So... We got a bit lost in Chiclayo today and ended up being escorted by some helpful policemen.
Backtracking slightly after from arguably the highlight of the day to a thought of the day. Why does no-one speak English in Peru (So far)? To gain an idea of what to do with our only complete day in Chiclayo, we decided to try and siphon some knowledge from an information centre or tour agency. Emma had read that the best one to gain this knowledge from was called iPeru. We managed to find their location online and try to find it in real life. This proved very difficult. As of so far, our (my) map reading skills have been decent. We haven't really gotten lost and always found the places that we needed to - had they existed. We wandered around the main area of Chiclayo for about 25 minutes trying to find El Dorado. After this time we decided to try and consult the map for what must have been the fortieth time. Upon this a man dressed in police uniform started speaking to us in Spanish and asking us what we were doing outside of his office - this, we had not realised. In our broken Spanish we were able to communicate with the man that we were lost and wished to find a tourist office. Fear not! He said he would lead us to said tourist office, much to the delight of several other Peruvian police officers who were near us at the time, one of which had a laugh like my uncle Michael (odd how similarities travel). We followed the helpful man for around five minutes, strolling purposefully through the streets of Chiclayo with our police escort, only to be taken to his mate in the police tourism office (who knew this was even a thing). Shock, this man also did not know English. After about five minutes of failed communication and pointing at maps, the man decided to call some other police officers who could actually speak English. Several minutes later two police officers rock up to give us our second police escort of the day through the streets of Peru. They took us to iPeru (El Dorado was found), this of course, was nowhere near where Google had advertised it... Nevertheless, After several hours of negiotiating with various tour groups and information points, we managed to gauge an idea of what to do with our day in Chiclayo. We have decided that the cost will be much better and for us to do what we actually want to do more by going ourselves. Let's see how that works out... Despite the high police presence (all very friendly and helpful), Chiclayo has been a very nice place so far and completely different to Cuenca. Where Cuenca would be deadly quiet by 8pm, Chiclayo would be busier at 8pm than at any other time before it! There are more shops open and more people about. There also seems to be a political march full of chanting going along our road at 10.30pm... I'm very glad that we chose Chiclayo and not Peruvian Stoke. To top off the day, we tried our first (and probably Emma's last) pisco sour - a drink originating from Peru/Chile (no-one quite knows and all guides say not to mention it). A good start to three weeks in Peru.
