Marmalade Sandwiches

OK I know I said i wouldn't be blogging for a while but having found a computer with a fast connection I decided to take advantage. We spent the most part of last week in Cuenca, southern Ecuador. Go at once is my recommendation. It is a beautiful place with lots of characters (by which I mean churches and history as well as bars). We spent the first day taking pictures of everything and generally enjoing the feeling of being able to walk around without fear of being mugged as Cuenca has a far more relaxed vibe than Quito. We stopped off at the Panama Hat museum- Cuenca being the centre of the hat trade- although it was really just a glorified shop with a couple of women sitting around with very old Singer sewing machines a bit like that scene from the Three Amigos. The shop people couldn't have lost interest fast enough when they realised that we were only there to confirm Chris's suspicion that he really doesn't look good in panama hats, and we left empty handed. We had a delightful night with our friends from Poland, Natasza and Joanna, and were sad to see them go as it felt our last link had been broken. The next day Chris was ill, actually properly ill rather than self inflictedly. I spent the morning mopping his fevered brow and playing clock patience quietly in the corner of the room but despite my best Florence Nightingale ministrations he refused to get well and entertain me and instead began feebly asking me to pass him objects. At this point I decided he/we needed a complete rest and so took myself off to the Wunderbar to watch Chelsea get knocked out of the Champions League which as we all know is the cure for everything. Several beers later I came back, having been consoled by an Ecuadorean octagenarian for the Michael Jackson statue at Craven Cottage, and Chris was promptly sick and felt better. This was fortunate as the next few days were all bus trips- the first to Loja. Nice town with many thoughtful touches including the Latin names on all the trees in the main square but a parlous lack of bars blighted the town considerably. Peculiarly everyone on the street in the evening was a man in a pair. This set me thinking- did everyone have just one friend? Was this a rule in Loja? Was there an unusually high prevalence of non-identical male twins? Was this the gay capital of Ecuador? I dismissed this last due to the absence of convivial drinking spots. In a half hour search we only found one bar and that appeared to be having a lock in. I hammered on the door until my knuckles bled but they refused to open up. Fortunately we did find somewhere at last for me to have my 'last beer in Ecuador'. As Chris points out, there is always an excuse for everthing. The 8 hour trip over the border took nearly ten hours. The initial hold up was at the border control. The man called Chris into the office which almost caused me to have a heart attack as I envisaged us being thrown in the slammer, but it transpired that the chap was finishing his shift and wanted to catch our bus into town, so was dawdling to get it to wait. Later we were stopped for an inordinate amount of time by some friendly policeman who had a problem with the bus driver's licence, but did keep waving at me through the window to reassure me. Northern Peru is hot and flat, a world away from the Andean highlands we had come from. As in Ecuador, but more so, every flat surface and all the rocks are covered in election graffitti. In Peru it seems you have to write a number down to decide who you want, a bit like ordering a Chinese take away. I leave it up to you to decide whether this would enliven British local government elections. 'I'd like Mayor number 6 and a portion of egg fried rice please'. We could hand out prawn crackers in the polling booths. But I digress. Piura, where we are currently, has very little to recommend it besides not being a bus. It sort of loomed out of some scrubby desert that looked like a sandpit with a load of birds buried head-down in it, and it is full of those tuk-tuk rickshaws and noise and chaos. It feels a bit like Delhi, if you've ever been there. But we have cable TV, we've seen the world's most unconvincing transvestite, and the don't serve rice with everything. If we can avoid physically melting before we reach Trujillo, Peru does seem to have its own unique charm. Chris has started to eat marmalade sandwiches and is already the owner of a stupid hat, so we should fit in nicely...