Colán

With left over pizza in our packed lunches, our first proper travelling experience of the year began.

To get to Colán you have to get an hour long bus to Paita which is a very very dusty little town with not much there, you then get into a minibus/taxi kinda thing to Colán and they literally drop you off by the beach and drive off! (Our entire journey from the aldea to Colán cost us S/18 for both of us, which is aprox £4.50ish!)

Mototaxi ride to the Bus Station

Paita

It was so beautiful to go from dusty streets to a stunning beach!

 There was so much wildlife on the beach, there were birds and ducks and so so so many crabs!

Heres a crab making a quick get away!

There were also locals pulling in their fishing nets and sorting out their fish.

I also made a friend, turns out she just wanted my pizza though

After stumbling along a pretty empty beach, (it’s currently winter here so no locals are at the beach and no tourists as it’s pretty much undiscovered) we began to get thirsty and came across a little small resort area with colourful beach ‘bungalows’ and what looked like a bar/restaurant. We decided to go in and ask if we could buy drinks there. Straight away the manager, Miguel, introduced himself and told us to use the pool as much as we would like and spend the day there; so we did so! It was so nice after a very stressful and busy week to have time to relax.

We managed to practise our Spanish too! We got speaking to some of the locals, including a gentleman called Ruben who has a small apartment he rents out to people visiting Colán, which was handy to know in case we plan a weekend trip up there! After making friends it turned out a couple were also heading back to Piura as they live there and kindly gave us a lift back, which saved us money and a lot of time as it only took 45mins in car!

Us on the Beach

The drive back was like being on tour; we saw the new motorway being built and the oldest church in South America which was pretty cool too! We learnt what a lot of the industrial areas were, including a cement factory and sadly learnt that the tiny rickety shacks in random fields are the homes of some people.

The Oldest Church in South America

After an incredibly good day the only thing left to say is, not only should you wear sun cream but you should also REAPPLY IT!