- Fresh Papaya juice
- Ceviche
- Most of the food, really
- The weather - it's warm, it hasn't rained yet and Peru's attempts at wind are just plain pathetic.
- The dancing (I have video footage but I'm not sure how to load it onto the blog)
- Boys dancing - all the boys here dance, all of them. It's kinda like you're a loser, pansy if you don't dance. And they're good at it and they enjoy it. Very cool.
- The parties
- The music - lots of variety and it's all packed with rhythm.
- The people - apart from the randoms on the street that yell out 'gringa' and random chat up lines as I pass by, everyone is warm and fun and welcoming.
- The mangroves and the private beach - surf the blog for photos
THE BAD
- The poverty - 60% of the population is living below the poverty line. Some families live on 1 nuevo sol a day (50c NZ). I visited a barrio (kinda like a slum) near my house in Chimbote and the houses are entirely too much like the cardboard box houses youth groups make for 40hr Famine sleepovers. Some of them are just made with woven flax-type matting. They don't have electricity or running water and they have a lot of problems with fires.
- 4-year-olds driving SUVs (yes, really). I also saw a kid that must have been about 10 years old driving a motorcycle with two passengers.
- Half-dead dogs in the street. There are lots of dogs around and they all look quite pathetic. I really think it'd be kinder to just put them all down before they have anymore puppies.
- The rubbish. There is no formal rubbish disposal in Tumbes as far as I can tell (and I think the problem exists throughout Peru). There's a guy who comes around during the week with a cart to collect household rubbish but I don't know what he does with it. As far as I can tell there's no rubbish treatment plant anywhere or and kind of organised landfill. There aren't really rubbish bins in the streets and everyone just drops their rubbish on the ground. As a product of the 'Be a Tidy Kiwi' campaign generation, I have not yet been able to bring myself to drop anything on the ground that's not biodegradable.
Photo: I took this in Chimbote. 'Limpia y Segura' means 'clean and secure'.
THE KINDA WEIRD (I have a feeling this list is going to keep growing at a faster rate than the other two)
- You don't put your loo paper down the toilet, you put it in a little rubbish bin next to the loo. It kinda goes against all my instincts but I think I've got the hang of it now (probably more info than y'all needed but I'm trying to be a thorough journalist)
- None of the streets have names and the shops don't really have signs. If you don't have a guide when you arrive you're kinda screwed as far as finding anything goes.
- I drink beer now
- I also eat seafood...for breakfast (crab omelette yesterday and shrimps and rice today)
- The dancing (yes, I know it was in the 'good' list too): it's always in pairs and you have to wait for a boy to ask you before you're allowed to dance. This isn't usually a problem cos I'm a gringa and have a certain novelty value as a dance partner, but it does annoy me somewhat that if the boys don't feel like dancing much then the girls can't dance. So, the foreign chicks have been gradually forcing their crazy feminist ideals on the local population by unashamedly going ahead and dancing without the blokes. Sometimes the blokes come and cut in when they feel it's getting out of hand.
- There's pretty much no graffiti here other than the government propaganda that covers most of the available wallspace.
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