The Highlands of Northern Peru: Waterfalls, Ruins, Mummies and a Travel Hiccup

Maggie/Mago here, in a semi-delusional state after our 4th overnight bus ride last night. I thought I was getting the hang of this but this afternoon has me slowing down quickly! We are now in Huaraz, Peru which is a starting point for lots of hiking (or trekking as I am quickly learning to say) in the Cordillera Blanca, an incredible mountain range that surrounds the town and that I didn't really know existed until a few weeks ago. Typical American, right?

We spent the last week getting a little further off the Gringo Trail by heading back up into the Andes in Northern Peru. As EJ wrote in the last post, we took a night bus from Chiclayo to Chachapoyas (or Chachas as it is also called) where we spent 3 nights. Chachapoyas was a beautiful little colonial town, all white-washed walls and a pretty Plaza and is a jumping off point for a number of day trips.

While EJ was recovering from his stomach bug, I joined a day hike to see Catarata de Gocta or "Gocta Falls". Apparently the falls were measured in 2005 by a German who "discovered" them at that time (though of course everyone who lived the region had always known of them) and it is hotly contested whether it is the 3rd or 5th "free-leaping waterfall" in the world, or some even lesser number. Apparently there is also a local legend about a mermaid who lives in the pond under the falls. Regardless of it's height, it made for a beautiful and challenging day hike - after about a 1 hour drive from town we hiked 3 hours out to the falls and about 2 hours back. I met a few French women and a Spanish couple on the way out and on the way back befriended an 8 year old Peruvian girl and eventually when she hopped on a horse for part of the walk, I got to chat with her dad for over an hour and have my first good Spanish practice in a little while. The falls were beautiful, one of those things that couldn't be well captured in a photo, and it was a great and tiring hike.

Gocta Falls in the distance

The lower half of the falls

View from the trail

The next day, EJ was feeling much better and we headed to Kuelap with another small tour group. Kuelap is a massive walled city built on the top of a mountain by the Chachapoyas people starting in the 6th century AD - and it was occupied until around 1500 - until Incan and then Spanish conquests. Although it looks like it could be a fortress, it is thought to have primarily been a village, probably for high-ranking Chachapoyan people, a place of worship and a burial ground. All of the buildings are built in a round style. The site was rediscovered around 1840 and is a much less visited site than Machu Picchu, partially because of the difficulty to reach it. This is likely to change soon as they are close to completing a cable car that will get people to the site without having to drive on the somewhat treacherous one lane gravel road along the mountainside (yikes!). Anyway, the site was beautiful, our tour guide was great and it felt really special to be somewhere so ancient and peaceful.

I think I'd build my walled city here too

One of the entrances to the city, described by our guide as being possibly a representation of a vagina

A reconstruction of what the homes may have looked like

Llama sighting!

Jeffrey our guide pointing out the face of a God one one of the burial structures

The next day we headed to the even tinier town of Leimebamba, a little bit south of Chachas. Leimebamba is also a charming little colonial town with a Plaza de Armas with a population of only about 1100. We were interested in checking it out because just south of the town was a museum that houses a collection of 200 mummies found in a burial site on a cliff nearby overlooking a lake called Laguna de los Condores. The bodies were discovered in 1997 and are particularly fascinating because although the Chachapoyan people used some mummifying techniques (removed organs to prepare the bodies), they didn't use any embalming techniques but instead found microclimates to store the bodies that were dry and cool and would preserve them. The mummies on display at the museum were absolutely amazing - many wrapped but some unwrapped and with skin visible and some seriously scary faces. Of course, I loved it. The museum was in a beautiful building and also has the collection of pottery, textiles and other artifacts that were left with the bodies.

