De Republiek

That was the question a few weeks ago. We were heading to the region of Tiwintza for the big river trip. In Ecuador everything goes easy-pesay with dollars, in Peru it?s neuvo soles. So we thought it would be pretty nice to have some, you know pay for food. We didn?t think there would be much cashmachines around. So you just go to the nearest exchange office, no? No, not in Ecuador.

We had about a day to find new cameras to replace to stolen ones, get a yellow fever vaccinicion (me), Malaria pills (us) and thus find soles.

First off we tried a few banks in de region, but they didn?t have or didn?t do foreign exchanges. Especially not soles (who needs them anyway). So we went to Avenida Amazonas, the commercial district of Quito with a lot of offices for ?cambio?. Nobody had any soles. They told us that some day they had, most days they didn?t . Basically all were waiting for a loose peruvian to have a crazy change day in one of the places.

We went to the airport. Surely an international airport with flights all over the world should have some? Guess what? They did! 10 wholes soles (aka 2.50 euro ).

Back to the main centre, the old square. Somebody had a promising lead that casa de cambio would have some soles. Eeeh wrong!

So by now we were crossing the border in less than 2 days and travelling throughout peru were there is no cash to be got, without any – any soles. Hard spot.

Then somebody thought off trying all the nearby hostels and ask local travellers is they have any soles left. In the second hostel a whole pack of Aussies had! Apperently they had a hard time changing the stuff since nobody wants to buy it ( they claim in Quito that nobody wants to buy Soles ) . So a exhange party later, some enthousiastic exclaims we ended up with about 800 soles. Not much for four persons, but it at least lasted us for food and bed until Sant Maria de Neiva.