Hola todo!

My second update from Huanchaco! I have been living here for about 1,5 month and Huanchaco is still treating me well! Not a whole lot of things have happened (and you might wonder, then why this long update?), I am just enjoying my peaceful time here; I am working at the restaurant 3 mornings a week, which I really enjoy. The restaurant has a really relaxing atmosphere and the people that come there are mainly young travelers (backpackers) or other volunteers. I get to meet almost all people that travel through Huanchaco, because there are only a handful nice restaurants out here and we are one of them!

On the weekends I teach English at the University of Trujillo, which is a 45 min-combi ride away from here. I have the worst hours, as I am teaching saturday late afternoon and sunday mornings at 8 (!!) There go my saturdaynights! The teaching itself is fun, but sometimes I find it hard to motivate the students.
On the contrary of what I had expected, Peruvian students are SUPER timid, do not dare to speak up at ALL! It doesn´t quite help that the school is in the middle of the centre, which especially in Peru, means loud music and LOTS of constant horn blowing. As hot as it is in Trujillo (about 27-30C) and not having any air conditioning, we have the windows open...so with all (ALL) my enthousiasm I have to shout to try to get some interaction going on..sometimes I pretend like I don´t hear them, just to get them to speak up a little and get them out of their shell..eheh.

Fairmail
Last month I went on a 5 day excursion to Cajamarca (a very nice mountain area about 7 hours away from here) with a really cool project called Fairmail created by 2 Dutchies who are also owners of the restaurant I work in.
In this project (a selected few) streetkids are taught to take nice photographs and then postcards are made out of these pictures which are sold in Holland (wereldwinkel!), the UK and Peru. 50% of the profits go to their education fund. The project is amazing! http://www.fairmail.info

I went on the trip with 16 people in total, 9 adults and 7 kids. Its purpose was to take pictures for the next postcard collection. I had a really fun time with the kids, it was great to get to know them personally and hear about their family and their background. I found it absolutely exhausting as well! The kids wanted my attention 24/7, they loved to sing and dance and get/walk/sit really close to me...putting an arm around my shoulder or grabing my hand ..wherever I was! They wanted to know everything about Holland (the adults were 6 Dutchies, 1 Brit, and an American) and learn Dutch..and demanded chinese coming from me! I told them all I know in Chinese..and ended up spending a lot of time teaching them ¨woa pu gue schwo putonga¨ which of course means ¨I don´t speak chinese..¨..they found it hilarious!
Cajamarca is really pretty, despite the rain, we were able to get some good pictures. On different days we got paired up with one of the kids to guide them and basically be their mentor. The kids took about 500 photos a day, but the criteria to have a photo become a postcard are really high. I can proudly say that ¨one of my students¨ managed to get one of his pictures we took together to be selected for a postcard! So Dutchies, look for Fairmail pics in de Wereldwinkel!

Border crossing to Ecuador
Last week I had to renew my visum by crossing the border back and forth.
I decided to take the nice route, 10 hrs by bus up north past the nicest beach of Peru, into Ecuador. I took about 5 days in total and went to what the Lonely Planet claims to be ¨worst border crossing in South America¨ so I was curious how bad it would get. I took a nightbus to Tumbes ( in Peru, just before the border) and took a bus to Ecuador´s Machala, supposedly about 2 hours over the border the next day. However, what I didn´t realize was that Machala was not the final destination! I was quite sleepy and dozing off all the time, but when I finally woke up, I found out that we had passed Machala 2,5 hours ago! So, I got off the bus and caught another one, back to Machala! I finally arrived in Machala at 17hr and decided to stay there for the night, check out this isla close by and return to the nice parts of Peru the next day. The isla turned out quite disappointing..I read at some girls´ blog that to her it was ¨paradise¨ and ¨a Galapagos for budget travelers¨, so my expectations were high! I did not encounter any (interesting) animals, just a couple of birds and the island itself was also quite unattractive..

I got back to Tumbes where I caught a 2 hour combi-ride to ¨the nicest beach in Peru¨..Mancora! Mancora was indeed quite nice, VERY hot and LOTS of mosquitos! Also, it was a bit touristy, but the beach was definitely nicer than Huanchaco´s. The water was much clearer and the beach broader. There was one main road where all the hostels, restaurants and bars were. I arrived quite late and was exhausted, but decided to go out for a drink anyway. In general, Peruvian (guys) do not seem to understand how women can travel by themselves...they are so machismo and after the ¨where are you from?¨ question the second question is almost always ¨are you traveling alone?¨ or ¨where is your boyfriend/husband?¨..and this is not only a regular line in a bar or club...no, they come from all corners! Whether you are talking to the busdrivers, security guards, policemen, store employees, ...it has gotten to a point that it is actually annoying! So, for the first time I met a guy who did not have the standard questions...and was not so machismo! He was from Ecuador and also traveling to Peru, and then Argentina. He was actually very nice, and when I understood his Ecua-Spanish (the accent is a little different) he was funny as well. It turned out it was a real good thing for him to have met me, because at the border he changed his US Dollars (did you know this is the currency in Ecuador?) to Peruvian soles...but lonely planet warns that this is THE ONE thing you should NOT do, because chances are high that you will get fake bills...and so he did...we tried to get rid of them at restaurants, bars, internet cafés...but no one would accept them! In addition, we didnt find any place where they would change US Dollars into Soles...so he was pretty much dependent on me to get to Chiclayo, a bigger city down south..good thing he was never machismo in the first place!

Upcoming months..
Next month I will stop working at the restaurant and hopefully get some more lessons at the university for some last minute money earning. At the end of April my brother, mother and her husband are coming and we will travel through Peru for about 3 weeks in may. After that I will start my own long-awaited travelz!

You will hear all about it as I am moving on, but for now, the plan roughly looks like this: in june I will go to Chile, July I will be in Argentina and in August I will be in Brazil and Bolivia...then comes september and almost time to head back home!! Luckily, that´s still about 6 months ahead of now..

If you want to visualize it on a map, see the route at:
http://www.allbigtrips.com/index.php?t=72

As of now I am planning on flying back to Amsterdam on the 15th, a few days earlier than initially planned...because on the 20th my lovely brother is getting married...in Scotland!

So, that´s all for now folks,...Mertov, my true loyal fan, special note to you:
I hope I was able to entertain you well, once again!

Chao everyone!