From Darkest Peru

We caught a bus south in order to escape the sprawl of Quito and get to a turn off for a pretty volcanic lake we were planning to visit.  Unfortunately, one of the down-sides of getting up at six am is being pretty tired and we missed the city we were suppossed to get off at.  Having avoided paying more for our mistake, we made the decision to keep pushing south towards Cuenca (in classic colonial spanish style the city's full name is ridiculously long: Santa Ana de los cuatro rios de Cuenca).  The mountains were beautiful as always, and with the good hitching here we reached the city that very night.

Carnaval was still on-going and it was fun to see foam and water flying everywhere.  However, it made hitching a risky prospect and at least once J got a face full of foam from a passing vehicle.  Another consequence of the festivities was that nearly everything in Cuenca was shut on the day we arrived.  And we mean everything.  This wasn't so terrible as we the city is very pretty and it is enjoyable just to wander through the old centre.  Not holding out much hope we strolled through town towards the Museum of the Central Bank, which was next to some Inca ruins.

It was surprisingly open.  Numerous toursits were drifting towards it suspiciously, exclaiming to find it both open and free.  There were numerous exhibits on the Pre-Columbian society that lived there, conquered in the late 15th century by the expanding Inca empire, where it became Tomebamba, the most important city in the northern empire.  Next to the museum, the ruins of the military/administrative hub of the city, called Pumapungo still remain.

We were informed that the usual archeological series of small walls were once barracks, homes for the sacred virgins, canals and religious baths and a foundry.  It was very interesting and a really nice peaceful place to come for picnics or reading since it was free access so we were pleased.

Having failed to get the the National Park we had meant to go to, we heard of a petrified forest to the south-west and made the decision to go there to get our camping and forest-wandering fix.  Again, we underestimated how easy it is to hitch-hike in Ecuador and we made it in a day's beautiful hitching in mountains and through dairy farms

We crossed a beautiful but somewhat dangerous mountain road past a valley that is being converted into a hydro-electric dam followed by mile after mile of banana plantations in the province named 'El Oro' after the fruit, reaching the park as firefly illuminated night fell.

There was a very large pavilion for maybe as many as a hundred people to eat, and inside large meeting rooms we could see rows of shiny mountain bikes, presumably for hire.  However in all this they forgot to provide space for people to actually camp.  We set up in the eating area, which we were grateful for when a tropical rainstorm lashed onto the roof for much of the night (and thankfully brought the temperature down a bit with it).

Armed with our ever present tin of pulses/beans and some cheap fresh local cheese (the cheese in Ecuador is both tasty and cheap.  It was explained to us by a lift from Colombia who worked in dairy products that while Colombia had been conned by free trade agreements and much of its dairy products were from the U.S.'s leftovers, Ecuador imported barely any dairy and had a strong and plentiful local industry), we set off into the forest picnicing.  As well as the 100 million year old fossils, many of which still had bark or rings visible, the site is in a very current rainforest as well and we enjoyed the abundant life as much as the fossils:

At this point we were a bit concerned that we were moving too quickly and would reach our next planned destination (Trujillo, Peru) days before we asked Couchsurfs, and indeed before any had replied at all!  This rapid pace was arrested somewhat the next day due to border faff.  The hitching remained as good as ever and we watched the landscape become increasingly arid and desert-like from the cabs of several trucks as we made our way to the Peruvian border at Alamor.  Here we found the 'border control' to be the porch of some man's house, the only indication it was a border control being his posession of a ink pad and stamp.

However, he was the Peruvian border guard and we found ourselves once again needing to officially exit a country before we could be allowed into the next one.  A backward glance across the blasted desert showed a distinct lack of an Ecuador border and we were told we need to back to the nearest town Zapotillo.  When we arrived back there however, we discovered that the border police in this town didn't have the authority (or possibly skill?) to wield a rubber stamp and that we had to go another couple of hours to the town of Macara in order to be allowed to leave.  This was pretty frustrating, but the aforementioned great hitching here made it doable and we did reach the correct town and settled in for the night.

The next day we crossed into Peru, back on the Panamerican where we belong and headed south.  We got away from the border in a collectivo since they made up over half the traffic there.  We've done this at quite a few borders, however this "collectivo" was only a normal estate car.  Refusing to accept the limitations of this, the driver managed to get seven other people and two live goats (plus baggage) in there in an immpressive defiance of physics.  The hitching here was as good as in Ecuador and we rarely waited more than 10 minutes.  This was a good thing as the land had turned into a fully fledged desert with dunes and vast, stunning vistas of nothing;

and the heat was punishing, so we were very glad that people were as friendly as they were as there was little in the way of shade to hide in.  One lift told us that the area in the picture flooded every year during the rainy season and so everything we could see was underwater a few months ago.  The further south we moved though, the scrub grew even thinner and the only thing breaking up the landscape was the occasional cement factory and ruined shacks.

When we arrived in Trujillo, we relished in the chance to do all kinds of luxurious things like lie on a bed and shower.  We also went for a wander to eat.  On the recommendation of a fellow Couchsurf who has been in Peru for a few months, we went to get some ceviche.  It was a huge helping (we shared one) of fresh scallops, crab, mussels, octopus and a lot of some delicious fleshy fish with yuca, something like yuca, all covered in a sharp lime sauce.  It was amazing and at the risk of this becoming a food blog, we've also been enjoying some other Peruvian food in the last couple of days.  Chica morada is a drink made from purple corn and with the cloves and cinnamon tasted for us like Christmas.  Cheap and easily wowed as we are, we have also been enjoying lots of fried corn that gets handed out as a side/appetiser often with garlic/lime sauce.

We're going to be here for a couple of days exploring before we move south.  There are nice fruit and veg markets here.  Peru grows everything from dozens of types of potatoes, to tropical fruits, to olives, so there is plenty options for us to munch on over the next few days.

Also, for those who didn't get the joke in the title- what were you doing with your childhoods?!