There are two things I dislike in this world: Mosquitoes and Peruvian men. In fact they tend to have similar characteristics, the both whine around and wont leave you alone. As a lone female traveller one has to develope the skill of looking up from the pavement to view your surroundings without ever catching any mans eye, think of it as a form of ocular ping pong and you can get an idea of what we look like. It would seem that from a Peruvian male’s perspective (generally speaking), a woman meeting their eyes is tantamount to promising to jump into bed with them and if you are so silly as to smile, well you´ve practically sealed you’re marital fate! I’m exagerating slightly and generalising hugely however it’s undeniable that this is my greatest travel annoyance and undoubtably one of the very few things I dislike about Peru, speaking to other lone women travellers it has become clear that they feel the same. I began my trip intent on simply ignoring this irritating habit and focusing on my travels, however the more time passes the more aggressive I become and the more my taste for revenge developes. I think the turning point occured about a 8 weeks ago in Trujillo, a reasonably large city in the north of Peru. Having decided to travel to the Ecuadorian rainforest we had spent the past few nights successfully getting no sleep (resorting to watching the crackling Kareoke on the tv) on night buses as we made our way north. When we got to Trujillo Bianca checked in to a hostel to rest an injured leg for the day and I decided to stretch my bus weary legs in what I hoped would be a peaceful amble around the city. It became clear that this was not to be when I discovered that this sport had reached a new level; even the car’s horns had been changed to sound like a wolf whistle! I did my best to ignore the inuendous stares, comments and disgusting squishy kissing sounds, until sleep deprived and stressed I finally snapped and one unsuspecting tike found himself hit over the head with my water filled bottle! Whilst I had suprised myself it was a greatly satisfying action leaving me itching to try again..a 2 litre bottle next time perhaps..

Excuse my rant, I wanted to share not only the perks but also the downsides to independant travel, not to mention the fact that I just like to rant..Sorry I havent been so hot on the communication in the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to cram so much into such a short amount of time that it seems the only free time I have is when I’m on a bus and as fantastically equiped as South American buses are (cough cough) internet is something thats not yet included in the armrests (thats if you get an armrest!). Since my last e-mail I have perused my way round Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chilli (well, spent 23 hours there..I just wanted the passport stamp if I’m honest!) and back into Peru. After my marathon trek in the Peruvian Andes, Bianca (the other girl on the trek) and I ended up spending a brilliant two weeks in Ecuador. Our first stop was a three day expedition into the jungle where we’d spend the days canyoning with bats flying overhead, climbing waterfalls, treking through virgin rainforest (trying to avoid the index finger sized ants whose sting outs you in hospital), tubing down the river, swimming accross the river against the current, spotting monkeys and numerous crazily big bugs, eating lemon ants and learning about all kinds of weird and wonderful flauna (trees whose sap an kill in 30 seconsds, coco plants, paradise fruits etc) before retiring to our gorgeous wooden lodge situated on a cliff edge and offering a-typical jungle documentary views of the amazon and a talking parrot. When we returned to the jungle town we were suprised o see that a giant ferris wheel had somehow found its way here, riding this rikety old fair ground ride in the middle ride was hugely surreal, especially after a couple of cartons of wine..

Our next stop was a day spent in Quito hugging our bags to stop them getting stolen again after one little mastached man almost successfully got away with Bianca’s that morning (she managed to give him such a scary look that he dropped the bag and ran!). We wondered round the city visiting a couple of churches until we unintentionally attended someones wedding service! The churches throughout South America tend to be intriguing in that they are ridiculously kitsch. You walk into incredibly large, architecturaly rich building to find yourself face to face with giant plastic figurines illuminated by neon ring “halos”. Despite being warned of frequent muggings and kidnappings on nightbuses from Quito, clambered on one particularly rusty and clonking contraption to make our way beachwards. Nightbuses in Ecuador are an experience in themselves, travelling on the cheapest possible we spent many a night on old tin contraptions that would groan and clunk loudly everytinme the accellerator was pressed, their windows broken, their seats smelly and their drivers obsessed with regaeton (a terrible attempt by south americans to rap to tinny salsa) till 4am they didnt make for the most comfortsble of journeys but they certainly pandered to our sense of adventure. Unfortunately we ran out of luck for this particular journey and the bus eventually got stuck/broke down in the middle of nowhere at 3am. The bus driver did very little to qualm our nerves when he spotted us as the only gringos of the passengers on the bus by telling us that we shouldnt be there as we were likely to get mugged! Thankfully we made it to Canoa beach unscathed and spent a brilliant week working our way down Ecuadors beaches which mainly consisted of lazing in hammocks, cocktails in hand watching surfers from the most perfect of Ecuadorian beaches whilst shaded by the coconut trees heavy with fresh coconuts or cantering along the long stretches of white sand on one of the many horses. Our evenings would be spent in a happy haze as we made the most of the many happy hours and would eventually end up skipping along a beach with the intention of going to a far far away cave at about 4am. Our only quirky experience was on Los Frailles a beautiful beach in a National Park, we were the only humans on the beach (and apparently in the whole park) and were happilly sunbathing in the park until the peace was shattered by helicopters circling over head and 30 military men fully gunned, uniformed and complete with sniffer dogs invading the beach. Jumping into our clothes as quikly as possible we discovered they were in such of a group of Columbian drug traffickers who had killed a high profile Ecuadorian official. They somewhat lost their stature in our eyes however as upon seeing us they whipped out their cameras and started snapping photos of us gringos! Next it was one last stop on the hippy beach (literally hundreds of dreadlocked flame throwing ecuadorian hippies) for some partying before leaving Bianca to fly home to the states and re-entering Peru.

Sheesh I have written a lot, I dont know why I’m so suprised..I always write a lot! I have some serious catching up to do in terms of round robin writing, watch out there’s more where this came from!

Love and hugs to you all,

Ruth xx