South Ecuador & North Peru

So you may have noticed I’ve been posting less and less frequently. I’m going to try and combat this by making the posts more succinct. So let’s try going back to highlights, similar to how I wrote earlier posts.

After leaving Montanita, hopefully for the last time, I headed for Cuenca. At this point I was ready to leave Ecuador and head to Peru for the next chapter to do some more volunteering. Cuenca is a city in the south of Ecuador known for stunning surrounding nature and scenery. It’s on the way south so I figure I should check it out.

Highlights:

• Meeting Ceci AGAIN for a catch up and endless laughs about our previous few weeks together with Alex. The lowlight of the highlight? It was the last days of carnival in South America and they like to take things a little further in Cuenca. On top of the puke-scented foam spray, they like to throw the odd water balloon. One was dropped so perfectly from an apartment window, it wedged and exploded between my back and backpack – superb shot!
• Going to Cuenca’s nature reserve (Parque Casa) with a French guy from my hostel dormitory, Coco. Under prepared as always, I didn’t consider the altitude would be so high and therefore, for me at least, the weather was bloody COLD.
• I finally bought a new watch! Only to later be informed that it’s probably a fake… Man I bartered so hard to get it down from $18  to $15… 
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Next stop
Out of pure coincidence, I find an email I was sent by an old work associate. In the notes, at the bottom of Ecuador, a town I hadn’t heard of: Vilcabamba. Heading there via a small city called Loja on arrival into Vilcabamba, I’m reminded of Santa Fe and some other quaint towns in the coffee region of Colombia. I love it, backdrops of stunning mountain scenery and yet another beautiful plaza.

Highlights:

• Booking a hostel via Hostelworld, checking in later that day to realise the staff assumed I was a female due to my name and, as a result, put me in a shared female-only room. Ashley is a only known as a female name in Latin America. So I’m it’s not unusual for me to be laughed at when introducing myself to locals. Another reason to go by “Ash”, which, often gets confused faces until I explain “como Pokemon” (like Pokemon) – then the laughs follow anyway. Lose/lose – thanks mum and dad.
• Drinks and salsa with Ani – the girl I was put in the room with. The one time having a girly name is a positive thing. Thanks again mum and dad…
• I bump into Manny & Lisa AGAIN as they check into the same hostel I’m staying in. This was getting strange.
• Spent an evening chatting to a sweet 70 year old traveller called Senga, she buys me wine in return for travel tips. She was one of few travellers I met who not only took my advice, but took the time to email me once a week and let me know how she was getting on – what a gem! 
  

  

  

Whilst in Vilcabamba, I applied for several volunteering positions in Peru, it was about time I got back to “work”. I was accepted for a position in the city of Chiclayo, north Peru, to work in a marketing role for an English & German language school – yippee.
So off I went. Vilcabamba > Loja > Piura > Chiclayo. Border control between Ecuador and Peru was much simpler. The bus stops at the border, you get your exit stamp  from Ecuador and walk over the border to get a stamp at the Peru office. It took around one hour in total. A slight improvement on the Colombia > Ecuador border which was around 5 hours.

On arrival into Chiclayo, I’m picked up by the volunteer host, Dinah, and her boyfriend’s grandma. A slightly unusual start…

Highlights:

• Organising and running an English language exchange with 15 Peruvian students. As an English treat, I made flapjack 😉
• Going to the sand pyramids with Carlos & Ceci (photos somewhere below)
• Being asked by a local whether I was from Peru! Was it the dark skin or excellent local tongue? Probably the former…
• Biking to Pimentel beach with Moises. A 30km round journey – amazing sunsets on Pimentel beach (photos somewhere below)
• First ever Tinder date with a girl named Mayra. It’s rather strange meeting someone for the first time when you don’t know what they look like
• Trying guinea pig. A lot of effort for so little meat! (photo here because it’s so disturbing)
  
• Spending a night in a Peruvian’s house drinking Pisco for the fist time with Carlos and two of his friends – only got back at 5.45am 🙂 Pisco is Peru’s national drink and like Colombia’s national drink, reminds me of those days when I used to sip the awful sambuca for laughs.
• For the organisation I was volunteering for, I created a profit and loss spreadsheet to help with targets, feedback forms and new Facebook promotions which resulted in a 50% increase on class attendance with 50% less budget spent on advertising. Not bad, huh? 
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Quick visits to Trujillo & Huanchaco

In Huanchaco – I randomly bump into Senga, we have beers on the beach. A girl walking past, Anna, joins us because we “look like fun” and after more beers on a sun-setting beach, we head for a meal.

 

After this chapter, I headed to Peru’s capital, Lima. Stay tuned.