when one travels….

Dear friends,

I hope this story finds you all extremly well. The last 5 days 11 students from the Universidad del Pacifico (UP) - me included -went on an unguided tour to the North of Peru. In the blink of an eye we had to make up our minds where to go, because the originally planned tour was canceled due to a hurt guide/planner/organizer of the field trip.

So we all joined the same trip to the little fishing village of Máncora (where Hemmingway was inspired to write his well known novel: The old man and the sea). As long as we were in a large group, fun was sure to be on our side.

After a tiring 18 hours bus ride we finally reached our destination two hours away from the border of Ecuador, about 3 hours South of the equator. You bet it was hot.

The hostel was dirt-cheap, but we spent most of our time outside anyways.

  

After a really tough day sunbathing, most of us were burned unforntunately. So the next day we took it easy again, going to the local tourist attraction - the mud baths. There we spent about 15 minutes playing in the finest mud and getting a nice peeling.

Yeah…. you are right, it is a pitty whole, but it was fun anyways. If it had not been for everybody’s hair in the mud pit, it would have been even clean - maybe not everybody’s first preference.

After the first 2 days we had enough of the beaches and the freshest seafood, were burned and had an invitation to go to Chiclayo, a city in between Lima and Mancora, so we would have been almost half way home. Our hostdad’s brother let us stay in his house and served us a delicious breakfast. Philipp and I were joined by 4 girls, so much about the guy-girl-ratio, totally unlike St.Gallen.

Together we visited the ruins of Sipan, where we were even shown the real bones that tourist normally never get to see, connections are everything in every country in the world. We had a private tour through the sugar factory, where Cesar works and afterwards were driven to the best museum in town, showing a lot of gold, by our private chauffeur for that day.

  

To our great misfortune most of us got sick that day, maybe due to some food we grabbed on the road while still in Mancora. To complete the story, sadly I have to report some robberies that we suffered of. When travelling, thieves know that you usually have your valuables with you and tourists are recognised a mile ahead. So we miss 2 cellphones, various digital cameras, passports, cash and credit cards…. that was really terrible. Luckily I still got all my belongings, but my thoughts are with my friends suffering from losses.

After spending the rest of the day in Lambayaque and the Centre of Chichlayo,

  

we departed from Cesar, knowing that we would see him again and got on the bus. Last sad thing to happen was the little accident our bus had, after hitting a speedbump with 40 mph. After two hours another bus took us to Lima, not bad at all for Southamerican schedules.

When saying goodbye to each other after finally reaching Lima early on Sunday morning, we were tired and dirty, but happy of what we had experienced nevertheless.

I hope you all had a great time, too.

Best whishes,

Matthias