Arequipa

From Cuenca, Ecuador to Lima, Peru and yes, all in one go

So we left Ecuador and raced down to Lima, Peru in a bid to try and get some distance under our belt (a 7 hour journey followed immediately by an 18 hour one). Our aversion to bus journeys was almost cured by the wonderful cama deluxe buses you can take overnight in Peru. Films, food, almost reclining, squishy, leather seats, attendants at your call. And all the while racing through amazing landscapes, that we felt a million miles away from in our little bus capsule. It was great to be living the luxurious life, and we didn´t feel at all bad about leaving the local buses aside for a while.

We stayed one night in Miraflores, a quiet seaside area of Lima, thankful we weren´t moving for 24 hours before getting on another 14 hour night bus to Arequipa where we are now in hiding from any glimpse of an attraction that might necessitate another bus journey, building up our bus-fitness to carry on to Bolivia and Lake Titicaca.

Sorry Peru, we are missing you this time. Next trip....

Amazing Cuenca, where I got bought flowers, bought a hat, got shaved (OK that was Tiago) and moshed to a punk panpipe band

We loved Cuenca. World heritage, clean, green, ancient city. We spent our time wandering the city appreciating the many sites (lots of churches), eating wonderful seafood, drinking too many mojitos, buying the famous panama hats (which are infact from Ecuador but were labelled as from Panama as they had to pass out through the Panama canal for export) and dancing in the square to a loud punk band, the most violent moshing to panpipe music you can imagine.

Q. When is a train not a train? A. When it´s another damn bus...

So, we are getting a bit (a lot) fed up of bus journeys. And decided to take the famous Riobamba to Sibambe train, down the terrifying Devil´s nose canyon. Imagine our surprise after accepting that the train wasn´t going down the Devil´s nose canyon at all, but was stopping about halfway, to arrive at 6.00am and find our majestic train, which we had thought would chug, chug along the valley of volcanoes, with us on the roof with the wind in our faces, wasn´t a train at all, but another damn bus stuck on the train rails! See picture below.

It wasn´t the best trip. Stopping at a church that we couldn´t see inside and in a market town with no market. But we had some good views and drunk a great rice pudding type drink.

At least taking the bus for the rest of the journey didn´t seem so bad in comparison.

Baños

Banos is a place for healthy people. The locals play all varieties of sports (including a strange variety of volleyball, pictured above. It´s strange as they are all so short there is no option of slamming, it´s all about positioning the shot). There´s a huge list of sports to do, we went for white water rafting and mountain biking. Both were ace (more on them later). But mostly Banos is about the baths. Hot thermal springs that spew from the earth, gracias to the huge active volcano that towers over the town (last erupting in 2006, we were given written instructions on what to do if an alarm sounded). Locals come out in force in the evening to lounge in the various hot water pools and chat, renowned for their mineral properties. I say lounge, but one pool was so hot that we could barely stay in it for more than 5 minutes before almost fainting. It´s no fancy health spa, but it´s wonderful people watching as it gets dark.

We went for a (very slow) trek up into the hills around Banos. I´m inventing a new sport of slow walking. To enter you need to have a combination of upset stomach, dehydration and altitude sickness. You walk, very slowly, and annoy the hell out of any healthy people who might be trying to trek with you. Also it helps if you stop the camera working for a while by pressing all the wrong buttons.

An occupational hazard of trekking near Banos is the serious mountain bikers who hurtle down the paths at breakneck speeds. Our own version of mountain biking was a little more genteel. In speed that is. It felt as adrenaline-filled as we biked down the curving roads on the side of a deep gorge avoiding huge buses and lorries. In the pouring, pouring rain. We were told not to go in the tunnels as they were very dangerous, so Tiago promptly zooms off into a tunnel. I stopped. Hmm. That was an interesting, and completely unheated discussion. At the end of our trip were some great waterfalls, which it dried up enough for us to see without getting any more wet. Then on the back of a lorry back to the town, with an interesting discussion with a smiling local guy, asking Tiago how many children he planned to have and why he hadn´t already got married, apparently people get engaged within a week here! Mustn´t let the girls get away he advised.

White water rafting was great. Tiago was in prime position at the front, and had the accolade of the most falls in the river. We managed only one 360 degree flip after getting stuck between the other boat and a huge rock.

Tiago says I mustn´t forget to mention that someone managed to forget our passports in the safe at our hostel in Banos. An easy mistake to make I think! So when we happily arrived at our next stop and were asked to hand them over, someone had to volunteer to do a six hour round trip back to get them. I say he is lucky we hadn´t done a 10 hour bus ride ; )

Oswaldo Guayasamín - La capilla del hombre