Baños...¡Dune Buggy away!

Leaving Peru and Entering Ecuador Aguas Verdes

We arrived in Baños (de Agua Santa) in the early morning after a bit of a rough/interesting ride from Peru. The trip started when we arrived at the place where we booked our bus ticket (in Mancora, Peru) to Ecuador and the kind of sleezy guy told us our bus was canceled. But he told us not to worry because they got a van for us to the border with 10 other travelers and then someone who is going to go in the van with us will buy bus tickets for us to a city near Baños. Crossing the border at Aguas Verdes (Peru)/Huaquillas (Ecuador) was a bit reminiscent off Cuidad del Este, Paraguay. Both sides of the border was just a sea of activity, with just a small bridge connecting the two countries. Both countries have their passport formalities a few kilometers from the border so there is really not much security except a few policeman around for good measure. After walking from the bridge to where we needed to buy the tickets we had a bit of time to kill before our bus so Emily and I just walked around the town for a bit which seemed to be pretty lively at night. We got back to where our bus was leaving from and realized we should have stayed another night in Peru to wait for the nice bus (which would have been the same price and we had seen the day before leave). The Ecuadorian bus was a bit of a POS...no AC, first time pretty much in South America we had a movie in both Spanish with Spanish subtitles, and no service at all. The bus ride was sweltering hot and every time the bus stopped at one of numerous checkpoints or for an unneeded meal at 3am. Even the transportation in Bolivia I felt was better then this. We had to switch busses in the early morning in a town about two hours from Baños and finally arrived at our destination in the morning.

Baños City Square

As we only had really a day in town we couldn't really rest from our pretty crappy bus ride so we had to make due with the day we had in Baños and not take a break. Besides the city, the best thing to do in the area is to go on a 60 km path down the main road from the city to see an array of waterfalls. As we were pretty exhausted we decided to skip the cheaper bike option and instead rented a 2-person Dune Buggy. The road was a gorgeous view winding through a mountain valley with overlooks of waterfalls every few kilometers. We even passed over one bridge where people were doing a bungie swing over the valley river. At the end of the road there is suppose to be a small hike down to a gorgeous hidden waterfall. Well needless to say we kind of overshot the turnoff by about 20km. So once we realized we went to far I turned around and headed back until we figured out where it was. I didn't complain to much, even though in the end it made us have to pay a late fee on the Dune Buggy, because I just got to drive the Dune Buggy a bit more down some great dirt roads. We did the short hike and checkout the hidden waterfall enjoying a nice picnic lunch down at the end of the trail. We headed back up the trail (which seemed a bit longer the way back) and jumped back on the Dune Buggy and headed back in to town. We pulled in to town and returned the Dune Buggy, both us and the Dune Buggy were a bit more muddy then when we left, and headed back to the hostel.

Waterfall

Driving around in the Dune Buggy

Close up of me driving the Dune Buggy

The hidden waterfall

Emily on the bridge

Video 1 of driving the Dune Buggy (on gravel)

Video 2 of the Dune Buggy (on paved road)

We heard about a few other things to do in and around town including a couple of day trek in the Ecuadorian “Lakes District” and also a late evening campfire in the mountains near a semi-active volcano. We talked to the Israeli hostel owner who told us that the nighttime campfire really isn't that great and the volcano hadn't been active recently. So tending we were both exhausted and the bad review we just received, we decided to just hang around town for the night enjoying a nice Italian dinner in the town square and watched a small band play marching songs. We took the rest of the night easy just hanging out at the hostel with some Israelis and went to sleep. The next morning we knew we could head out almost every ten minutes to Quito so we enjoyed a great pancake breakfast at the hostel and went to the town square to buy some freshly made toffee. I had seen toffee made by the machines on the Jersey Shore before but this was literally handmade. A man had a large amount of taffy and was standing about 2 meters away from a hook that he kept swinging the toffee on stretching it out more and more. In reality the toffee ended being not that great (Jersey Shore Salt Water Taffy is much better) but it was the thing to buy in the town so we had to try it. We then headed to the bus station and on our way closer to the Equator in Quito.

