MUNGO EATS Latin America

Going back a ways, a map of our journey out of Colombia and into Ecuador:

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Untitled in a larger map

And across Ecuador:

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Ecuador 2 in a larger map

Finally, into Peru:

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Into Peru in a larger map

We crossed into Peru today, leaving Ecuador behind, still slightly undiscovered.  There were three possible border crossings that we could have chosen.  The first one is near the coast, and since we were no where near the coast, it was not even a consideration.  If we had followed the PanAmericana south, we would come to the second most used crossing.  The last option was a sleepy little crossing directly south of Vilcabamba.  This crossing was only opened about 5 or 6 years ago, and there is always a question of the road conditions leading up to it.  The crossing appealed to us because it carried on in a direction we were already heading, was small (which hopefully meant less hectic) and it was still in the highlands (which hopefully meant still cool).  When we spoke to our hosts in Vilcabamba about the border crossing, they sounded less than optimistic.  They thought the road had been washed out a few years back and were unsure of it’s condition at this time.  They encouraged us to check with the bus station, because they were not even sure that buses ran south of Zumba, the last town of any size before the crossing.  The buses did run all the way to Zumba, which was most of the way, and the driver we checked with said the road to the border was open and passable, so we decided to give it a go. 

It was raining off and on and really, the road ended up being fairly rough, but it was mostly packed.  There were areas where there was a fair bit of mud on the road, and I was nervous about getting stuck in these areas, but Kevin assured me that the road was pretty solid beneath the mud.  He wasn’t worried.  At one point we had to wait for about 45 minutes or so while they MADE a road for us to cross, but all in all, we did okay.  It was slow mind you, but we reached the booming metropolis of Zumba before nightfall, and found out that what was ahead of us, was much the same as what we had gone through, so we felt good about that. 

We got a good start in the morning and headed to Peru.  The  road was as expected, slow, rough, but passable.  We got to the border crossing at about 10:30am.  I must say that it was the most enjoyable crossings to date.  You drive into the sleepy little town of La Balsa on the Ecuador side, and really just park anywhere.  We went to customs first, and there was no one in the office, but the girl in the store next to the office, went to fetch the official for us.  He just took our vehicle permit back, didn’t check any VIN numbers of anything and sent us on to immigration.  Our immigration official was wearing sweat pants.  When we entered Ecuador, we were given a small slip of paper each which had our personal information on it, that we were told not to lose.  We had to return these slips of paper on leaving the country.  The immigration official could only find 3 of the 4 slips in the passports and we discovered that Kevin’s was missing.  Kevin is the only one that has his passport handled other than at border crossings, because whenever we go through a traffic checkpoint, they always look at  his passport.  We assumed his slip of paper was lost somewhere along the way.  The official was not worried though, he just invented a new “enter the country form”, so that he could have an accompanying “leaving the country” form.  We were then done on the Ecuador side and needed to proceed to the Peru side of things.  Unfortunately, even though we were just at the customs office, he seemed to forget that we would need to get out of his country and we had to go ask him politely, if he could please raise the barricade, so we could leave.

On the Peru side at La Balza (just to be original), we started at immigration.  Our official here was wearing shorts and runners.  We then proceeded to the police, and I am not really sure what we accomplished there.  On his wall, was a poster, hand written, in felt on bristol board paper, which stated a police officers duties.  I can’t remember all the duties,  but a few were, “follow the law”, “be just” and my favorite, “have faith and optimism”!  The officer copied out our passport information, then signed each immigration form.  Was that our official police check?  Anyway, back to immigrations guy, who then stamped all the passports, then on to customs.  One customs officer was dressed in official looking clothes, but his partner,was wearing sweat pants and rubber boots (one step down from just sweat pants)!!  I think the officially dressed fellow was in charge, but he needed his buddy to tell him what to do.  The unfortunate thing was that he couldn’t seem to hear what his buddy was telling him, a little hard of hearing I think, so there was a lot of things repeated and repeated, and repeated.  I am not sure why the young, dressed down, guy couldn’t just do everything himself, instead of yelling the instructions out to the old guy, but it was pretty comical.  Like an Abbott and Costello skit.  Also, there were a bunch of chickens running around outside the offices.  Not really good looking chickens, ones with half their feathers missing, half bald chickens.  One chicken kept entering the customs office, and the officials would chase it out, but a few minutes later, it would wander back in.  I really had to work hard, not to burst out laughing. 

Finally, after customs, we were  going to go work on getting Mungo in, but the Ag official beat us to the punch and was standing next to the van waiting for us.  He really only needed to see Mungo’s rabies certificate, but looked at his other papers just to humour me.  He did not take any copies of our paperwork, and we did not receive any paperwork either.  When he saw the form that Ecuador issued Mungo, he kind of whistled and said it was very official looking, then he shook my hand and wished me a wonderful journey. 

Off we went into the Peruvian countryside.  We are VERY used to being stared at.  EVERYONE turns to watch the strange vehicle, filled with gringos go by, but in Peru, they added a new twist…they all wave!!  I felt  like the queen waving back at all my loyal subjects (that would make Mungo the Royal Hound!!) .  Really it was quite funny.

Tonight we are in Jae’n.  We will be heading towards the coast from here, and then south to Lima.  Looks like we will make it there in time!