Crossing over to the land of Peru

After a nice stretch of time in Cuenca and nearly a month in Ecuador, we crossed the border to Peru. The border patrol was a tad confusing, we were illegal immigrants for some time until we found a tiny border control office and got our, rather lame, stamps into the new country on our travels. Peru is certainly different to Ecuador. We went from lush green mountains, full of vegetation and growth to desert and wilderness of Peru.

Nothing but barren desert land, the odd sand dune and the odd house in the middle of it all was our view for 12 hours as we travelled from beach to beach. We first stopped in Puente de Sol, a beautiful beach a few hours from the border. Here, we camped on the beach for 2 nights, soaking in the hot rays of the sun and watching the sunset each evening. We also managed to spot some whales on the hirozon, breaching as they jumped out of the sea. The beach was also home to a giant sea lion that had been washed a shore and the voultures were having a treat feeding from that. It seemed that the voltures were everywhere in Peru, with no vegetation to feed on, they waiting for new scrap rubbish or food to eat. The houses are mostly small shacks, with corrigated iron or reeds for roofs. Brightly painted fronts, stand out like illimounous paint agaisnt the sand landscape. Typical colours such a turquoise and pinks seem to dominate.

After getting quite burnt and sampling the local beers we awoke early *5am to leave this beach for the next seaside resort..Huanchaco..we are camping here, cold showers and the sun definately does not have its hat on so looking forward to Lima where a nice hot shwoer and a bed awaits. We are going to invest in a pillow today too as the towels and fleece alternative is not working for us anymore!

This beach has one of the beach waves to surf..not that we are going to try and its very overcast and we dont have great sea legs. We are just off to eat our macoroni cheese that we brought from New Zealand and read our books on the hammock for a while, before catching the bus to the local shopping mall in the desert!