A guy hand-making toffee

Mancura...why are we in such a rush I want to stay longer!

The 18 hour bus ride from Lima up to Mancora was pretty pleasant minus Emily almost getting us thrown off the bus in the middle of the Pan-American Highway. Earlier along the bus ride at one point Emily went to go make a #2 in the bathroom. Which as I had noticed during our bus company's safety and information video is strictly forbidden! They explicitly said that the bathrooms were for urinary purposes only. Emily however must have not been paying attention (even though we had taken this company in the past and I know she had watched the video then). Well after Emily took care of her business and had returned to her seat the stewardess approached Emily in her seat and for the next several minuted loudly chastised Emily that the bus bathroom is not for taking #2s and that she had now made the entire back of the bus smell. Emily has tried to claim since this that she was not feeling well and what else was she suppose to do but personally I agreed with the stewardess.

 The Beach

We arrived in the small village on the way northern part of the Pacific Coast in Peru early in the morning. We hoped in to a mototaxi (like the ones in Puerto Maldonado) and went to our hostel. We stayed at another branch of the hostel we had stayed in in Lima, The Point Hostel. They tend to be known as larger party hostels but there weren't many hostels in town and also a party-lie atmosphere isn't so bad when your hostel is right on the beach...it was all of the 20 steps to get to the ocean from the hostel. We got in pretty early so our dorms were not ready yet so we just hung around the hostel laying in the hammocks and enjoying the Pacific sun. Eventually we headed in to town which for the most part is just one main street about 2 km long which runs parallel with the coast. The town only has a population of about 2,000 people most of which work in tourism somehow, either operating restaurants, beachfront hotels/hostels, or touristy stores. Mancora isn't only a stop along the gringo-trail but also a nice vacation spot for a lot of Peruvians. While we were heading in to town we saw a wide range of sea-life along the beach. Including some crazy looking crane, a dead seahorse, and these mini (almost clear looking) crabs that were every where. That when you tried to catch them they ran in to these tiny little holes. After walking along the beach for 15 minutes we hit the main tourist area. We decided to check out a restaurant that someone at the hostel recommended us. The place was a bit gringoy but they had a really good looking seafood menu and tending we were on the ocean we thought that seafood would be the best choice. The restaurant, called “Green Eggs and Ham,” was owned by a nice older American lady. We ended up eating there both days for lunch and had a variety of seafood dishes including a shrimp burger, a tuna steak, and fish tacos. All of our meals came with these delicious beer battered sweet potato fries. The best part of it all was it was on this great patio overlooking the beach. The rest of the day we just walked up and down the beach and went in to the water for a bit before sunset to swim in the waves. That night we had an enjoyable time chilling at the hostel right near the beach and playing a little beerpong (me and this Brit won 6 games in a row!).

 The Beautiful Pacific

Emily and the beach go together like chopped liver and tomato sauce.  What is spaghetti and meatballs a better analogy?

The next morning we knew we had to continue in to Ecuador that day. We really wa ted to stay some more time and under normal circumstances would have chilled in Mancora for at least 4 days if not more but we literally had no time and we knew it. So we booked bus tickets for later in the afternoon and just enjoyed a little bit more time on the beach, regretting that we didn't have more time to stay and chill in Mancora. That evening we took a 45 minute bus ride to the border area between Ecuador and Peru. The two towns kind of reminded me of Cuidad del Este, Paraguay a bit. Not to the same extent but it was a stereotypical border town as in terms it looked like everything was pretty cheap and probably fake and it seemed like an endless stream of people just constantly crossed the bridge connecting the two towns (border control actually not at the border for either Peru or Ecuador, so no one really watched what went back and forth over the border). After dealing with passport formalities a bit outside of town in Ecuador we waited for our overnight bus to Baños.

 Cool dead crab (these are not the mini-crabs I was talking about those were to clear and fast to try and photograph)

Lima...eh, not that great of a city...BUT WE GOT TO HANG OUT WITH JENN!

