After almost 6 months in Ecuador I was definitely ready to head for Peru and check out if all the bitching I'd heard about Peru and its people (horrible spicy food, rude loud people, dirty unimpressive scenery, surround you straight off the bus shouting gringo gringo gringo!, slit your bags open when you're not looking and run off with your stuff, the list goes on...) from Ecuadorians had any truth behind it.
Worryingly, the first impressions backed this up somewhat. We crossed the border at 4am on Sunday 9th March, and as soon as we'd walked over the bridge separating the two countries I felt the mosquitoes surrounding us, and Peru's welcome present turned out to be 20 or so itchy little red marks on our arms and feet.
The border crossing went off without a hitch and as day broke driving through northernmost Peru it revealed a dry, dusty, desert-like landscape with hoardes of tiny mototaxis (scooter-driven rickshaws that you might expect to see buzzing around New Delhi) driving along litter-strewn roads. The immediate impression was of a country where life is rougher and tougher than its northerly neighbour.
This impression was strengthened on arriving in the tumbledown streets of Piura, our end destination, but it was there in the 'Movil Tours' bus station - Peru would rather present you with 20 individual bus stations than one big one - that things started looking up.
It was there that we saw we could pay 40 soles (about 13 quid) for an eight hour bus journey to Trujillo, complete with 180 degree reclining seats, airline style at-seat service and drinks and meals included. The 8 hours on that coach rank amongst the highlights of the entire Peru trip, hence:
Reasons to love Peru #1: the buses
We begrudgingly got out at Trujillo, jumped into an old camper van converted into a bus and shuddered our way along the coast to the resort of Huanchaco, constantly looking around for any lurking bag-slitters. We settled down in the beachside Hostel Sudamérica run by the self-proclaimed gringa Julie and then watched the sun go down and ate Peruvian ceviche, literally just fish in lemon juice with chilli, super spicy and not very nice. What else had the Ecuadorians been right about???
The next day we visited Trujillo city centre where we met the friendliest tourism officials ever, one of which insisted on showing us personally around the government building and conducting a practical photoshoot around the building and main square for us. I guess the north of Peru often gets left out by tourists for reasons already mentioned and due to a certain old Inca city somewhere in the south, so they're making a special effort. Bless their hearts.
It was then on to some pre-Inca ruins in the form of the built-on-sand chan chan, where we stalked some people who had paid for tours and learnt of the ceremonial sacrificing to children to mother earth, which by all accounts was a hell of a party for those guys. The day ended with some major bonding between my German girlfriend and a Chilean bloke over a love of Chris Stark AKA Scott Mills' assistant on BBC Radio 1. Strange world we live in...
On the second day in Huanchaco we had the dubious pleasure of going out with a genuine local fisherman to try and catch some tasty morsels. The difference between this and normal fishing is that you're perched with your legs either side of a long cigar-shaped reed boat armed with a piece of drainpipe halved down the middle to paddle through the waves and a polystyrene block with washing line hanging from it and a couple of baited hooks on the line. The idea is to chuck your polystyrene block into the waves and then paddle after it to retrieve any fish washed onto the hooks.
Clearly easier said than done. Our 'guide' was a typical long-haired laid-back South American surfer dude and after a brief demo I was sent off to catch dinner. The chucking the block was the easy bit, retrieving it not so. My boat was swept back to the shore without me a galling three times before I finally grabbed the bugger to reveal surprise surprise not a single bloody fish. Mareike fared even worse, being dragged out to sea and having her boat dumped upside down by the waves and fighting to not be completely dragged out (she also lost her sunglasses for her troubles). Not that our guide was bothered as he sat on the beach with his feet up.
Despite us only managing one pathetic tiddler between the three of us, we were invited to his home to eat some fish he'd caught earlier in the nets (no one is crazy enough to ACTUALLY fish like we did anymore), which were served together with their eggs in a very fresh hot sauce, a true delicacy! It was actually pretty damn tasty and helped us forgive the 'guide' for our earlier trauma.
A sunset surf later (i stood up twice whoop) and all was forgotten, and I guess I can say with hindsight that our early Peru adventures taught us that you definitely need to learn to take the rough with the smooth in that country.
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