Reunion in Huanchaco

Huanchaco is a beach-village and a popular weekend-outing for Trujillo's citizens as the city centre is located a few kilometres from the shore, into the desert.

I had been in Huanchaco only five minutes and was walking past a café when some people behind me apparently wanted my attention. Here it happens all the time if you appear to be a lost tourist (an image that for me, is almost impossible to avoid). Sometimes they only want to chat for a while, try their broken English, ask where I am from etc and sometimes they want to sell things, everything from sunglasses and watches to necklaces, candies or food. The actual state of tiredness is normally what decides how much I want to engage myself into what may be a very long and boring discussion. For you guys who know Tenn-Ola, you know what I am referring to.

At the very moment, I was very tired of these people as I had been held up in Trujillo just before taking the bus and I decided to try to ignore them. They normally go away then. But strangely they didn't give up as I expected, and even more strangely, they seemed to know my name.

Turning around, 20 meters behind me at the entrance of the café, there was no seller of sunglasses or necklaces, not even a Peruvian English language-student; it was James, an English lad which I had met in Colombia a few weeks earlier.

In general terms, there are two types of Backpackers in this part of the world; the ones travelling from South to North and the ones travelling from North to South. As the "gringo-trail" is quite well defined and passes all main sights through South America, travellers going the same direction in about the same pace are likely to meet each other several times. This happened to me before as well, for example the two Irish girls I met on a bus Station in San José, Costa Rica also appeared in both Cartagena and Taganga, Colombia. And I also ended up in the same hostel in Bogotá as a Manchester-guy I had earlier met in Cartagena. An other example is the french guy with the broken leg in Colombia; I met his good friends in Riobamba, Ecuador and ramdomly figured out the connection when they were mentioning their poor friend who broke a leg. There are many more examples.

Now meeting James was a surprise indeed. I travelled to Ecuador one day before him and we decided that we probably would see each other in Quito around the touristic sites. We didn't.

After catching up, we found out that we were supposed to travel to Huaraz (same destination again) that night on the same bus. I had already got my ticket but not James, and for this reason he wanted to go a bit earlier to the bus station. We decided it was a good idea to meet again before the departure and I went to check out the beach in Huanchaco as it was my last afternoon in the Trujillo-area.

I was however not too surprised that James did not appear in the bus station that night so something must have gone wrong; like for example the departure being sold-out. Nevermind, I thought, we may be able to catch up another time in another city. Maybe Lima or Cusco or Bolivia. Because everyone always travels to the same destinations. I like the "gringo-trail".

Huanchaco pictures: