Welcome to Piura, Peru, The City of Eternal Heat

Trip Start Jul 14, 2010

Trip End May 18, 2011

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Flag of Peru Piura, Peru
Wednesday, January 5, 2011

After 9 hours on a bus, with one of the easiest border crossings ever (except that we had to get three stamps instead of just two) and with some nice conversations with an older hippie couple from Alabama who were looking for their next foreign place to put down some roots (they lived in Bali before the �crystal ball hippies� got there), we arrived in Piura, Peru. Just as our guidebook suggested, it�s in the middle of a desert and there is really no reason to be there other than that you have to stop there on your way to any other part of Northern Peru. This is exactly why we were there. Upon getting off the bus, we shared a taxi with two other young travelers (an Ecuadorian girl and a French guy who met through couchsurfing and were definitely �together� - we�d previously heard that some Ecuadorian girls have couchsurfing accounts just to date foreigners from Europe and North America - hmmm, coincidence?) and got ripped off going to an ATM and then our hostel. It cost us 20 soles, when it should have been maybe 5 at the most

Border Crossing

. This kind of situation tends to happen as soon as you cross the border and start using a different currency, so we just chalked it up to being travellers.

In Piura, we did the normal changing-country tasks, like getting a new chip for our cell phone, and exchanging our left over currency from the previous country. We did a little walking around, and ended up passing the Plaza de Armas (they don�t call them Parque Central anymore) and went across a bridge to see if we could maybe find some cheap food to eat. Once on the other side of the river, we realized that not many tourists go there, as the streets were dirtier and a little more chaotic, and I didn�t feel as safe. We walked down some streets, then decided there was a reason that we didn�t see any other tourists there, so we headed back across the bridge and found a cute little spot to have some dinner, which was more like sharing appetizers. We tried two types of tamales and papas rellenas. The tamales had greek style olives in them, which was something new, and the papas rellenas (stuffed potatoes) were also really good, though I don�t remember exactly what was in them.

In keeping true to the Bible, we left Piura the next morning and didn�t look back.

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