Archive for July, 2003
The Border Between Ecuador and Peru
Ecuadorians and Peruvians may be be playing nice along their border these days, but lemme tell you this: both camps will rip you off if you give ‘em the chance.
In March, I made the crossing from Huaquillas (in Ecuador) to Tumbes (in Peru). I dumbly changed money along the border and was given fake bills. And then a Peruvian border guard, upon learning I was heading down to Tumbes, offered to hook me up with a working woman that night. (I declined.) Finally, a couple cab drivers tried to scam me, but I escaped their clutches.
A friend of mine who made the same journey a few days later was also given fake Peruvian currency by a group of men he met just after stepping off the bus. Then he took a cab driven by another couple of the guys from the group; when he tried to pay with the bogus bills, the Peruvian drivers wouldn’t accept them.
“But I got this money from your friends,” he said. “Oh, no,” they replied. “Those weren’t our friends. Those guys were Ecuadorians.”
Johnny Depp, Peruvian Piranha Poacher and Certified Weird Guy
Johnny Depp, who’s really really really strange, got caught smuggling stuffed piranhas and a dead vampire bat back to the States from Peru. Depp has an “extensive taxidermy collection.”
A Chilean Jelly Fish the Size of a School Bus?
SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters)–”Chilean scientists were baffled on Tuesday by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help identifying the mystery specimen.”