Ok, this is a picture of a picture, but you get the idea

Beautiful museum grounds, complete with llama

Decaying bus on our hike to the museum

We had checked ourselves into a hospedaje (hostel-ish setting) in town that cost <5 USD for the night, it was a bit musty but pretty comfortable and we were looking forward to a good night's sleep in this tiny little village. Instead - there was some kind of disco/bar located directly on the other side of our hospedaje that was playing crazy loud dance music as we were getting ready for bed - we figured, hey, it's Saturday, we're acting old, it's a tiny town, it's bound to settle down soon - but no, the music continued until probably 4-5 AM. Earplugs and pillows over the head helped some, but we were basically up all night, and then at 5 AM we suddenly heard brass instruments, drums and what sounded like gun shots. Oh yes, there was a parade at 5 AM (and they were fireworks). We headed out to the Plaza to see high school age kids playing music and groups of kids dancing in the street. We pieced together that it was an annual celebration of the anniversary of the local high school (celebrating it's 51st year). It was too funny and unexpected not to laugh.

We had already made plans the night before to take a collectivo (minibus) to another town called Celendin where we could catch another collectivo onto our goal destination of Cajamarca. We had been told the collectivo would roll through town sometime between 7:30-8:30 AM so after watching the kids in the Plaza for a while we gathered up our stuff and began to wait for our ride. And wait...

Grumpy locals waiting for the collectivo that never came

Cute schoolgirls watching the band play around 6am

We were repeatedly reassured that the ride was coming, just late, and we were entertained watching another 2 hour formal parade through the town plaza with the kids and teachers (this time in uniform). But then, after about 4 hours it was confirmed that there was a breakdown of some sort and it wasn't happening. That left us with the option to take a 10pm bus overnight to Cajamarca or wait until the next day. We sat down in a restaurant (on the same Plaza, of course) and while eating, a guy came in and said there was another collectivo he could get us in that should be coming around 3:30pm - we said we'd take it. Our spirits lifted, and we continued to wait in the Plaza. Then, 4:30 came and the guy was still making calls and giving us increasingly confusing answers. Finally, the said collectivo arrived in town with no room for us. So, we went ahead and bought our 10pm bus tickets.

Not such a bad place to be all day, right?

All day long, I'd been saying what a minor problem this really was, at least we were in a charming  and safe place, the weather was pretty nice, and it was just one day gone. But, by the end of the day (after it had started raining), we were both feeling a lot like the street dogs we'd been hanging out with all day, and were pretty relieved to finally board that bus. I'm sure the people of Leimebamba were tired of looking at the pathetic gringos that had been hanging out in the Plaza for 16 hours too. All this on 1 or 2 hours of sleep. But, we made it to Cajamarca intact! And kept on rolling.

Cajamarca, another beautiful colonial city in the mountains

Beautiful textiles and a new style of hat on the indigenous women in Cajamarca

View of Cajamarca

Chiclayo, Peru

Lalo here.

I've got some unplanned down time so I figured I'm make another post, because I'm sick of looking at my kindle.

We spend Monday night in Chiclayo, down the coast a ways from Mancora and then after walking all over Chiclayo on Tuesday, we boarded another night bus to Chachapoyas, back up in the mountains.

This section of the northern Peruvian Andes has a lot of significant ruins from Incan and pre-Incan times. We came to see (among other things) the ruins of Kuelap, what I understand to be the 2nd largest ruins in Peru. After a few days in Mancora, I was kind of eager to get off the "beaten path" and see some real Peru. Kuelap is hard to get to, there is not a huge tourist industry in Chachapoyas, and they don't appear to have any fancy hotels, so we seem to have left the hordes behind.

At any rate, I woke up Tuesday morning feeling a little off, but decided to power through and go see the sights. By the evening, I was starting to feel true nausea coming on. Long story short, if you are lying awake, sweating bullets, trying to get your mind off it because you think theres a reasonable chance you're going to throw up on this bus and you have another 6 hours to go and if you keep thinking about how shitty you feel, then you're definitely going to throw up, I highly recommend listening to Radiohead's new album on repeat until you get there. Radiohead, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sandersand Art Blakey all helped me get to a peaceful place where I could focus on the music and literally ride it out.

I spend all day pretty sick. Here, I'm rounding the corner on day 3 and I just ventured out to the mercado central for some bananas and oranges, so that's a good sign. 