On the 9^th we were suppose to fly from Puerto Maldanado back to Cusco and then take an overnight bus from Cusco to Lima, arriving on the 10^th. Well, needless to say we kind of misread the plane tickets and assuming our flight was at 11:45 we showed up at the airport at 10:45 only to see our flight taking off as we arrived. So after talking to our airline, StarPeru, and to LAN Peru we figured out it would be not much more expensive to just fly to Lima that day instead of having to pay the rebooking fee on StarPeru. So we hopped on a flight to Lima arriving in the late afternoon and frantically trying to find a phone to call our friend Jenn, who is currently working in Lima, who thought we were coming in the next day. We caught a taxi to get to one of the main tourist areas of the city, Miraflores. Our cab driver even though he told us he knew exactly where we were going to meet up with Jenn was in reality had no idea. He first took us to a hotel that was no where near the Miraflores neighborhood. He then once we got to Miraflores and still couldn't find the Marriott Hotel we told him to just drop us off in the main square. We then got in to an argument about the fare which he quoted me at the beginning of the ride. I told him I would have given him the whole fare if he would have gotten us to the hotel but tending he didn't succeed in that I gave him less. I ended up just walking away and tending he didn't follow me I assume he was at least content with what I gave him so. However, if you are working the airport shift in a taxi you should at least know where the main hotels in the city are. We had to walk a good 12 blocks to the Marriott right on the Pacific to meet up with Jenn. We finally found her and after talking for a little bit caught a taxi to her neighborhood, Barranco. The rest of the night we just went out for dinner and checked in to a hostel right near Jenn's apartment.

 Church in Barranco

Another church in Barranco that they redid the front but the rest of the church is basically falling apart (and creepy blackbirds hang out on it)

One of the gardens along the Pacific Coast

 Jenn and Em overlooking the Pacific

The next day we met up with Jenn in the morning and stopped by her office. She is in charge of accounting for a film being shot down in Lima but she managed to get a day off from her usual 7 day week schedule to chill with us. We began the day by walking from Barranco north to Miraflores along the Pacific coast. Zig-zagging through different garden terraces built on the cliffs. By the time we ended up in Miraflores we had to catch a cab back to her office (work was always calling) so we could go run an errand at the set of the movie. The movie was being shot in an old building on a campus of a military school in Lima. After dropping off some petty cash to random people on set we took a cab to downtown Lima. Lima is kind of like Los Angeles, in the fact that it is really spread out. A lot of the cities we have been in through South America tend to be built in valleys and as the cities have expanded on to the mountain sides. However, because Lima is not in the mountains and along the coast, the city has kind of just spread out. On one side it did not seem as cramped as a lot of the other major cities we have been in but it also took us 30 minutes to get from one side of the city to the city center and we had no traffic (which I guess is one difference from LA). When we got downtown, to Plaza de Armas (also known as Plaza Mayor), we decided after eating another traditionally cheap South American set menu meal, to head to San Francisco Church which besides being a large Franciscan monastery also use to serve as a mass burial area for the entire city of Lima. We went on a tour throughout the monastery finishing in the catacombs which they have found thousands of bones and have estimated 25,000 bodies on the first level alone. They told us they couldn't excavate the rest of the layers because it wasn't stable for the building. They don't even know how many more layers there are, they estimate anywhere from 2-10 more layers. Before we went in Emily and Jenn both thought that the catacombs were going to be kind of creepy. But in reality they were pretty interesting. Most of the bones have been sorted during the archaeological excavations and placed with other like bones. But it is kind of interesting finding out how Lima use to use this as their main burial ground. After coming back up to ground level and rejoining the real world we went to meet up with some of Jenn's friends, two actors from the movie (Taylor Lautner from Twilight and Johnny Lewis from the short-lived but Fox TV show Quintuplets, which I use to watch religiously during Sophomore year of college). We headed over to the Inquisition Museum and received a tour of what use to be the Inquisition Court and Prison (and later became the Peruvian Parliament building). The tour was pretty informative about the Inquisition in Peru and throughout South America. Which they told us only about 30 or so people (according to documents, even though they are sure others were killed without trials) were actually killed. They also showed us some of the unearthed prison chambers and had pretty gruesome reenactment models of the torturing techniques. After we left the Inquisition museum we walked around the downtown area some more checking out a pedestrian mall and Plaza San Martin. Later in the day we met up with Jenn's mom who also happened to be in town while we were in Lima (by coincidence her mom months ago planned a trip around Peru and then a few months later Jenn got this job in Peru and the times overlapped). After a nice dinner courtesy of Jenn's mom we helped Jenn's mom move her belongings to her friend's (who was also Jenn's boss) apartment which was being rented in the house of a famous Peruvian artist, Victor Delfín.  It was kind of dark and at night so we didn't get to look around to much but the house which he uses as a studio was full of his art.

