Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day

Santa Rosa, Ecuador – Zorritos, Peru

Pride cometh before a fall.

This was our tenth country and our ninth border crossing. So I guess we figured we didn’t need to bother reading up on any new complexities this time. Probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

We’ll pick up our narrative in the morning, on the road . . .

We’re enjoying a very quick and easy trip to the fronterra – Español for border. This flat riding is fun!

We reach a big sign over the road:

• Centro Huaquillas – right arrow
• Ecuador-Peru Fronterra – left arrow

Seemed simple enough . . .

Left, of course. We’re going to the border.

So we head down the road. 

“This is the quietest border we’ve seen,” I say, as we bike along.

There are a few cars and trucks parked along the side of the road – doing who knows what – but otherwise there’s nobody around. 

“Maybe they’re throwing out their drugs before they get there,” offers Diana.

Eventually there’s a sign over the road: “WELCOME TO PERU.”

We take a picture. We’re feeling pretty good about things.

But then I ask where we’re supposed to get our passport stamped? 

We confer for a bit. These borders are so loosey-goosey that apparently they just put the border control in the town – you can go right through – the way we did – if you wish but then you won’t have a stamp. 

We’ve learned that lesson. We definitely need our stamps. See One Step Back, Two Steps Forward – about the day we had to go back to the Mexican border for that very reason . . .

Okay, so we need to get to the town. We do a little Google Maps work. We can either go back to the junction we saw originally – where the options were Centro to the right, or Fronterra to the left – or we can take a tiny road directly there. It’s about 5 miles the long way, or about 2 the short way. Really not much of a choice – we’re already backtracking – let’s make it as short as possible . . .

The highway we’re on is kind of raised up – so we can see the little road we need to be on – but there’s a steep embankment to get down there. After some searching around we bite the bullet, take off our panniers, and scootch our way down. Not pretty – but it works. 

Re-pack the bikes and take the little road through some banana plantations. We eventually emerge into the chaos that seems to mark all the Latin American border towns. Vendors, people, tuk-tuks, and taxis everywhere. And everyone’s shouting as they hawk their wares: “Arepas, arepas, arepas.” It’s quite the scene. 

We make our way back to the Ecuador part of the town – because there is no border in the sense that we think of borders, instead everything just kind of blends together – and find an Ecuadorian police officer. We ask him where we get our passport stamped. He explains that we need to go back 3.5 miles to a place where you can get both stamps – one for Ecuador and one for Peru. 

We’re pretty hungry at this point so we buy various items from the various vendors – fry bread, an arepa, coconut milk, etc. While we’re eating we confer about this border arrangement. Seems awful strange to have to go back into Ecuador to get the “leaving Ecuador” stamp. Seems even more strange to go that far into Ecuador to get the “arriving in Peru” stamp. We poke around on the web a bit, and eventually Diana figures out that there are two stamps places – one 3.5 miles back – for going from Peru to Ecuador, and the other – you’ll love this – just a kilometer farther up the road from where we left off originally. 

We confer again. We can either go the long way around, or just go back the way we came – which will mean climbing back up the same embankment. Another no brainer for us. We agree to go the short way. 

We retrace our steps through town. And start heading back through the banana fields. 

“Make a U-Turn,” blares my phone. I look down and see that Google Maps is suggesting yet another road – because we’re mapping not to where we originally were, but to the passport control place. 

“My phone is telling us to turn onto that dirt road.”

We confer again and decide to give it a go. It’s shorter, an it doesn’t look too bad. 

So we start. There’s a puddle or two – but pretty easily avoided. 

It’s at this point that we must divert from our narrative for a little more context . . . Years ago Diana and I went on a week long hut-to-hut bike trip with our dear friends Tom and Leslie. Basically you go from Durango, Colorado to Moab, Utah through a very desolate area. The hut-to-hut company stocks the “huts” – which are basically storage containers – with food and drink. Super fun. Highly recommend this trip if you have a chance to go . . .

Anyway, somewhere out in desolate-ville it started to rain – like really rain. We had heard tell that the dirt out there can turn to a peanut butter like consistency if it rains – but we hadn’t thought much about it. 

Until it rained. 

Oh, my goodness. It was crazy. After about 30 seconds of rain the road turned into peanut butter alley. It turns out that when you roll a bicycle tire through peanut butter all the peanut butter sticks to the tire. Worse, it’s like a snowman – with each successive turn of the tire more peanut butter builds up. Pretty soon your bike literally weighs 100+ pounds and is completely encased in sticky icky mud. 

It was kind of a nightmare. 

Each of us reacted differently to this nightmare. Me? I just kept on peddling as best I could. Because stopping meant putting your feet on the ground – which just meant more mud. 

Diana and Tom stopped. Now, Tom is one of the smartest people I know. But his reaction to a crisis situation is maybe a little unorthodox. Tom decided that the best thing to do at this point was to completely unpack all of his gear. I guess he was looking for a solution of some kind? 

Well, enough on that – suffice to say that we eventually made it to the next hut – and Tom spent the next six hours or so cleaning the bikes with the meager amount of water they had for us there . . .

Sorry – where were we? Oh, yes, we were making our way through the first puddle. No problem. Sadly, the next puddle was a bit worse. And the one after that  . . . well, before we knew it Old Dan and Little Ann were as encased in peanut butter mud as our bikes had been on the hut-to-hut trip. So sad. Worse than the hut-to-hut experience because those bikes were rentals. Old Dan and Little Ann are our companions for a long time . . . And they had just been cleaned in Cuenca. 

I pretty much pulled a Tom at this point. Tore all the stuff of the bikes, turned them over, and started trying to de-peanut butter the bikes with my bare hands. 

I think it’s fair to say that this was a new low point. The good news? Surprisingly, there was no inter-marital tension. Somehow we managed to get out of the peanut butter without killing each other. I mean, we weren’t happy. We weren’t laughing. But we weren’t at each other’s throats.

We backtracked, hit the little banana plantation road, and made our way back to the steep embankment. Took the packs back off, and struggled back up the hill. Which was even more difficult than coming down because, well, we were going up – and, worse, our shoes were all muddy and slippery now. 

Fun.

Another kilometer or two down the road and we’re at the passport center. 

If only . . .

We’ll keep the rest of this brief . . . 

First day in Peru – we were not impressed. Garbage everywhere. Maybe worse than anyplace we have been. Smells of rotting garbage and raw sewage wafting about. Tuk tuks – in full craziness – everywhere. Even the beach was pathetic. Buildings and walls right up to the water’s edge. Some of them literally falling into the ocean – which I guess is because a giant swell brought them down a month or so ago. Kind of what happens when you build right up to the ocean. Duh!

But we’ll see – small sample size.

One other point on that. Kind of funny that the Palacios were so worried about our safety in the Ecuador coast area. Looking back now that was paradise compared to what we’ve encountered so far in Peru . . .

We did manage to care for Old Dan and Little Ann a little. Brought them to one of the many car wash places you’ll find in pretty much every Latin American country. Not like the car washes you imagine in America. No. No automatic anything. This is just two kids standing in a muddy field with a few rags. At this one they were pumping absolutely filthy water out of a slough to supply their hose. But, whatever, it’s not like we were drinking it . . . And now the bikes are as clean as ever . . . They even spritzed some perfume stuff onto them at the end. Important to have your bikes smelling their best . . .

So there you go. 

Happy Valentine’s Day. 

Diana didn’t divorce me on the spot. So that is something . . .

Tomorrow? Well, I’ll leave manana to manana.

Postscript. Turns out that our airbnb is next to a disco. Incredibly loud dance music until 3 a.m. Really?!? Definitely a different culture . . .