Crossing borders

Fresh off the Amazon...and in Rio de Janeiro. Hola from Brazil!!! That still stays the same even though the rest of the language is way different from Spanish. That being said, one can still get by with a butchered mix of Spanish and French for most part.

In the last few days, I flew from Guayaquil (last stop in Ecuador) to Lima where my first hotel splurge occured. Since I was in Lima for just the night, I opted to stay at the airport Ramada Inn. Nice hotel...with a spa, pool and free internet. Three guesses as to where I spent my time. As an aside, I wonder why people think that showing you numbers on a calculator makes a discount more effective? The guy at the reception desk punched a new number into his calculator each time he gave me a further discount on the room rate. It´s not the first time I´ve seen this happen...maybe it´s all about the power of the picture as opposed to words sort of thing.

From Lima to Iquitos...a crazy little town towards the eastern edge of Peru where one may catch a boat to the ´three-frontier´of Peru, Brazil and Colombia. Iquitos has two main modes of transportation...two-wheeled vehicles (a varied assortment) and ´moto-taxis´, which are the strangest versions of three-wheelers that I have seen to date (photos will be uploaded soon, I promise!). They are essentially front halves of motorcycles that become a little covered rickshaw at the back. Anyone who has seen bicycle rickshaws in India...just think of motorcycle-rickshaws instead, and you´ll get the picture.

From Iquitos to Santa Rosa...a Peruvian border town that can be reached on a fast boat from Iquitos in 9 hours. It was a fun ride that ended with everyone walking off the boat on planks into the town (we were surrounded by the river and wet mud), on planks to the immigration office/police station and leaving on planks towards another little boat heading to Tabatinga, the nearby Brazilian border town. It´s all fun and games until you realize that you forgot to get a country exit stamp while you´re trying to enter another country...we met a French guy entering Peru who was sent back (by boat) to Colombia for his exit stamp. He lost an entire hour on his schedule...damn!

While Santa Rosa needs a boat, Tabatinga and Leticia (Colombia´s border town) border each other pretty closely. Close enough so that one may wander along the road from Brazil into Colombia looking for faster internet...wander back for food...and then head into Colombia again. I´m pretty sure Indian citizens generally need a visa for Colombia, but Leticia is obviously an exception :)