Piura, Chiclayo, Huanchaco, and Trujillo in Peru

Welcome to Chiclayo
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Sunday, February 12: Woke up, packed, called home, and then ate breakfast which was really more like lunch and included some kickass asparagus soup. At 1p.m. we took a bus from Loja, Ecuador, to Piura, Peru. At the border crossing, we had to get off the bus. The Ecuadorian immigration guy asked for a stamped paper that they gave me when arrived. I didn´t seem to have it. Luckily, the guy just gave me a dirty look and made me fill out another one. He could been real asshole and asked me to pay him, but luckily he just sneered at me and let me through. Then we had to show our passports to the Peruvian immigration people and fill out a form. Then we had to go across the street and register with the Peruvian National Police. They are very high tech and simply write your name and passport number is a ledger.  We finally go to Piura at around 9:30 p.m., dumped our stuff at a hostel in a somewhat sketchy part of town near the bus station, and went looking for our first Peruvian meal. We ate chicken, rice, and spagetti from a vendor who had a picnic table set up on the sidewalk.We had gone to an ATM, so we had Peruvian soles with which to pay. My first impression was that Peru is not as prettyas Ecuador. The people are not as nice either. But the first bunch of days in Peru, we (unfairly) compared everything to Ecuador. Then we walked around a bit,, but he neighborhood wasn´t anything special, and it was hot and humid, so we went back to the hostel to shower and try out Peruvian television. There was a lot of noise and people movement at the hostel and no fan, so we just sweated it out.

the shoddy building construction in Chiclayo
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Monday, February 13: It´s fecking hot in northern Peru! They have these funny motorized rickshaws in Piura, they are run on a moped or motorcylce engine and usually the front of the bike is attached and remains in its original condition. We wanted to take one to town but were informed that they are not allowed to be driven in the center of town. Therefore, we were forced to take a Daewoo taxi. All the taxis in Piura are Daewoos, which I believe is Korean for ´garbage can on wheels.´ We did some errands in town and ate breakfast. Then we got on a bus to Chiclayo and got to watch 4 hours of terrible Jean-Claude Van Damm movies in Spanish. Everyone said that the busses in Peru are way better than the ones in Ecuador, and that did seem to be the case. We made it to Chiclayo, dumped our stuff at a hostel and walked around town a bit. We walked to the Mercado Central and got batidos and also tried some local version of a refresco, it was super sweet and had some spooned pineapple in it, a total sugar rush. Then we walked up to the Mercado Modelo and the Mercado de Brujos, the Witches´Market. The markets were large and colorful and and colorful and there were tons of people around. The Witches´Market was somewhat disappointing because there weren´t that many stalls of witchcraft goods, and the market itself was primarily a regular food and junk market. However, we did find lots of San Pedro,the hallucinagenic cactus, and we were told by a young guy who looked pretty blitzed out of his mind that there is another plant called Wasa that can you high. I didn´t see any dried llama fetuses as the guide book promised, but there were tons of dried herbs, teas, and flowers, and potions of all kinds, salves, lotions, balms, powders, crystals, voodoo-type dolls, charms and stuff to put in your bath (which is weird since no one in South America so far seems to have a bathtub). Anyway, we bought olives and raisins from a vendor and then made our way to the main plaza to eat at Mi Tia´s restaurant which was bustling with people ordering hamburgers and ice cream. In Piura and Chiclayo people love to eat ice cream and it can be found on every corner. It was amazingly hot in Chiclayo. But as the sun was setting (we couldn´t see it for all the hazy clouds), it got cooler and more breezy and actually felt like it was going to rain. But apparently that is a total anomaly in the Peruvian desert, and as such, it did not rain. We ate awesome grilled chicken with fries and sada, and a little boy next to me asked us our names. He was cute, named Richard, and a curious type of kid and sweet. We talked to him a bit, andwhen he was leaving with his older female chauffer, he said, Bye, chicas! It was cute. As we werer paying ,the lights went out throughout the city. The denizens of Chiclayo seems pretty calm. The restaurant prompltey produced serveral very fallic-looking candles, and we got our change and walked carefully down the streets back to the hostal. It was creepy, I was nervous we´d get attacked, but everything was totally cool. We got back to the hostel and got a candle and sweated it out until the lights came back on.

