(Lentils, rice, fried banana, chicken, chips and salad)
In the car park, we were stopped by two people who were amazed to see a campervan in Ecuador, and when we were in the restaurant, a couple who spoke English asked where we were from (they'd lived in Cambridge) and said it was very rare to see campervans in Ecuador. South Americans are not afraid to stop you and ask about unusual things, and they love it even more when you let them have a nose around!
Once back on the road, we ended up still driving after it got dark, something we've done quite a lot but which the Foreign Office doesn't recommend. We soon realised why when the beautifully tarmaced, but poorly lit road we'd been driving along suddenly turned in to a rough dirt road with invisible posts! We were lucky that just Paul's wing mirror hit the post, but the force smacked it in to the door frame and shattered the glass.
Oh well, it was another thing to repair, but we were both still in one piece!
When we finally made it to Huaquillas, the border town on the Ecuadorian side, we planned to fill up with ridiculously cheap diesel ($1.02/gallon or less than 20p/litre). But for some reason all the petrol stations were closed by the time we got there at 7.30pm. So we ended up having some food in Huaquillas and then camping out at one of the petrol stations with a 24-hour security guard. The next morning, we got in the queue for fuel, only for the guard to tell us that the fuel was for 'co-operatives' only i.e. taxis, police, companies etc. But before we even tried to ask him to bend the rules, he raised the fact that we'd been parked there all night and said he'd speak to one of the attendants for us. Camping there made it look like we were desperate for fuel and we were allowed to fill up - yay!
Then it was off to the border. We had to abort our first attempt to cross and drive back into Ecuador to de-register the van at a customs office we missed in the dark the night before. The lady there was very thorough, taking a picture of the van, the number plate (which a security guard had to clean with a brush for us because the van was so dirty!) and the chassis number under the bonnet. Then at the border, we got stamped out of Ecuador and in to Peru with no problems - although I had to photocopy a couple of pages from my passport for Peruvian immigration because it seemed my exit the last time had not been processed, so it looked like I was still in the country.
Getting the van in to Peru this time was no problem either. We didn't bother with the notarised documents, we just gave them the 'improved' registration document from the start. The officer this time was very nice though, so who knows if he'd have accepted the notarised documents.
In Peru, we headed to some mud baths en route to Máncora. Paul had read about them online and they weren't in the guide book, so there were no other tourists there, just us and some Peruvian families.
A couple of kids even took the opportunity to practice their English with us! The mud baths were really good fun because we were so buoyant in them, so we could just float around, smothered in mud. It almost felt like being in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, floating around in lovely warm vats of chocolate....except we didn't taste it of course.
We're not sitting on the bottom in these photos, we were so buoyant we could float with both feet and our shoulders out of the mud!
In Máncora we stayed at the Loki hostel. We'd met the manager, Rhiannon, at the Loki in Salta so it was nice to see a familiar face, something we've missed while travelling.
We even got free t-shirts for staying at our third Loki (the other being in La Paz). The hostel was packed with young Chileans and Argentinians on their summer holidays, so it was a bit loud and full on. But it was still nice to relax by the pool or at the beach after the long drive through Ecuador.
There was even a poker tournament one afternoon at the hostel, so while I sunbathed, Paul did some male bonding. And he showed the kids who's boss by whooping their arses and winning!!!!
A whole £11 richer!!
