Huanchaco

What started as a 3 day beach fix turned into 3 weeks of ´chilling´ in the Peruvian town of Huanchaco (just outside of Trujillo, Peru). The beach bum life consisting of: food, yoga, chilling, more food, more chilling, surfing, sleeping, and repeating ended up being our routine in Huanchaco. This lifestyle became too difficult to give up, so we just kept staying and staying and staying!

Hostel view 1.

Part of what made it so hard to leave Huanchaco was the fact that our Hostel was located right on the beach and it provided us with amazing nightly sunsets (pictured above). As an added bonus, this hostel also had a bar, fridge, and the first bath tub in all our South American travels (not a bad way to spend $30)!

Hostel view 2.

Another reason why it was so easy for us to stay in Huanchaco was that we gained another addition to our traveling family. His name is Licky Skittles. He´s a blue dinosaur that I managed to win in an animal crane in Huanchaco. Licky decided to join us for the rest of our trip, so you might catch him in some of our photographs. This one is of Lydia and Licky enjoying the beach together.



The beaches of Huanchaco were fairly nice. There was fine white sand and continuously crashing waves that were great for viewing and surfing; however, on the downside, Huanchaco´s beaches were filled with trash from the countless unscrupulous visitors to the beach. It is such a frustrating issue, due to the fact that it could be so easily solved with an education campaign coupled with the enforcement of fines, but instead, ignorance leaves the beaches much less desirable than they should be.


Contributing to the garbage problem in Huanchaco are the beachside snack vendors, who are present in astonishing numbers. With such numbers, they fight for a competitive advantage in selling their tasty treats. Some use bubbles, some use kazoos, and some (pictured below) take a more creative approach to selling candy:

Transvestite mentos salesemen... er... saleswomen... er... salespersons can be found on the beaches of Huanchaco wearing wigs and appropriately placed balloons. It´s quite entertaining!

Huanchaco also has to be the festival capital of the universe. It seemed like every other day Huanchacans would be celebrating something! Even when there wasn´t anything to celebrate, the people would park their cars on the beach, open their doors and windows, blast their music, and dance till the break of dawn!

A popular dance during all the Huanchacian festivals is the Marinera (not to be confused with the spaghetti sauce). The Marinera dance is common all over Peru; however, each different region has its own take on the dance. In northern Peru, it´s about quick steps, cowboy hats, and dress twirling (see below).

At another random Huanchaco festival, the people put on a beachside play about the warring natives of the region. Unfortunately, it seemed that whichever force I cheered for ended up being vanquished :(

Amongst all the warring tribes, a woman in silver paint would romp around striking various poses.

By changing the exposure rate of my camera, we were able to make this woman look very god-like!

Hail the conquering heroes!

This festival came by our hotel window one night. I believe it was for one of their sacred virgens, as they carted a virgen statue around with them wherever they went, then put on various demonstrations of offerings for her.

Amongst the offerings was Marinera dancing of course.

Lydia liked this festival so much that she offered her soul to the virgen, with the help of this devil character;)

The honoured guest! Notice the scared dove on the left shoulder of the virgen. We think he was tied to the statue, where he had to endure hours upon hours of fireworks! Poor little guy!

The coolest offerings given at this particular festival (asside from Lydia´s soul) were these giant firework statues. The Huanchacians started constructing these structures during the day, only to have them destroyed (most entertainingly) during the evening. I have never witnessed such an awe inspiring display of firey badassedness! Watch the video and enjoy!

One of the ways Lydia and I liked to pass the time at the beach was by making hand-pebble statues. Pictured above is Lydia´s gold medal winning seagull thinking of a clam. Great work Lydia!

Looking at the sunset from our hotel room whilst a tranny mentos salesthing pesters a nice couple.

The Huanchaco/Trujillo area also has some decent ruins in the area. Pictured above and below are the Chan Chan ruins. A large complex of sand structures in the desert about 15 minutes out of Huanchaco.

The evidence of one slight misshap I had during our surfing at Huanchaco is pictured above. During surf practice, I was standing in the water with my board, and all of a sudden some sea creature (I believe it was either a baracuda, shark, or kraken) decided to latch onto my big toe. In a half a second I was able to kick it off, but it scared the bejesus out of me. After this time, I didn´t spend too much time dily dallying in the ocean (good motivation to stay on the board)!

We didn´t visit the Trujillo area too much during our visit in this area, but one section of Trujillo that we did enjoy was this public garden.

A neat tree found in the Trujillo public garden.

Public garden question #1: Does anyone else think that this collection of plants looks like a bird?

Public garden question #2: Does this Cactus look happy to you?

This picture is of Licky Skittles enjoying our final sunset in Huanchaco. After our time at the beach was through, we headed straight up into the Andies and the beautiful town of Huaraz.

Chiclayo/Lambayeque

When heading south from Ecuador to Peru, a common misconception is that one needs to pass right through northern Peru and head straight for Lima and below. After a bit of reading up on the matter, we found that northern Peru actually has some interesting, lesser known sites that are a great way to break up the trip down south.


Our first stop in Peru was a city called Chiclayo (and Lambayeque which is a bordering region). The city itself isn´t too special, but it does have some nice cathedrals and a massive market, which is where we spent most of our time. Probably the best thing about Chiclayo is that its people rarely see foreigners, so one gets a lot of interesting reactions from the locals when walking down the streets. Funny enough, because the people don´t see many outsiders, they can´t really distinguish between people from other parts of the world, so they just call all `strange´ looking people ´chino` (Chinese), which couldn´t be further from the truth in our case. The reaction from the locals seemed to be amplified in our case because I (Tyrone) am about a foot and a half taller than every living soul in South America, and both Lydia and I are very blond!

