Rolo on Tour

Time to discover more of the northern part of Peru: The next two stops were the cities of Chiclayo and Trujillo.

If you are looking for new glasses the first one might be worth a visit as I have seen there such a concentration of glasses shops you cannot imagine. Otherwise I would recommend skipping it as it was hard to meet people there, the reason being that there are no hostels around.

In Trujillo at least that was the case. Also there is a nice central square as almost anywhere in Latin America:

Furthermore I finally managed to get some basic salsa lesson and I fixed my bag (see last entry) for 1 Sole (0.37$). Considering I got a 10$ refund from the owner of the dog, I guess I made a pretty good deal on that :-).

In Trujillo there are also some precolombian ruins called Chan Chan. To me it was not that interesting: They were a lot like those in Egypt, just without all the cool stuff!

Time to go back to the mountains I thought, in this case the city of Huaraz. Huaraz is located near a mountain range of the Andes called the Cordillera Blanca. There I took part in a 4-day-trek called Santa Cruz Trek. The trek was pretty nicely organized by some agency and so we only had to do the hiking, as everything else (cooking, carrying and setting up the tents and so on) was carried out by the guides and their donkeys.

The first night I suffered again (like when doing the Quilotoa loop) of altitude sickness and crossing 4750 metres (the highest I have been in my life) the next day was not really helpful to that. Having passed that obstacle although all symptoms disappeared.

Some pictures of these days:

Start of the hike on Day 1

Reminds me of the Matterhorn

A nice place to spend the night

We crossed only the parts without snow and ice 🙁

How will these mountains look in 5 (10,20,50..) years?

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Before I left Ecuador I had to complete 2 more tasks:

The first one, eating guinea pig, was accomplished in the city of Cuenca.

Great Success!

It was not very spectacular, tastes a lot like chicken but is way more expensive.

Further south lies the little town of Vilcabamba with nice hiking opportunities:

Yes, other people make videos too 😉

I like

One of those hikes brought us to a small village. And that is where I completed the second task: Playing Ecuavolley.

Ecuawhat? It`s a very popular game in Ecuador, especially in small villages. It is like volleyball, but you play on about the size of a beach volleyball field with a football, 3 on 3 and the net is 3 metres high. That way you can hardly smash the ball down; but if you think about it, that is probably a clever idea if you are as small as most ecuadorians you rather want nobody to be able to do that, than just all the people from other nations ;-).

Shoes, socks or barefooted: Which is the best outfit?

Trying to stop egoism 😉

That was a lot of fun and we nearly forgot the 6 hours of hiking we did to get to that place. If people are at least half-capable of what they are doing, it is very hard though to force scoring a point, so it can be quite exhausting.

In Vilcabamba I stayed in a german hostel with great german food. Quite nice after 2 weeks of having mostly the same food all the time. They even had Currywurst on their menu, but seriously, who eats that for dinner?

My first attempt to leave the country failed due to a bus which left 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. The second attempt did not go without complications as well, as I found out on departuring, that one of the little dogs of the owners had parts of my bagpack for dinner:

Yummy! Too bad when your bagpack feels twice as heavy suddenly 🙁

Nearly 17 hours (I guess that was not the fastest way 😉 ) of busrides later I arrived in the little beach town of Mancora in Peru. The (party) hostel I stayed in there made it quite hard to find sleep. But with the beach 5 metres away and the benefits coming with that it was still a kind of nice place to hang out:

Probably the nicest view I got so far from my bed

Sunset in Mancora

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I got this question a lot during the last time – by people who probably don´t know much about Germany. Qué tal Alemania? What is Germany like? What do you answer on that? Is it even possible to have a quick answer on such a question? How do you describe your country in 3 sentences? When I ask other people about it, they usually name „German beer, Sauerkraut, soccer and Rammstein“. Interesting image we got!

But what would you mention first? There is so many aspects in describing the life in a country:

• How the landscape looks like: How high are our mountains, do we have beaches, deserts, national parks?
• What is the weather like? How warm does it get in summer and how cold in winter? Is there a lot of snow?
• What kind of school system is there? Do you have to pay for school?
• Is there a social security system? Is the economy strong? How much do you earn in average?
• What role does the religion play? Is it considered to be necessary to get married when in a relationship and if yes – at what age is that done in average? How many divorces are there? How many kids do you have on average?
• What role does sports play and which ones are most popular?
• What is typical food and drinks in your country?
• Which political system do you have? Is it democratic? Is there a lot of corruption going on?
• How are people dressed?

The list could be continued. Still which aspects are the most important and how do you explain those to somebody living in some village in Ecuador whose life differs so much in many of those things?

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Finally I knew where to go from Quito: I went to Latacunga to start the so-called Quilotoa loop from there. One hour after arriving there I had met Stephan from Holland and Maike from Germany and we soon discovered we had the same intentions, so shortly afterwards we planned how we were going to spend the next few days together.

It all started with a bus ride to the Quilotoa lake situated inside of a volcano at about 3900 metres of altitude. Having passed the following obstacle, we were ready to start:

Our first day we were hiking along the crater and we had magnificent views all the time.

The Quilotoa lake, just stunning.

We were quite surprised finding a „beach“ up there!

After that day I felt really sick (altitude ?), but the next day everything was fine again, so the adventure could continue. The next step was to hike to a village called Chugchilan and after having found the right way and going up and down several canyons, we arrived our destination for the night and I could learn some dutch card games ;-).

Discussion: Which one is the right path?

Keeping a tree from falling Bruce-Willis-Style

Our third and last day of hiking should bring us then to another small village called Isinlivi and it was another day of going canyons up and down.
All in all, all the hikes were great. Awesome views, friendly people and many animals (sheep, cows, dogs, horses, donkeys, lamas) on the paths.

What a donkey!

I like the dog´s expression 😉

Getting back from Isinlivi to Latacunga was not an easy task, as we had to ride on the top of a milk truck for a while. It rained and as we got up to 4000 metres again, it was quite freezing for some time. Luckily my clothes passed this rain-proof-test, so it was still quite fun :-).

Milk, me, Stephan and again Milk

All in all a really great trip, especially as we barely met other people. I wonder if it will be the same in 5 years, as it is already in the lonely planet….

A completely different experience was the city of Baños. You could not walk 5 metres without somebody asking you „Hey my friend, wanna do a tour tomorrow?“ Not my thing.

So after having made a bike trip to some waterfalls, which involved climbing down and up the tower which you can see below, I left this area again.

only 26 metres high, so very safe

Maike, relieved to be at the top again

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