Mud Mud Glorious Mud!

We had a good time up in tumbes in the far north, a stones throw from Ecuador. First we stopped off in Puira though. Kelly had managed to get her hands on the LP (guide book) and found out that there was a little town good for shopping (handicrafts etc) near puira on the way to tumbes. So we stopped off there. We ended up buying a bunch of pottery and some filigree jewelery all for amazingly cheap prices. Filigree jewelery is made up of fine silver thread wound in intricate designs. Then we were back on the road towards tumbes. It was an interesting town, they had made an effort of make the place look good. And they had decided colourful and excentic was the way to go. Am I right the church looks like a licorice allsort? The first day we hired a boat and guide to show us around the mangroves at Port Pizzaro, where Pizarro first landed in Peru and discovered the Incas. It was pretty cool, we got to get off and walk around in the squelchy mud and see a huge frigite bird colony up close. We also got to see some of Perus only crocodiles getting nursed back from the brink of extinction, here's to reptiles with secondary palettes! Maybe the delighfully squishy feeling of the mud inbetween my toes had triggered something but when I found out about thermal mud baths near by I knew we had to go. The LP didn't have anything about it except mentioned a hostel which did tours to the site. So we took a combi down to where the hostel was (in a little town named Zorritos, little foxes?). The hostel proved useless so we started wondering down the pan american highway which runs along the coast the entire length of Peru. The coast of Peru, except for the very tip around Port Pizzaro is desert, so save the small patches of cliff is is one long sandy beach where it meets the sea. So being partial to beaches we walked the roughly 100metres from the pan american to the coast. The beach was amazing, perfect white sand and blue sea stretching either way as far as the eye could see. Not only where there no people but no litter! I guess there aint many litter making people living in the desert. So we spent a pleasant 2 hours or so walking down the beach, there must be allot of oysters in the water there as the beach was littlered with lovely pieces of mother of pearl. Just about when I was getting hungry I was giving up hope of finding the thermal mud baths. So started back towards the Pan american in hope of finding a restuarant, in our way was a large compound with basketball nets, I assumed it was a school, but luckily kelly was on the ball and recognised it for an upscale hotel/resort. So we approached the compound and stood mornfully at the locked gate. A fellow approached us and kelly used her Spanish skills on him, we were in! We were served up some awsome cebiche ('raw' seafood marinated in lime juice) and not content with fixing up our grumbling tums the waiter fixed us up with a ride to the thermal mud baths! Oh yeah! He called a taxi for us which would take us there, wait for us and take us back for 30 soles (ten bucks), pretty good deal. So we got to play in mud, mud, glorious mud! Also the mud bathes were free! They are just these completely natural pools of bubbling mud in the middle of nowhere! Each pool had a slightly different mud and we tried them all out, throughly covering ourselves from head to toe. It was splendid. Oh it is supposed to be therapeatic and help/cure various things, I dunno, all I know it was really good squishy mud.
Now for the bad news, looks like the road up to the mountians will likely be closed for a week more, we are looking at our options.

The last pic of off the little balls of sand that crabs make when they feed on the little bits of organic matter that surround each grain of sand.