At this point of our travel we already knew that Manca's parents are joining us in Chile in beginning of september so we needed to speed up our traveling pace a bit. We spent the last days in Ecuador in a great company of fellow travellers in Cuenca and enjoyed the best coffee of our lives in the Ecuadorian caffein capital Loja before succesfully and smoothly crossing our first border with the car. We quickly got to know a brand new aspect of the continent as we found ourselves in the middle of vast desertlands of northern Peru. If someone dropped us there just out of the blue we would have guessed to be somewhere in northern Afica. The distances got longer, we were passing through rural lands and often sharing our campsite with farm animals while staying at very friendly locals. Friendlyness aside... this is by far the dirtiest place we have ever encoutered. The roadside was constantly covered with layers of plastic bags and any other trash imaginable. Unfortunately this patern extended far into the desert all the way to the beaches and the Pacific ocean.
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Ecuador is one of the smallest nations in South America, yet it does not lack any characteristic landscapes of the Andean countries. The small distances also mean, that you can get from salty ocean breeze to the breathtaking volcano views in a matter of hours. Leaving Guayaquil in the evening and driving over the flatlands for a while, the road got steep and curvy as we hit the Andean mountain range. We stopped for the night on a backyard of a very friendly family and we talked into the evening about our travel and home country. Oh and they are growing avocados in the backyard they gave us about ten kilos of them for the way :) The next day we continued to the charming village of Salinas where we explored the surroundings a bit, enjoyed the local european style cheeses and had the first peek of the Chimborazo volcano - the highest mountain in Ecuador. We started our first drive in the evening and soon realised that driving in South America has little to do with our usual route we had on the German highways. The road was messed up, full of potholes and big rocks lying around. One thing was sure... driving at night will be done on rare occasions. We stopped in a charming village of Mindo where we camped for the first night and had an amazing chocolate tour the next morning. They showed us the whole process of chocolate-making which included tasting cocoa in all of it's forms and varieties. This time, Manca was in chocolate heaven. Popayan greeted us with colonial whitewashed facades in the center and a very relaxed athmosphere due to plenty of students that live in this university town. But we were also very warmly welcomed by Felipe, a photographer and traveler that gave us a place to stay for a couple of days. We did some cooking with his mom and prepared "Kaiserschmarrn" as a typical and traditional european food. Popayan is also a UNESCO world heritage town for its cuisine but although they are very proud of it we haven't really marked any differences in the daily diet of the locals. Apart from wandering the city we also decided to visit nearby sulphur hot springs and couldn't wait to finally get our car since we needed an eternity just to use the public transport to get there and missed plenty of beautiful spots on the way. |
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February 2019
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