Peru-Ecuador-Peru

Over the bridge and through the woods....

A successful border crossing! For those of you that are looking to leave Peru and enter Ecuador in the near future I would highly recommend using the Tina/Macara border crossing, as opposed to the PanAmerican crossing. The guards are nicer, there is barely any traffic, less chaos and chance of losing things and it is kinda pretty. This crossing my camera survived the trip and I was surprised to be greeted by the sleeping, small village of Macara on the Ecuador side - surrounding by mountains and pools of rice. It was beautiful, for a night.

I met a lovely women in Macara and stayed the next morning to check out her work with women's groups. She works with women in Domestic Abuse situations and informs women's of their rights and gives them a safe place to stay - a shelter of sorts. They received funding from Italy to build a nice, small office/sleeping space - but are currently looking for more funds in order to keep their operations running. Anyone out there interested in helping out a spunky women grow her shelter in a small village in Ecuador?

I left Ecuador after my morning with Luz (light) feeling that meetings like these don't happen by chance. I truely hope in the future to help her find support....for now I have women waiting for me in Cajamarca. So I jumped in the back of a pick-up and headed south to the Peru border. We flew by rice fields, I crossed the international border and then jumped in a car with a bunch of random people to take me to the next biggest town in Peru. All very normal things to do in these parts. In fact, it reminded me of my brief life in Santo Domingo, DR. Nobody says a word; You get a car with unknown faces with your only commonality is to get to the same place. The difference between the Dominican Republic and Peru is that in the DR you can't escape the blaring bachata music that accompanies you on your travels.

Secrets of healing and luck in native plants

There was no bus ticket to Cajamarca when I arrived in Piura (they only leave at 10pm at night from Chiclayo, a close-by town) - so I was forced to take advantage of my extra day and sightsee a little. I checked out an artesian town that "sews" silver threads in earrings, went to the famous witchcraft market in Chiclayo and bought myself some "cleanse the negative energy" mix to bathe in, and visited a pre-Inca cultural museum filled with ancient gold goat heads and other gems. I arrived safely back to Cajamarca on my night bus...with a neck kink, but that won't stop me from diving into my monthly reports and waxing floors - prep for my visitors this week!