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It’s 8pm in the evening in Madrid, the temperature’s pushing 35 degrees Celsius, I’ve just done an hour of yoga during which I thought I was having a heart attack, and now I’ve turned the terraza / balcony into my very own Café del Mar. Lemon Jelly on the stereo, work finished, Mahou in hand, happy ‘as Larry’.
Rurrenabaque to me was like arriving in heaven. After spending several month freezing in the beautiful south of Peru and La Paz, the hot lowland was a very welcome change.
This friendly frontier town is probably Bolivia’s most beautiful lowland settlement (elevation 105 m). It is a small city, which enables you to walk all over the city by foot in no time at all. Most of the buildings are two story buildings which makes the city very comfortable.
The town has become a great travellers hub with many restaurants, cheap (good) guesthouses, hammocks, travel agencies and swimming pools. I absolutely loved it.
Most travellers head up the Rio Beni to visit the surrounding jungle in Madidi National Park and the savanna-like grasslands (pampas). I highly recommend both the city and the tours. It was a wonderful experience for me.
Piura, a hot and dusty city in Northern Peru, was founded in 1532, three years before Lima. I was out developing mild heat stroke today, whilst wandering around some of the back streets, and came across a set of interesting murals – including the one pictured below of Jesus.
The Lonely Planet says the following about Piura:
After several hours of crossing the vast emptiness of the Sechura Desert, Piura materializes like a mirage on the horizon, enveloped in quivering waves of heat. It’s hard to ignore the sense of physical isolation forced on you by this unforgiving environment…the scorching Summer months (now) will have you honing your radar for air conditioning as you seek out chilled venues in which to soothe your sweltering skin.
That just about sums it up, although my radar and my bank balance failed me on the air conditioning front, and I’m currently sitting here with a head like a tomato and a high velocity fan blowing a tornado over me.
I need sea!