 The Monastery of San Fransisco  

Presidential Palace

Plaza de Armas (the same fountain has been in place since the Inquisition period)

 San Martin Plaza (all these countries love San Martin)

Next is a series of photos from the Inquisition Museum (real sized models of torture techniques)...

Inquisition Tribunal

 A condemned inmate

 Making people sit upright for hours (he has been waiting awhile to get out of that)

 This is one way to get taller

 Yeah dislocated joints ain't cool

 Kunta Kinte anyone?

 This was evidently the only method used in the new world to kill people during the inquisition (30+ people were sentenced to murder by the Peruvian Court.  They Basically choked you to death.

Not really sure what type of dominatrix stuff is going on there?

Water boarding anyone?  Now we know where Bush got the idea.

Our next day we took it more relaxed...no hanging out with movie stars.  We decided to take a walk along the Pacific Coast in Lima walking through parks above the cliffs and also down to the ocean side rocks.  Two cool things we did see was first a park which is designed by Victor Delfín.  The park, named 'Love Park' was beautifully decorated with a long sitting area which was designed with broken tiles.  In the middle Delfin also designed a large sculpture known as 'El Beso' (The Kiss).  Secondly, in one of the random parks we passed through along the Pacific Coast was an amazing wire framed head statue of Yitzhak Rabin.  After enjoying one last dinner and a few drinks with Jenn we headed off to the hostel (surprisingly walking along the coast all day can get tiring).  The final morning we woke up and had a chance to meet up with our friends Sophie and Dean before they flew later that night to Las Vegas (they were doing the West Coast of the US before returning to Australia).

 Down on a little jetty on the Pacific

Yitzhak Rabin z"l

Love Park

Peeka-boo

 The Kiss

Jenn in her apartment

Out to drinks (Pisco Sour, national drink of Peru) with Jenn and her mom

Missing Jason :(

Overall, we really didn't like Lima.  It was probably the worst city we had been to in South America.  Everything in the city is really Americanized with American fast food chains (KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks), sit down restaurants (TGI Fridays, Applebees), and chain stores (Payless).  It was also just an extremely polluted city.  We probably would have never stayed more then a day or two there if it wasn't for our friend Jenn.  The touristy areas in the city were nice but a place like Miraflores you can find anywhere in a major city in the US.  The part of town we stayed in, Barranco, was much nicer and a bit more funky (I guess I would call it) with older style architecture but still overall the city just seemed bland.  We caught an afternoon bus to Mancora, finally some time to chill on the beach! 

 Resemblance anyone?  Emily wouldn't take this picture for me, so thanks Dean for doing so.

Welcome to the Jungle! We have fun and games (also loads of cool fauna and flora!)

 Yeah that is right it is a TARANTULA

Walking off our flight from the elevation of Cusco to the Amazon Rainforest was a real introduction to our next few days...humidity hit us as we walked off the plane as it was the worse feeling ever.  After weeks upon weeks of being in the mountains from Ushuaia all the way up to Peru we kind of forgot what humidity was.  It was kind of funny because the day before we had been talking about how nice it is going to be to not be in such high altitude with low oxygen levels and that we will be able to breathe so much easier.  Well the humidity definitely did not make it easier to breathe in the lower elevation.  From the airport we took a mototaxi in to town.  It was the first of several mototaxi rides we took throughout Puerto Maldonado.  Mototaxis are basically the front of motorcycle with the back of a two person carriage.  There are very few cars in Puerto Maldonado because the only main road from Puerto Maldonado to the rest of Peru (which goes to Cusco actually) until about a year ago or so was unpaved.  So it was pretty hard and expensive to ship things in to the town.  Now though the road is evidently much better which use to be a horrible bus ride of anywhere from 12-36 hours is now under 10 hours and not to bad we hear (we heard this after the fact, but we met a few travelers who bussed in to Puerto Maldonado and they said it was fine, even though our hostel owner still wouldn't recommend it during the rainy season).  So because of how expensive it is to ship things in very few people own cars and also gas is really expensive, so motorcycles and motobikes are the way to get around town...they are literally everywhere.

