No mad gecko: Bad luck

After almost one month of seamless traveling bad luck finally has come to us :)

1. Ecuador-Peru border crossing

Ok it is known as one of the worst border crossing in the world... We completely confirm this, it took us more than half a day to manage our entrance in Peru. We first head to the main border, the policemen told us to go the custom office where of course we cannot get the peruvian visa because we hadn't the ecuadorian exit stamp. So you except the Ecuadorian office to be close...haha no go back 10km. We arrive in a brand new building where the officials tell us that their computer is not working and we can't have the exit visa(yes instead of using the regular old fashion stamp the ecuadorian one is printed with a computer). They explain us that we have to go to a border town 10 km from there. So we head to a crazy town half Peruvian, half Ecuadorian...we go to the border inside the city with people everywhere, big families with crazy luggages and again the official at the border tells us we have to go back 5km....This time we manage to have our exit visa go back to the original border and everything is fine except for the truck papers...and we have to go back again to a different office handled by militaries 10 km back again.....

The crazy border...we had to make a u-turn with Ernie in the middle of this crowd....tough :)

2. Hostages

In the city of Cajamarca, our driver hit the mirror of parked truck on the side of road. Thinking there was no damages he doesn't stop and a few minutes later a car comes to the truck with a few locals. They want us to go back because the truck mirror in fact has been damaged a lot...So of course they want us to pay for the repair but this would only possible the next day. So they first ask for a 2000$ guarantee but we were not keen to give 2000$ like this so we we arrange that 3 of us would stay at the locals' place. Tom (the leader), Tobby and myself stayed at the locals appartment for the night while the truck found a bush camp near the city. We had a full appartment for ourselves and ended-up eating chicken and fries and watching climbing movies...not so bad for hostages. The next day we went in town with the son of the truck owner to get a quote for the repair which was of 1200$...

The three hostages, myself, Tom and Toby

The truck we hit and the building where we had to stay for the night !

3. Flat tire

Not a big deal but just happened a few days after...Not so easy to change a tire on a big truck...

Chris trying to change the tire with two smalls jacks...

Yeah...definitely flat

4. Battery down

On the way to Huaraz near the coast the truck primary battery went down after visiting Chan-Chan...again not a big deal but stuck for hours...

5. Truck stuck in the mud

On the way to Hatun machay on a dogie road the truck got stuck in the mud...After a few hours of trying to get it out (in fact it even get worse and worse). Tom and I went to the nearest town to find a crate to get the truck out of the mud. Hopefully some people where heading back to Huaraz and the driver brought us to the town and found for us...a diggar !

I never ride a diggar and this was a unique experience...2 hours and half to go from the city to Ernie sitting on the top of the diggar at less than 10km/h... Useless to say that when the night went it was kind of freezing on this diggar !