everything because he knew they were going to kill him. There is also the very real possibility that there are more ruins to uncover. All of this was underground until they started digging in 1966. 

In this photo and video, you can see a doorway and two niches in the wall. The original wall had four niches, one for each of the important celebratory days in the Inca calendar year. The roof and/or door of this temple was designed in such a way that the light would shine into these niches only on the solstices and equinoxes of each year. Each niche has a gold statue of a god. When the priest saw the light on the god, they knew it was time to party!

There was also two entrances and exits to the temple and it was a mirror image. So on the other side of the wall is the same layout. This was so that they could do worship as the sun was rising and setting. The guards would stand at the door and communicate with whoever was inside by the echoes of the walls!

When the Inca himself (Inca was the name of the king) would come to visit this palace, he would stay in this room. Outside of this room was quite literally rooms full of the best and most beautiful women of the land wanting to be his wife. His name was Inca Huayna Capac, which literally means unlimited women. He had thousands of wives across his kingdom. But before they could become his wife, they had to go to school to learn the Inca history and customs. He didn't want no scrub.

This is where the guided tour ended and the self-guided tour began. The Incas also made interesting rock carvings around the temple/fortress site. 

They had carvings of turtles and in the side of the mountain is an image of the Inca himself! Enjoy the pics below. Tonight, I take a 7 hour bus at 10:30 into Peru. At least they have seats which fully recline into beds. Hasta luego!

Cuenca

Cuenca is a nice old town, known for being a UNESCO world heritage site, just like Quito. I only have one more stop left in Ecuador. Galapagos will continue being a dream because it is just too expensive to do on a backpacker tour.

The architecture here is just as good, if not better, than in Quito. The balconies, the carvings in the stone, the doorways and churches, all set to an Andean background. First a few of the churches below.

The two pictures and video below are of the "new cathedral" built in the 1800s. It is huge. The pictures show a little bit of the scale with the traffic at the bottom of the picture. The second picture is the main entrance to the church. The video shows the inside of the church. 

The church below is San Blas and the second picture is 

The architecture of the various buildings in the old town is really nice as well. I can imagine just having my breakfast on one of those balconies like a big shot. At least for a day. It would be nice.

 

Volcan Tungurahua

I'll start the post by saying this, there was no lava because the volcano was not erupting at the time. It is an active volcano though, but it usually only erupts during the full moon. Today was spent hiking up a mountain in the Andes to the very top. It was hard, tiring and completely draining as all I brought was a bottle of water and Oreos. But the view was so worth it. Really spectacular. I don't think I can get tired of these mountains. If I do, I know it will be time to go home.

The trail started with an unbelievable number of stairs to get to a statue that overlooks the city. But before I got to the statue, I was greeted with a ginormous cemetery. It was huge, the picture below is just half of it because I couldn't get the whole thing in my shot.

The view from the statue of the city of Banos. It's set at the base of several mountains.

The trail I was following was marked "Mirador del Volcan". And the signs I came to always had a distance on it. But they didn't seem right. I would pass a sign saying the mirador was 350m away, walk for ten minutes, then pass another sign saying it was 300m away. Impossible.

The trail didn't even look like trail in some parts. I always thought of mountains as vast rocky wastelands, but I passed so much greenery and even a few farms on my way to the top of this mountain.

The "path"

Farms

When I finally made it to the top, the view was obstructed by clouds. All around me were clouds. It's a strange feeling being in the clouds. But I was. And I was hungry. I had been walking for about 4 hours at this point.

I stumbled upon this restaurant which had a picture of Banos and the mountain I climbed. Just to give a sense of the hike, Banos is that town at the bottom of the picture, and that box on the far right is where the restaurant was.

I took a cab back down the mountain because I was dead tired. The cabbie stopped to let me take some pictures of some waterfalls in the area. It was a good day. Tomorrow, I head to Cuenca.