 A mototaxi in the main plaza in Puerto Maldonado

While we were in town we stayed at a great hostel named, Tambopata Hostel, which also ran their own tours.  Because they are the only actual backpackers hostel in town they know if they offer the same exact tour as every other tour agency in town but undercut the price because the hostel owner and his friend run all the tours (this means they don't have to hire a guide for you) they can in the end charge $50 less.  We ended up going with their tour offer and went to sleep kind of early because we had to wake up at 5am the next day to head to the rainforest.  Our group was the owner of the hostel, a German student who had been volunteering teaching art to troubled youth in Peru, Emily and I.  After taking a mototaxi down to the river we had an hour or so boat ride down the Rio Madre de Dios which is a contributory to the Amazon River.  The river and regions main economic industry is gold.  Up and down the river there are custom made gold machines which sift through the river bed looking for gold.  It was pretty amazing to see just how many of these gold sifters there really were.  When we arrived at the trail head we began to hike, in the muggy muggy humid weather, two hours to our small camp on the shores of a small lake, Lago Sandoval (which is an oxbow shaped lake).  For the next 2.5 days we spent exploring the glories of the Amazon Basin.   It was great having a local guide who grew up right on the river.  Some of the highlights included:

 Listening to the konch as we head down the Dios de Madre

Our German friend, Sergio, driving the boat while our guide refills the gas

Rio Dios de Madre

Weird creepy crawler

Emily climbing the roots of an iron tree

Cool picture of the inside of a dead tree

Snake!

More Snake!

 Snake (our guide thought it was a great idea to play with it on a stick)

Fishing for piranas!  The first night our guide Johnny took us out on the lake and pulled out a bag of raw beef chunks.  We then put it on a special (heavy duty) hook so that the pirana's teeth cannot cut through. Emily had one of the two hooks for about half an hour without catching anything.  She went through 3 or 4 chunks of beef as the piranas are pretty quick, so unless you pull up really fast you aren't going to get them.  Funny to say when she gave me the hook, I caught one in about one minute.  In Emily's defense our guide did say they tend to only come out for about a 10 to 15 minute period both in the morning and evening.  That night when we returned to our lodging (just simple shacks with mosquito nets and the owner only ran the generator from about 6pm-8pm so we could eat dinner) in addition to the dinner the owner of the lodge made for us we also enjoyed the piranas we caught.  They were kind of bland tasting, not anything I would ever order in a restuarant.  The next morning we went out again and Emily did finally catch a pirana that we enjoyed for lunch.  A few fun facts though we learned about them...Yes they do have really sharp teeth!  They only bite humans if you have an open/fresh cut of some sort (which happened to our German friend when him and I went swimming together).

 My Catch!

Look at those teeth

Emily's catch, finally, the next morning

Sunrise over the lake while we were fishing

At night we also searched for Black Caimans.  We saw the eyes of a bunch of them out on our canoe but our guide who attempted several times to catch them was unable to.  We even tried setting a trap with the fish guts from the pirana we caught but to no prevail.  We also got to see endangered otters.  The lake only has one family of 4 otters and we were lucky to spot them one day when they were going fishing for food.  It was pretty interesting to see them play around and kind of seemed almost out of place in the middle of the Amazon but at the same time we saw unexpected things all the time.  More wildlife we saw were the macaws.  The second day of the trip we woke up early to go to a viewing point where the macaws socialize and eat the bark of certain trees because they contain a protein which helps them properly digest the berries they normally eat.  We also had an option before our tour of going about 8 hours down river to a spot where the macaws eat the same protein but instead of from trees they eat it from clay along the river side.   The second night when we came back from being out on the lake and taking a small hike through the rainforest our guide stopped and pointed his flashlight at the trunk of a large sized bush.  We didn't understand at first what he was trying to show us and then all of the sudden...WE SAW A HUGE TARANTULA!!!  It was the size of two closed fists and was hairy everywhere.  Mad creepy!