We both acknowledged that with travellers diarrhea and ecoli and whatnot, its not a matter of if but of when, so I'm trying to just go with it. Atahualpa, for those wondering, was the Incan leader that the duplicitous Pizarro took captive, demanding the legendary ransom of a roomful of gold for his release. That took place in Cajamarca, the next town on our route, in 1532, so I figure this was Atahualpa's, not Montezuma's revenge.

At any rate, I convinced Maggie to go off on the day-trip tour to the 3rd (or 5th) highest waterfall in the world (depending on who you ask), rather than sit here with me, so here is my down time.

At any rate, I really enjoyed Chiclayo. I think its very much a pass-trhough city, so we got a lot of looks. I don't think Chiclayans are used to seeing two tall-ish, hapless gringos wandering their streets. The main square and Cathedrale de Chiclayo were gotgeous, but the two coolest things in Chiclayo we saw were the Mercado Central and the Paseo Yortuque. 

Paseo Yortuque was only built a few years ago. Its a walking tour of the history of the religion, Gods and culture of the Lambayeque region of northern Peru. Before the Incans conquered everything from southern Colombia to northern Chile, there were a lot of smaller empires. The walk had a series of statues of the Gods of these pre-Incan religions and they were awesome. I'll spare you the details and names, but the Iguana God was the mediator between the land of the dead and the land of the living because iguanas apparently live underground sometimes. The Crab God was the God of fishing and fishermen. 

A thousand years before Stan Lee invented Spider Man, there was Spider God

After Paseo Yortuque, we wandered north to the Mercado Central, which has a whole quadrant of it focused on brujas and magic. Burlap sacks of tree bark, roots, spices, powders, animal horns, special candles, coca leaf, staffs, daggers and wands. Lots of potions and teas for potency. It was pretty intense.

At any rate, I'm on the mend and the show must go on! Hopefully (but not assuredly) that was the worst bus experience I'll have in South America. Maybe I should have bought a candle or charm for that. I dunno. I just knocked on wood, so maybe that'll help.

But seriously, check out the new Radiohead album, Moon Shaped Pool

dive into northern Peru

E.J. here.
Well, we left the farm and took a 7 hour bus to Cuenca, in the south.
Cuenca is known as the ex-pat scene in Ecuador. Lots of middle aged white people milling around in cargo shorts and huge bonnets. Thats a bit of an exaggeration, but in the first week in Ecuador, I did a search of books on amazn kindle for the keyword Ecuador and a full third of the books were travel guides and bird books and another full third of the books had titles like "So You've Decided to Retire and Move to Ecuador" and "Retiree Guide to Cuenca". Haha. I mean, it makes sense, as a social security check of $700 a month could go a lot further in Ecuador than in the States. But yeah. There are a LOT of retired age, but still adventurous-at-heart Americans, Canadians, French and Germans in Cuenca. The birdwatching is good, I guess, which is a low-impact sport.
All kidding aside, its a really beautiful city. All the roofs are terra cotta tile. The city itself is nestled in the mountains, so there are gorgeous views. The amenities are build up a little bit, so you still can't flush toilet paper, you put it in a little trash bin next to the toilet (just accept that as a reality for all of South America and move forward with your life), but they have some excellent restaurants and great coffee shops.
And I found a restaurant that was owned by a Ecuadorian wife and her Belgian husband, named Jodoco, which had excellent Belgian style homebrewed beer and good Belgian style frites. That made me very happy.

The next day we went to the mercado and walked around. I haven't really explained this, but a mercado (market) is an open air stall market where you can buy dry goods, fresh fruit and vegetables and then there is always a section of mini restaurants/ food stands, where you can get a good cheap lunch. Our rule is that it is well trafficked with lots of people eating there and the hygiene looks decent, we're probably alright. Some things I don't eat. Fresh vegetables (lettuce, tomato) can get you and I don't generally drink juice, because people often make it with tap water, but soups and lunches are usually a safe bet (knock on wood).

