We made a return visit to a small seafood restaurant a mile from the campground. A German couple, Gert and Evaline introduced us to it and we brought young Florian and Corrine to it in turn. We actually bought them lunch as they deserve a boost.
We ordered the world’s weirdest appetizer, octopus in a mauve olive sauce and it’s unfortunate you can’t taste the salty olive flavored dressing as it looks grotesque and unappetizing but which works beautifully:
They spent almost two months stuck in northern Ecuador with their 1998 Volkswagen Eurovan getting the engine rebuilt after their turbocharger broke and spewed metal into their motor. Parts are difficult to import to Ecuador especially reconditioned items for this older German vehicle but their made it into Peru where their timing belt tensioner had a fit just inside the border.
Florian is a railway mechanic in Germany and he works on his own car here in South America so he managed to reset the te sooner enough to get to the campground and investigate the problem. He found and easily fixed our fuel hose that came unclipped after our engine oil cooler was replaced in Colombia so he is pretty handy.
For some reason the timing belt tensioner came loose and broke off a piece which he hopes won’t prevent the thing from working. He reset the whole thing and is taking the van for a test run into Tumbes and back today when they go to town to do some shopping.
We would like to travel with them down the coast a while to make sure they are okay as they don’t speak Spanish and being broken down alone by the side of the road is pretty desolate. However they want to stay another week here and neither of us can stand to stay that long. We’re hoping the test run goes off okay and we can leave ahead of them, perhaps tomorrow. There are ruins down the road on the way to Machu Picchu (“old peak” in Quechua) we want to visit. Fried fish fillet in a seafood sauce:
Over lunch we talked of travelers we had met and discovered we both found certain people distasteful and others we had both met we both enjoyed. I told the story of my rail journey from Moscow to East Berlin in 1981 as Florian’s parents had grown up in Dresden in East Germany and they wanted to hear my perspective on the Cold War divide of their country. Me at Checkpoint Charlie, West Berlin 1981.
Florian also told us a disturbing story of being broken down roadside and an overlander driving by and not stopping. They met later and the other traveler shrugged and said they didn’t stop as there was nothing they could do. It is an ethos we do not agree with and perhaps we are out of touch with more modern younger travelers but we would never do that. Pasta in shrimp sauce:
Even though Layne and I aren’t mechanics we would pass a broken down fellow traveler without stopping. We’d like to drive south with these youngsters a day or two to make sure their repair works and to be there if they need a translation or an even a tow. If they decide to stay here a week we will still keep in touch on WhatsApp and drive back if they have a problem. To not do so seems unethical to us, travelers from different era.
Rusty too seems restless and was glad to be out of the campground yesterday. The sea breeze cooled the air but it’s a dry desert atmosphere here. We saw lots of water trucks supplying locals with potable water as supplies are scarce. Luz is building a vegetable garden behind her restaurant in raised beds under green shade awaking right in the edge of the arid lunar back country behind the highway.
A water truck cane by the campground last week and filled the drinking water tank. Water deliveries may be in all our futures in arid areas. And yes I am watching the potential hurricane tracking across the northern Caribbean bringing its own supply of rain no doubt to parts of south Florida.
Glad I am not to have to think too hard about it.
Meanwhile we carry on at the lovely campground. We swim, we read, we talk. But in every traveler there is that moment when you know it’s time to be gone.
Tomorrow is Independence Day in Peru, the end of a long holiday weekend and we’d like to be traveling. We have Rusty’s papers in a safe place where he can’t get to them and destroy them but I don’t think even he wants to delay our departure; I sense a restless in him too as he paces around between naps reminding me of a caged animal.
Altitude is tough for us and as much as we enjoy the scenery of any pretty mph rain range a beach is an easy place for us to hang out and swim. After this we are told the waters are cold and less and less hospitable the further south we go.
