More time on the bus

The last post was interupted by our bus arriving early and Sherrell frantically running in and telling me we had to go -- right now!

In my rush I forgot to mention that we were deathly ill for about a week as well when Ecuador decided to make life tougher for tourists. Now we are super-paranoid about getting sick from the hordes hacking and coughing on the buses.

Anyway, another 6 hour bus ride brought us to Chachalayo where there are some cool pre-inca sites. Then tomorrow we take another 10 hour overnight bus up to Chachapoyas where this pre-inca village was built with 3 times more stones than the great pyramids of Egypt, yes 3 times more. Not many people know about this place, but it´s bigger than Machapichu.

In Peru (kicked out of Ecuador)

We got back from the Andes in Ecuador and scrambled for two weeks. Sherrell got her annual cancer checkup at a cancer clinic (2 hours by bus). The price was good considering the quality of equipment and medical care, but the paperwork was tiresome. It also took 3 trips and we still need to do 2 more when we get back. The good news is all is well and she´s almost done with the doctors for another year.

The bummer part of all this, is Ecuador recently decided not to renew 90 visas for the standard $15. They decided $100 was better, and then they decided not to renew them at all! Since our visas expired a week before we were due to go to Peru, we had planned on renewing them for the 8 days or so before we left for Peru. However $100 per person for 8 days wasn´t going to work, and then when they closed the door on renewals, we were forced to leave the country early.

So we took a 6 hour bus to Guayaquil, Ecuador, toured the town for 7 hours, then took a 11:30pm bus to Mancora, Peru which took another 10 hours or so. Mancora is a surf town and is a lot like Canoa back near Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador just bigger and the wave is better. Today we hop on another 8 hour bus to get a little further south in Peru.

Hey who moved our boat?

We got back from our first non-medical related trip since the 3 day Costa Rica road trip and found our boat was in a new location. Apparently the yahoos building the rediculous bridge project snagged our anchor chain and drug our boat up to their barge. Of course this happened 3 days after we left. So the crews of Batwing, Nakia and Che Bella pitched in and reanchored Sarana safetly away from the bridge monkeys.


Unfortunately the anchorage here is really crowded and I could go off about all the things bothering me, but I won't bore you. Needless to say, this is the 4th time someone has snagged or moved our anchor and IT'S GETTING OLD. (Here's a story and a photo sequence another cruiser captured the 3rd time our anchor was snagged by a large power boat http://svnakia.blogspot.com/2008/06/snagging-sarana.html.)


Anyway, as promised here are some cool photos from our trip. This animation sequence is the "Flowers of the Andes" and takes a little bandwidth to view.


Here's a city-scape of Quito the capital of Ecuador.


Here's the second tallest mountain in Ecuador (Cotopaxi at 19,388 feet) and has erupted over 50 times.

One of the coolest spots was Quilotoa at 12,705 feet. Swimming anyone?