Ecuador Declares War On Canada!

What is it about border crossings that make us so nervous? Maybe it starts when you miss your bus in the morning that takes your there? Or perhaps it's the 3 hour wait in small town Ecuador where a waterfight breaks out with the local army base? It could be the converted flatbed truck with benches (camionettas) that drives you on an increasingly smaller dirt road towards the border? If it's not any of those it's probably going to be the point in the trip when your camionetta comes to a washed out bridge, so you have to walk across on a tree that spans the river, and catch the next camionetta on the other side.

So we made it to Peru, it was quite a trip here, not your average border crossing by any means. Missed the 6am bus from the muy tranquil Vilcabamba by about an hour, so waited around until 9:30 for the next one. It's about a 5 hour ride along a dirt mountain road that is barely one lane. We had to back up numerous times to let busses travelling in the other direction past. The views out the window tended to be breathtaking an terrifying all at once, as the driver sped around blind corners with a courtesy "honk". We rolled into Zumba, only to find ourselves waiting for the next camionetta to the border, which left at 5:30pm.

The central plaza in Zumba borders on a large army base left over from border skirmishes with Peru back in the 90's. The local batallion we're keeping themselves busy by lobbing waterballoons down at passerbys. They seemed to really enjoy trying to hit the gringos, but luckily we picked a spot just out of range to sit and wait. After about an hour of on-and-off shelling, the army became frustrated with their inability to actually hit us, so one of them ran out from the base and dumped a bucket of water on Sarah. Priceless! Only now they had started something, and it was my duty, to my country and my woman, to finish it. I ran over to a nearby store and bought a bag of baloons, filled a few up in a washroom, and snuck over to the base. I hit behind some large walls, and with Sarah as my lookout, waited in silence.

By now the whole Plaza was watching us, eager to see what would come of the gringos. When the time came, and the enemy came into range, with lively inaccuracy I unleashed a flurry of watery revenge, barely mangaging to dampen their spirits. It was fun though! Realizing their walls and hill were too much for my weak arms, I turned my attention to three boys that had decided to join sides with their countrymen. Since they were much smaller than me, didn't have a big army base, I felt much better about fighting against them. Things went back and forth for quite awhile, and I finally gave up after jumping off a roof and hurting my foot. They drove home their victory with one last brutal waterballon to my ear. Then our ride came, so we took off for the border!

Camionettas are basically flat bed trucks, converted into busses by putting a few rows of benches in the back. They look rediculous, are very uncomfortable, and are the only way to get around between small towns in the mountains. The road from Zumba started off pretty good and wide, but slowly became smaller and houses and farms became less frequent. It was pretty nervous to begin with, since we were behind schedule, would be crossing at night, but when the truck stopped in the middle of no where and the two guys in front got out, all that was going through my head was "oh crap, this is it, we're being robbed, why didn't we choose the other, bigger border crossing?" It's a good thing they were only asking for the fare. Gladly we paid our $2, midly confused since it was only half what we should have paid, and at the randomness of the location they chose to ask for it. It all became clear a few minutes later as the truck turned around, backed down the road around a corner, revealing a bridge that had been washed out.... 3 months ago. This was the first anyone had told us of the bridge, news travels slowly I guess. We walked down to where the bridge used to be, and where prospective entreprenuers had set up a makeshift cable box for shuttling across luggage and stuff. We loaded our packs into the box, and walked down some steps carved into the mud banks to a tree that somebody had wedged across the river. On the other side we paid our $1 for use of the cable box and hopped into another camionetta. This was all very strange considering this is one of only three border crossings between the countries. I guess it's such a small one, and underdevelopped that there is no rush to repair a bridge. Oh well. The rest of the trip was uneventful, crossing the actual border consisted of walking across a fairly new large bridge, useless now that the road doesn't go anywhere, and getting our pasport stamped on the other side. We hopped into a taxi collectivo, and shared a ride to the nearest town, San Ignacio, which is two hours away.

So we're in Peru! Hoorah! It's pretty much the same as Ecuador so far, only the money is now Peruvian Soles, not American Dollars. It's taking some getting used to, but not that bad.

Yesterday we left San Ignacio in the morning and caught two taxi collectivos, two mototaxis, and a bus to get us to the town of Chachapoyas. The first taxi from San Ignacio was the most interesting, we were packed into a 15 passenger van, that was the size of a mini-van. At one point there were 20 people in the van, and the top was loaded with so much stuff, everytime we went aroudn a corner the wheels would screech and I envisioned us rolling into the fields of rice. It was a beautiful day, really sunny and hot, and the road was covered in pot holes, to which the driver either couldn't see, or didn't care about. No less than four people threw up! Four people! We followed a beautiful river most of the way to the town of Jaén (pronounced Hchkahn, sortof), where we hit up the bank and changed taxis. The most breathtaking part was on the bus ride south, that went up a canyon. The walls of the canyon rose thousands of feet on either side and you could have jumped into the raging river from the bus. Parts of the road had been carved into the canyon wall, in a half tunnel, so the bus was driving under a rocky overhang. Hard to explain, but it was terrifyingly ingenious engineering we were witnessing.

We're here in Chachapoyas for a few days, trying to set up a trek into some jungle or cloudforest to visit some pre-Inca ruins, then we'll continue south.

sorry for the lack of pictures, we forgot to charge our batteries :(

here's a crab from Ecuador though.