Well we found a doozy in Cuenca. This lady had a whole pig, which they somehow had fried on the outside. Plates of pork over rice with stewed yucca and hominy. Amazing.

We spend a couple of days in Cuenca and then felt like it was time to move on to Peru and head south. Our only hard date of this whole trip (aside from being back home by Christmas) is that we start the Inca trail in Cuzco, in the south, by September 8th, so we need to be in the south of Peru pretty soon.

We decided to bite the bullet and take an overnight bus from Cuenca, Ecuador to Mancora, Peru, a beach town in the north. The bus left at 10pm and was supposed to arrive sometime around 6am the next day. Well folks, lemme tell you, there are a lot of them in my future, so I'm trying to make my peace with overnight busses, but damn. It was rough. The first leg of the trip was coming down out of the mountains. We had 8,000 feet of elevation to lose down switchback-roads, jerking left and right. We lived, so the driver was better than I, but it did not afford much sleep. And then we got to the border at 3:15 am and all had to pile out and get in line that took about 70 minutes. 

Its 3 in the morning at the Peruvian border. What?

70 minutes on our feet, trying to be at least semi-coherent. We got through customs, got a new stamp on our passports and got back on the bus. We arrived in Mancora about 7am and miraculously found a beachside hostel that let us check in at 8am (what?!?) and we slept til about 11am, took showers and started to look semi-human. Like I said: trying to make my peace with overnight busses. We've got another one tonight, which you'll hear about soon enough.

Mancora is a little fishing village that has evolved into a tourist surf town. There isn't much of anything to do except sleep, eat, drink and lay in the sun. Go swimming. The water was warm and a lot of people take surfing or kite surfing lessons. I found myself content to lay on the beach and read my kindle. Do some body surfing. It was quite nice after over a month in the mountains, where it gets quite cold at night, to lay in the sun and sweat. 

  

Its known as a party town, so we just accepted the fact that the music is going to be loud until midnight and just went with it. Walking around barefoot in the sand, eating ceviche for lunch and burgers for dinner, it was a nice little hiatus for a couple of days. But in the end, I felt a little guilty for not having spoken a word of spanish in 3 days (an exaggeration) and it felt like time to move on. On our last day in Mancora, we had tried to schedule a whale watching trip. Humpback whales breed and give birth off the coast of Ecuador and Peru this time of year and the odds are good of seeing the whales on one of these tours. Pick-up was at 6:40 am and we would be back by 11:00am to check out and head to the bus station. We got up and waited and waited and they never showed. Maggie was quite disappointed. Neither of us has ever seen a whale up close and we felt jilted of the experience. Maybe next time.

In the end, the only sea life we saw were 3 (yes 3) giant dead sea lions, washed up on shore of the beach over the 3 days. Apparently, there is a current vortex off the coast of Mancora and stuff gets washed up on shore all the time. I don't know. But it was macabre and awful and incredible. 

This cat didn't care about the sea lions at all.

Having missed the whale watch, we decided to adapt and got on an earlier bus for Chiclayo, a city to the south. Thats where we stayed last night. Today we're going to head back into the Andes, this time in northern Peru, to get a bit off the beaten path and see some ruins and maybe some mummies, if we make it to a certain museum. On to the next adventure! On to the next night bus!

Baños

E.J. here.
So we finished the Quilotoa Loop and headed a bit south to a town called Baños (baths), which is known for its hot thermal springs. We had lined up our first volunteering gig in the village of Runtun, in the mountains above Baños.
For those unititiated, workaway (workaway.info) is a non-profit networking program where (once you join) you can search for and contact different places to volunteer a few hours a day from free room and board and often meals. The median expectation seems to be 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but some expect you to work part time 7 days a week.

Last week we had our first workaway experience in Runtun, working mornings on a family farm and it was a great experience and we're already looking forward to more. At its best, its a mutually beneficial situation where we save $ by not spending on lodging, while getting cultural exposure, language exposure and getting off the Lonely Planet pipeline of tourists, while the family gets economical help on whatever the venture is. Mostly, we've seen farm stays and helping out at hostels, but there are other stays out there.

