While Italy still has not yet won the world cup, a first greeting from the Galápagos Islands! After three and a half consecutive days on the road (only interrupted by one night of decent sleep in a hotel on the 7th in Piura, Peru), I have just arrived on the islands. Five buses (Huaraz - Trujillo - Chiquian - Piura - Loja - Guayaquil), then directly to the airport and straight into the plane (which was very lucky!), then bus - boat - bus. And I even managed to find a hotel already, which actually had turned out to be a little difficult as the world cup was already on and it is siesta time, too.
Peru bade me farewell with the most revolting splatter movie on the bus, I have ever, ever seen. To give you a taste - New Mexico after the nuclear tests, a few humans remained in the area and have now turned into horrible monsters with disgusting mutations. Of course they only want to take revenge on the Americans. So they direct a biggish family traveling through into a side-road and make sure they break down with their car and mobile home. After that you enjoy 90 minutes of the bloodiest limb-hacking and sick splatter scenes. Besides them raping the about 15-year old daughter and the mother, they start murdering the the family in the most bloody manor imaginable. All shown in close-up and great detail, of course. I am surprised you are allowed to produce something sick like this anywhere in the world! But I am not so surprised you can show this shit on a public bus in Peru at 9.30am. Nobody was worried the slightest by the fact that there were plenty of kids between about 3 and 15 years on the bus all watching with great interest. Unfortunately this only fits the general picture. No surprise therefore that some of the people in this beautiful country are somewhat - excuse my explicit language - fucked in the head. This last impression did not make it overly difficult to say good-bye to Peru. It is a shame, but the only thing I did not like so much of Peru were some of its people.
I am very glad to have arrived in Ecuador, hence. Much more brash, more technology, but also dollar-driven higher prices... Getting out of the plane on the Galápagos Islands I had to take care not to step on a lizard - it looked at me like a funny new species of tree. And look at the picture, these little fellows are everywhere on the beach promenade and the black volcanic rocks. They will move, though, but only if you get closer than about 20cm. There are plenty of birds in the air, mainly pelicans and huge Frigate birds, and big and beautifully reddish crabs on the cliffs... Lots of wildlife even in town!
Being now in Puerto Ayora, I have to sort out my boat-cruise etc. And France vs. Italy are into the penalties now, will have to watch that. More later.