Passing though Peru

Taxis in Peru are all Daewoos
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Tuesday, February 14: We had breakfast that was included in the price of the hostal - bread, butter, jelly, coffee, juice - but no eggs! But the coffee was instant, which I preferred to the weird room temperature coffee extract or syrup that we had the day before. You have to mix it with hot water, I had mine with milk, it tasted like metal, it was really gross. Valentine´s Day is a big deal in northern Peru, sort of. We were expecting all of our Ecuadorian boyfriends to call us today on our spiffy Movistar mobile phone purchased in Ecuador and promised to work all over South America. But the phone gave us a crazy message when we turned it on, so went to a Movistar office and were told by a few relatively incompetant workers that the phone´s chip would only work in Ecuador, despite what we were told, since Peru is still ´working on that technology.´ But we could purchase a different chip to use in every diffrent country we go to. What a pain. Then we went to an internet cafe, and it was so so hot. I was sweating profusely and the proprietor of the business noted same. It was hot, but I was also sweating because I had to take a super grande mierda which I hadn´t done in a few days, so I went back to the hostel and clogged up the toilet. This has been a frequent problem for me, fyi. We made it to the bus station and had 45 minutes to kill, so I walked around and took pictures. A dude came on to the bus at one point and sold us a kind of frozen fruit ice cream in the shape of a sausage, it was cooling and delicious, I could actually chew on the pieces of coconut in it, yum. We made it Huanchaco, a slightly depressing beach town. We ate pizza in the main plaza, thrilled by the black olives topping. We walked up and down the beach, which strangely stopped at one point and turned back into desert. But the reed boats were laid out to dry, they were very lovely. We stayed in a front room at a hostel our book recommended, it was very loud all night and into the wee hours, I suppose due to the drunken carousing of rejected lovers. Someone was also blowing a whistle every few minutes. It was very annoying.

crazy porches on a house in Huanchaco
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Wednesday, February 15: We ate a lovely breakfast and proceeded to spend the entire day on the beach, reading, swimming, and relaxing. I found out that the whistling at night was in fact a guard hired by the town to alert people on the street that there were people walking on the street. You´re right, it doesn´t make any sense. Many things in Peru do not. Anyway, these two dudes who had tried to pick us up the night before - the Josés- found us on the beach and asked us to join them on the beach at night for a bonfire and beverages. Then we ate ceviche, I thought it was totally gross, Laura loved it. I´d eaten shrimp ceviche in Quito, that was delicious, but that was at a fancy restaurant. Then we went back to the beach. At night, we met the Josés, they went to get fire wood and we made a lovely bonfire at the beach. It was pretty fun, we played silly memory games, they were well behaved for the most part. And for whatever reason, the electricity in the whole town shut down around 11:30 a.m. What´s with Peru and power outages? We´re still not sure, and we think Peru is not too sure either.

fruit for sale on the way to Trujillo
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Thursday, February 16: We wanted to get the hell out of Huanchaco, so after breakfast (no juice because their was still no power, so the blender couldn´t work) we took a combi (a shared van) in the morning  to Trujillo. We got dropped off a long way away from where we wanted to go, but walked around and finally made it to a hostel that was total pandemonium. It didn´t help that the chaos was being organized by nutty Clara (proudly showed us how she keeps her money in a pocket in her underwear, had only one eye done with eye makeup) and her English husband, Michael, who both owned the hostal together. We bought tickets to go to the Incan ruins of Huaca del Sol, Huaca del Luna,and Chan Chan. We bullshitted around for a little while, then were at the hostal at five to two to leave for the tour. We didn´t end up leaving until about 2:35 p.m. We drove to the ruins with Michael talking a mile a minute, spewing information about the area and the people. We ended up only going to the ruins of  Huaca del Sol (´hauca´means pyramid, but it was more like a compound), and Michael again gave way more information than any normal human can process at one time.  It was very hot and windy and the sand and dirt kept blowing in our eyes and even got in our ears. We saw the remains of a palace/government type compound where a bunch of bodies and artifacts werer found, although most of the tmbs have been looted by grave robbers. There were also lots of well preserved friezes which were obviously more than just decoration. It was interpreted taht the friezed with fish, serpants, dogs, gods, and humans told stories, mabye about who was buried there, maybe about ancient Moche tradition such as sacrificing prisoners. Whent eh tour was over, I found out that we weren´t going to any other ruins, and I was disappointed and made a mental note to get some of my money back, since nutty Clara had gotten us to pay for a trip to Chan Chan as well. After the ruins, we walked in to town to buy our bus ticke for the next day´s trip 8 hour trip to LIma. We´d been warned that Friday is a busy traveling day to Lima, and that we might not be able to get tickets, but we went directly to the bus office and we did manage to get tickets - all the way in the back of the bus. Then we ate our favorite meal, pollo asado with fries and salad. We also had the lovely Peruvian drink called chica morado. It´s made of purple corn and kind of takes like sugary punch. After dinner, we ambled around town, excited to be in a big town that actually had some life to it. Back at the hostal, Laura ended up talking to nutty Clara about the beef we had with her about the tour, and she promised to return some of the money to us the next day (no doubt from the pouch sewn into her underpants).