Two stories come to mind on this point. First, when walking through the industrial section of the market (where there are auto parts, tools, etc. for sale), about 50 people spontaneously and simultaneously started doing the whoop whooo whistle for Lydia. It was as if a naked playmate had fallen from the sky and landed in a construction workers conference in the Bronx. Not to be out done, when we then decided to check out the shoe section of the market for Lydia (an area of the market ran by the women of Chiclayo), there, a line of about 15 girls started smiling, staring, clapping, waving, and making rather forward comments about my eyes and such. There may have even been a couple of proposals! On top of the come-ons, we also managed to scare quite a few children, due to our giant `gringo-ness` (I may have helped by making stomping gestures towards them). A trip to the Chiclayo market is definitely a good time if you are in need of attention or an ego-boost!


Another interesting thing about the Chiclayo market was that they had a section for Brujas (witches)! There you could fill your boots with various types of dried animal parts, voodoo dolls, and my favorite, the San Pedro cactus (a hallucinogenic with the ´minor´ side effects of uncontrollable diarrhea and projectile vomiting - we decided to pass). Unfortunately, we did not get any pictures of the market, as we didn´t want to chance offending a witch doctor (we´ve all seen Beetlejuice):





In the outer regions of Chiclayo, there are also a good number of museums and the first round of ancient Peruvian ruins, including the Sipan museum ruins and pictured below:

The Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan (it took all my strength to not try to run up the side of the building).

A ceremonial mask found inside the museo Bruning.

Pictured above, the Gene Simmons of the Chimu empire.

After touring the Museo Bruning, a mock-chief put on a little show for us and allowed for us to take a picture with him.

A nice pair of hooters outside of the Sipan ruins.



The Sipan ruins themselves were a little disappointing, as we were only allowed to tour a small section (and were eaten alive by mosquitoes whilst doing so).

Still, there were some beautifully crafted sand carvings in the walls of the excavated ruins.


In all, Chiclayo is a great way to break up the LOOOOOOOOOOONG drag of road from Ecuador into Peru!

Goodbye Ecuador!

So, we left Baños to head south to Cuenca, Ecuador´s third largest city. We travelled with a new friend, Bigi from Switzerland, and promised to stay in Cuenca for a few days so we could celebrate her birthday with her. In Tyrone and Lydia fashion, we got her a fun birthday present that she says she will ¨never forget¨!!

We made our way up to this Cuencan ¨mirador¨ to get a good view of the pretty colonial city.

The streets looked much like those in Quito, but there wasn't as much hustle and bustle, which was nice.

There were many beautiful old buildings, including this cathedral in the main square.

The inside of the cathedral is decorated in ornate gold.

Cuenca is the birthplace of the "Panama Hat", so we decided to make a day of it by shopping for hats. Tyrone found this nice 'ol cap and wanted to buy it... luckily I convinced him to move on (and told him he could have that hat once he retires)!

We then decided to check out the Homero Ortega hat museum where we learned all about the panama hat-making process. It can take from one day to many months to weave the hats, depending on how fine the material is and how skilled the weaver is. The hat is initially weaved into a bell-shape and then later bleached and/or steam-pressed into the desired shape and size. The hat that I am trying on below took around 3 weeks to make and cost $260! We were even shown a hat that took over 6 months to create that cost $1,500! Because I fell in love with the hat below, but could not afford it, the shop-keeper had an identical hat with a lesser-quality weave custom made for me on the spot for around $25.

Cuenca has many unique museums, including a small antique musem/home lived-in by an eccentric elderly couple. They had many dolls, old sewing machines, ancient kitchen equipment, etc. that were all very interesting to look at.

They also had a pretty little roof-top garden and a yard full of pigeons and chickens - in the middle of the city!

We visited another museum next door that was extremely different. It was a goth museum decked out in gruesome pictures of monsters, devils and nudids... And the washroom had an extremely interesting tap that we had the pleasure of using!!

After Bigi´s birthday celebration, we were pretty sick of the city life, so we headed further south to a highly recomended little town called Vilcabamba. This little town is famous for its long-living inhabitants, who apparently hold the record for some of the longest living people on earth. It is supposedly common for people to reach the age of 100, and believed that someone there even lived to age 135! Studies have been done on the area to find out why Vilcabambans live so long, and it is attributed to their fresh, mineral-rich water.

We stayed at a funky lodge a small trek outside of town in an adobe house. The trail into town was quite interesting, as we had to cross a rather decrepid bridge on the way!

The lodge is surrounded by a series of hiking trails that were mapped out by the owners. One of the owners is a botanist and she marked all the different names of local plants along the trails!

Tyrone at the top of the mountain, checking out the view of the river below.

There were tons of butterflies ("mariposas" en español), snails, stick-bugs and other little creatures on the trail.

I even found myself a nice coffee bush. All I needed was a roaster, grinder and coffee pot!

There were tons of flowers on the trail, too, this one being one of our favourites!

I even heard a Who during one of our hikes!

Our adobe hut was equipped with a little kitchen, so we made our own breakfast for the first time on our travels. We had locally grown coffee, a fruit salad (Tyrone picked the pomegranite off a tree himself!), and a lady next door had baked some tasty banana cake.

After some wonderful hiking, rest and relaxation in Vilcabamba, we decided to head further south and cross the border into Peru. Here is the last photo I snapped in Ecuador whilst we were on the bus:

We hope that our previous and current blog posts have helped to show you that Ecuador is an extremely wonderful country full of rich culture, wonderful people, beautiful landscapes, and adventures not to be missed!