MUNGO EATS Latin America

We left the sleepy little town of Huanchaco this morning, trying to cut the road to Lima down to one day’s drive.  We did not really have a destination in mind, just about “halfway”.  The drive was relatively uneventful.  We were stopped twice by the police.  Both times, the officers were quite pleasant.  The first fellow that stopped us was a chatty guy.  When we stopped, he initially peered in the side windows at the kids.    He then suddenly appeared at my window, causing me to start.  He was laughing at me when all of a sudden Mungo’s head appeared in the front seat.  This caused the cop to jump.  Then it was my turn to laugh.  What goes around comes around! 

He wanted to know the usual, where you from, where you going.  He then asked what we had seen so far in Peru and after we told him, he gave us his opinion about what we ought to see.  Finally, he started chattering quite quickly, asked me where I got my sunglasses from, etc.  Most of what he said went over our heads.  Eventually, he let us get back on our way.  Both Kevin and I had the distinct feeling that he was kind of fishing for a ‘bribe”, but never got around to actually asking for it.  We both kind of got the feeling that he thought we should give him our dog?!  Whatever.  He never checked any of our paperwork at all.  Just stopped us for a chat, I guess. 

As we drove we saw lots of sand dunes.  Some were quite huge!!  As we were thinking it was about time to stop for the day, we passed a beautiful little sheltered bay.  We decided to try to find a way into it.  We didn’t quite get into the bay, because there were large drifts of sand preventing us from driving in, but we did find an almost perfect camping spot!!  Tonight we are perched on the cliff overlooking the perfect bay.  There is a small fishing village in the next bay, but the one we look down over is deserted.      See the van perched WAY up there on the rocks?

We walked down into the bay, and it was amazing.  You had to “foot ski” down the dunes.  Once at the bottom, we were greeted by hundreds of red crabs.  They were big enough to see from quite a distance and the ground looked like a wave of red as they scurried about.  Mungo had a blast chasing crab after crab.

We found a cave in the rocks, that could not be seen from up above.  There was a large opening into the cave from the ocean side. 

Once inside, there was a smaller “escape hatch” to scramble out of.

Pretty cool! 

There were a lot of big rocks to climb around on as well.

A very, very nice place.  The ONLY bad thing, is that we seem to have sand EVERYWHERE!!  It will take a little cleaning to get rid of it all.

Tomorrow…Lima, to Betty’s house, to get ready for Christmas!