BLOG - TRYING FOR COLUMBIA

The last time I checked in here I was dreading a 4 to 5 day bus journey without the company of Dan and Soph, my travel mates for the last 2.5months, from the border of Bolivia and Peru, to Bogota in Columbia. As it happens I made it to Mancora near the Ecuador border, met some Dubliners who had an addiction to Rum and spent 10 days in Ecuador, mainly getting out of my tree on Rum Rum and...oh, Rum. However on the way I broke up my endless hours on buses with days at two of the many incredible sights in Peru, Nazca and Trujillo...

THE NAZCA LINES
"Wake up, wake up! This is Nazca!" We had arrived 4 hours EARLY. Dazed, alone and in the pitch black the driver dropped me off on the side of a dusty road. Muchas gracias amigo. Wondering around deserted streets looking for some information, a random guy offered me a hostel - mugger or friend? Gamble. He gave me a room, but I think ripped me off on the flight to the lines. At 7.30am I was up again and trying to keep my breakfast down whilst weaving around in the air over the Nazca lines - a collection of huge drawings by the Incas in the desert rock below. A monkey, condor, hummingbird, a whale, a pair of hands, and many more. There are various theories on why they exist from a calendar, to depictions of gods or running tracks! An hour after I was back on the ground I was back on another bus to Lima and then overnight to Trujillo...

HUACA DEL LUNA & THE CITY OF CHAN CHAN
I hadn't planned to come here, but it was as far as I could get in one night. It turned out to be a terrific day seeing an extremely old temple and a crumbling adobe city. The twin, pyramidal type temples of Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna were built by the Moche people from 100AD to 700AD. Luna is a tremendous sight - 5 temples, each built on top of the previous and each getting slightly bigger than the last. Ongoing excavation reveals huge painted walls with intricate details, sacrificial platforms and a huge square for accommodating the onlooking public. Walking between the 5 different levels and then gazing at the outer wall it took my breathaway just as much as Machu Picchu, and they still have Sol and the surrounding city to start on. Following we checked out the Chimu city of Chan Chan - the largest pre-columbian city in South America. This place was gigantic built entirely of mud bricks in the Chimu period of 850 AD to 1470 AD when the Incas invaded. Most of the walls are mounds of dirt now as the rain over so many years has eroded them, but some original carving of fishing nets and turtles still remain, it must have been an incredible sight at its peak and totally intact.

RUM AND COKE PLEASE
After 3 overnight buses I was shattered and decided to chill in the beach town of Mancora. There isn't much to write about here except for getting hammered playing boozy bingo, dancing on the bar - a lot, drinking rum Squishies (Slush puppies with alcohol) and singing some bad karaoke. This is where I met the 4 Irish - Gary, Rochy, Darragh and Elaine, who talked me into coming to Ecuador. Most mornings started with "s***, that rum was strong!!"

BEAUTIFUL CUENCA
2 nights of tremendous amounts of alcohol and we were heading for the border and for a speedy stop in the pretty city of Cuenca. Enroute and our first experience of Ecuador was the bus disappearing with all our bags!! Sitting with only our passports, we were relieved to see it return after doing a loop of the border town! Searching for Panama hats, time in Cuenca passed quickly, and I don´t really remember much except a beautiful square and 2 foot diameter pizzas. Hungry eyes meant we struggled to finish the 2 we ordered - a watching chef making us feel very guilty!

BAÑOS - UPHILL STRUGGLES
The small town of Baños sits amongst towering mountains and a piping volcano, and is known as an adventure wonderland for backpackers. Activities such as rafting, biking, ziplining, bungee and go-karting to name but a few, but also with some relaxing natural hot spas. We opted for a leisurely few days, downhill biking the road to Puyo on the edge of the jungle. Darragh, conveniently blaming a foot injury opted for a lazy day at home and sent the 4 of us off on the 60km road which contrary to popular belief and the touting bike shops, is NOT all downhill! The road was spectacular, lined with waterfalls and cheap cable cars made from garden fences and tractor motors to ferry us across, 100metres up in the air. Pailon Cascada was the pick, where we could stand in behind and watch as it roared overhead into the deep gorge below. We managed 40km before finding out we still had 2hrs left, and instead turned around and hailed a bus...back to Baños and Darragh ready and waiting with 3 bottles of Rum! Again?! After such heavy exertions, we decided on a spa day - twice checking out the hot baths, where Roisin (she will try to deny it) kept touching us under the water and a full body massage complete with a facial - my 1st. A bit wierd in my opinion, especially when the girl sprayed what smelt like Febreze on our faces!!

QUITO - SLIGHTLY OFF TARGET, CEST LA VIE
Capital Quito with its seemingly endless cathedrals and churches, one of which has an altar containing 9 tonnes of gold, sits low on my list as memorable cities. However, it does have a gothic looking church, climbing which took us over boardwalks and up dodgy ladders for a cool view over the city. Well for 4 of us, Darragh got scared and blamed his foot again. After a trip to Mitad del Mundo (Equator), I learned that its not only the English who have something against the French, the Quitonians telling us it was the French who marked the position of the monument marking the centreline of the earth, 250 metres off target!! Ha! The real equator is round the corner where you can try to balance an egg on a nail and see water flush in opposite directions only meters apart! Wow! ;-)

OTAVALO - JUST ANOTHER MARKET
Final stop in my short trip to Ecuador was the market town of Otavalo for one of the biggest Saturday markets around, selling everything from jewellery and clothes to roast pork and quails eggs. At the end of the day its just another market in my opinion, but what was cool was finding a stationery shop selling beers! They pulled up a table and chairs and we drank cold ones amongst the paper clips and staplers - if your reading Uncle Andrew, that's something you might want to consider in Ascot!

Next morning, the Irish left at 6.30am for the border - those of you that know me well will not be surprised to hear that I ignored them and slept in, only to bump into them in Cartagena on the Carribean coast, but that's for later.

Magnificent Columbia to come..

Until next time...

Greek