The farm we stayed at primarily draws income from several greenhouses of two fruits traditional to the region. The first was tomates de arabol (tree tomato) and the other was babaco. Our first two days of work were in the tomates de arbol greenhouses. The first day, we harvested the ripe tree tomatoes off the vine, which got to be pretty back breaking after 4 hours, collecting 5 gallon buckets of the gorgeous organgey-red tomatoes and lugging them to one side of the greenhouse to big collection bags, which we then loaded into the back of a truck.

The second day, we tied low-hanging and burdened branches to an overhanging scaffolding system, so the branches don't break under the weight of the ripening, juicy tomates.

Under the greenhouse. Tomates de Arbol

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we helped out with the hand-construction of the new house they are building on the farm. They are building a brick and mortar house for workawayers and a new bedroom for Monica, Holger and little Emily.
As it was, we stayed in a dorm in the main house, owned by the grandparents, Wilo and Alba. The workaway was coordinated by their English-speaking daughter, Monica and we worked mostly with Monica's husband, Holger (pronounced ohl-gehr).  Most of the time, Monica was busy teaching english in a school in Baños, although she was in the greenhouses with us the first couple of days, not having to teach.

Little Emily (2 1/2), helping Holger lay bricks

We would get up each day a bit before 7am and help make breakfast before heading out around 8am. We'd work until noon, more or less and then help make lunch. Our afternoons were free and then we'd usually help prep for dinner in the evenings. Each meal would typically be eaten in a big family, with Wilo, Alba, Monica, Holger, Emily and then the volunteers, depending on who was around. There was a Canadian woman named Louise who had been there for a week when we got there and a British woman named Lou arrived a few hours after us. We all slept in a dorm room with bunk beds. And it was cold int he mountains after dark! But I digress.
Meals were prepared as a team and the feasts were worth it. The diet was vegetarian except for two meals and Alba could do magic with beans and potatoes and lentils. Typical breakfast might be some rice with a tomato salad mixed into it with a kind of porridge/ oatmeal drink and a glass of juice. Lunch was often a bowl of vegetable soup of some sort and then a bowl of beans/ lentils and rice. Dinner would often be some variation thereof, but a more sedate affair, except for the night we had fried trout, fresh out of a mountain fish farm with roasted potatoes.

Dinner prep: Holger, Louise, Emi, Maggie and Monica

Awkward Dinnertime photo: Wilo, Alba, Monica, Holger, and Maggie

But it wasn't all work and food. We went down into town a few times in the afternoon to go to some of the thermal baths, which was lavish after the harvesting and hauling of bricks. Baños has several bathhouses. We made it to two of them. The first was at the base of a waterfall. The volcanically heated and mineral-rich water was distributed in a half dozen pools of different temperatures. There was a shower next to the hottest bath that was just redirected waterfall runoff, ice cold, so you could soak until you couldn't take it and then step under the waterfall stream and drop your body temperature. I went back and forth a few times

That weekend we also went on a long (mostly downhill/ down mountain bikeride to see a series of waterfalls between Baños and Puyo and it was retty incredible. We got lucky because it rained in Baños more days than not when we were there but we had a gorgeous day for the bike ride. 

We also hiked up the mountain from the farm to "the tree house", where they have this epic "swing at the end of the world" with a pretty amazing lookout. Maggie loved it but full disclosure, I was having a caffeine headache at the time, acted like a total brat and wouldn't go on the swing because I felt like I was trapped in a tourist trap nightmare. It wasn't that bad, I was just having a bad day.

 Last but not least, there were two adorable things on the farm. The first was Emily, the daughet of the couple and the second were the 2 baby calves, a couple of months old. But of these additions to the farm greatly upped the cuteness levels to sometimes unmanageable levels. It was pretty great.

  

 

We finished up at the farm on Tuesday morning and took a 7 hour bus south to Ecuador's third largest city (and ex-pat stronghold) Cuenca. I'll leave Maggie to cover that stretch in a few days