Feb. 15 – Naranjal, EC to Manicora, PE
After a quick breakfast in the hotel restaurant, we finished up the air filter maintenance, and loaded up. Today was an easy and fast ride to the border. The border town situation, however, was one of the most ugly we had had to deal with. First we had to backtrack from the border itself through this creepy, busy town to find the immigration hut to get our exit stamp from Ecuador, and stand in line for 20 minutes there.
Then we had to fight our way onto a bridge, crowded with market stalls and foot traffic, to get to the Peruvian customs station, where Levi spent over an hour filling out forms for entrance of the bikes, while I tried to keep track of our stuff and satisfy all the curious locals. We had come prepared with photocopies of all our basic documents, but, of course, they now wanted a photocopy of the Ecuadorian exit stamp that we had just gotten as well, so Levi had to march off into the crazy market madhouse on the Peruvian side looking for a photocopy place, which, being Sunday, was not easy to find. It was here that I first met Pat, an adventure rider on a Suzuki V-strom traveling around the world from Ireland. We met up with him again later, but he, of course, first had to backtrack, like we did, 3 km. back into Ecuador to get his exit stamp. They just do not make it easy!
After customs, we went a few km. into Peru, and stopped again at the Peruvian immigration station. This only took a few minutes for each of us, but before we could leave we got told we had to pay for parking in the lot outside the immigration building! Welcome to Peru! All in all, we made this border in just under 2 hours, which may be a record for us.
Away from the border, we stopped in a tiny Pacific coast town for some ceviche and beer – what a treat! Soon after that we met up with Pat Cahill again, and we rode together the rest of the day. We stopped for the night in a Pacific coast tourist town, Manicora, and had our choice of dozens of hotels and hostels. We chose a very funky hostel on the beach, with typical hostel accommodations (rough rooms, cold showers, and bunk beds), but a nice warm swimming pool (don’t mind the scum) and a bar and internet for Levi. It was a neat place to stay, with nice other guests, but kinda noisy and buggy. It is now very warm and humid here, as it was all day. Pat shared a 4-bed room with us, and we are enjoying his company very much. He is a commercial pilot from Ireland, who is doing the global circumnavigation as a way to raise money for hospice service in Ireland. He is a stitch with lots of great stories and a wonderful accent.
We all walked the town, and settled on a dirt-floor restaurant for a seafood dinner. The Pacific here is beautiful, calm and warm. A charming place in many ways.