 Beautiful Birds (I took this picture while sticking my camera through binoculars

Random Lizard

FROG!  Bud and Weiser you have a new friend.

 Sunset, waiting for that sun to go down so we can hunt some caimans

Bats!

Ahhh...the scenery (during the time we waited for the sunset we probably got bitten by 5,000 mosquitos

 Swinging from the vines

Awesome flora

Swinging from more vines

Turtle on the Lake, or half shell?

Other random facts that even Bear Grills probably doesn't know...
1)  One of the local type of ants known as the army ant has large pinchers on their ends.  These pinchers are used by the local as a form of stitches.  When someone gets a gash on a limb, somebody else holds the skin together then takes one of these ants who will clamp down on the gash effectively making a stitch.  You can just pull the body of the ant right off and the pinchers will stay in play for a week.

2) A different type of ant (I forgot its name), which are about 3cm big make their hives around the roots of trees.  These ants are extremely dangerous.  Every year there are a few reported cases in the Puerto Maldonado area of kids being bitten and die from these ant bites.  If an adult gets bitten it can paralyze your limb for a few hours to days.

3)  The roots of the palm tree most commonly used for hearts of palm can be ground down and are good for your kidneys.

4) Because the canopy of the rainforest is so thick there is a type of tree known as the walking tree, can evidently move up to a meter a year so it can reposition itself for better sunlight intake.  Its roots are crazy long and stick several feet high into the air.  The way it works is that new roots will grow in the direction the tree wants to move and older roots from the opposite side will automatically begin to retract from the ground.

The roots of the walking tree

 Hmmm...good idea or bad idea for Brett to eat random mushrooms?

 

5)  Fish Tail Plants, which look like fish tails are almost 100% water proof and the locals and every where in town uses them for their roofs.  They are so resilient they only need to be changed once every 10-15 years.

6)  We ate fresh Brazil nuts (which are actually usually harvested a little bit before we were there).  They were delicious.  On another interesting note about them though, is the goo surrounding the nut inside is a natural cure for acne.

7)  We saw tons of termite nests.  Good things we learned about these insects that most people think only destroy things and cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars...eating a few a day can help regulate asthma, rubbing/crushing a few of them on your skin works as a natural bug repellent, smoking out the hive in a closed building can also be a good bug repellent.

 Lago Sandoval (with one of the canoes on the lake that you got around in)

Sunset from a observation tower on the lake

Sunset from a observation tower on the lake

Our final day out in the rainforest we had an option of going to a small wildlife refuge, Reserva Ecologica Taricaya, that takes in wild animals that were illegally taken in as pets and then abandoned.  We saw a wide variety of monkeys, birds, and even a leopard.  It was cool to see these animals up close.  We had been able to see them all week from a distance but to get right up to them was amazing.  Unfortunately most of these animals for one reason or another won't ever be able to return to the wild.  While we were there we also we able to experience a 50 meter high suspension bridge which walks you above the canopy of the rain forest and we got to hang out for a bit in a tree hut built in to one of the highest trees in this region.

The following is a collection of photos from the wildlife refuge...

 

cute

 Tucan Sam anyone?

The canopy walk

I was a bit scared

Green Love

Weirdest Looking animal ever.  Literally non of its body parts seem to actually fit together.

Overall we had an amazing time in the rainforest.  The day we returned we went to a small jungle lodge on the outskirts of town to go have some Thai food.  The place had been recommended to us months earlier from a fellow traveler.  It was a delicious meal (the lodge is owned by a lady from Thailand) and a nice relief after the three sweltering days in the jungle.