Adiós, PE!
Well, after about 6 weeks in the country, we have now left the magical country of Perú behind. We´ll spend a few days in Ecuador (only around the Quito area) before flying to the Galápagos Islands on Sunday the 17th. We´re flying back to Quito from the islands on the 26th before heading to New York City on the 27th. I can´t believe the main part of our trip is almost over! We´ll spend about 2 months in the US before heading back to London, but it´s quite sad to be saying goodbye to our foreign adventures so soon.
But before we left Perú too far behind I wanted to share two things with you. First, I know how much you all loved my post on boring New Zealand license plates (you did love that post, right?). Well, in South America, all of the countries we visited had the country name printed on their plates, including Chile, which still resorted to boring black printing on a white background. In South America, though, it´s very difficult to bring vehicles across some borders. For example, Bolivia refuses to allow Chilean tour operators to bring vehicles over the border (we don´t need to get into why Bolivians hate Chile again), so we had to change vehicles at the border.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the Peruvian license plate. Strangely, Peru, which is tied for the shortest country name in the world with all of four letters, has decided to abbreviate its short name from four letters to two on its license plate. It looks like this policy has been going on for decades. I can´t imagine how abbreviating the name saves any time, money, or effort, but there you go. Most of the current Peruvian license plates also use the boring black print on white, although you do see some with yellow backgrounds.
The other final thing I wanted to share about Perú was a bit of trivia. In the northeast part of Perú, deep in the Amazon rain forest, is found the city of Iquitos, home to anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people. We didn´t visit this part of Perú, but what is interesting about Iquitos is that it is generally regarded as the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road. It can only be reached by boat or plane. I just found it quite remarkable that hundreds of thousands of people can live in a city that can´t be driven to. And I thought the small communities of hundreds of people that we saw in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco that were a mere few miles from the nearest road were crazy.
But before we left Perú too far behind I wanted to share two things with you. First, I know how much you all loved my post on boring New Zealand license plates (you did love that post, right?). Well, in South America, all of the countries we visited had the country name printed on their plates, including Chile, which still resorted to boring black printing on a white background. In South America, though, it´s very difficult to bring vehicles across some borders. For example, Bolivia refuses to allow Chilean tour operators to bring vehicles over the border (we don´t need to get into why Bolivians hate Chile again), so we had to change vehicles at the border.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the Peruvian license plate. Strangely, Peru, which is tied for the shortest country name in the world with all of four letters, has decided to abbreviate its short name from four letters to two on its license plate. It looks like this policy has been going on for decades. I can´t imagine how abbreviating the name saves any time, money, or effort, but there you go. Most of the current Peruvian license plates also use the boring black print on white, although you do see some with yellow backgrounds.
The other final thing I wanted to share about Perú was a bit of trivia. In the northeast part of Perú, deep in the Amazon rain forest, is found the city of Iquitos, home to anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people. We didn´t visit this part of Perú, but what is interesting about Iquitos is that it is generally regarded as the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road. It can only be reached by boat or plane. I just found it quite remarkable that hundreds of thousands of people can live in a city that can´t be driven to. And I thought the small communities of hundreds of people that we saw in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco that were a mere few miles from the nearest road were crazy.
posted by Kevin at 6/14/2007 01:24:00 AM
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