still having fun

Ok, so the adventure left off when Jill was in Cajamarca, land of cheese here in Peru.

I spent several nights there, and had to spend an extra one because I couldn{t get a bus out of town the day I wanted to. June 5th was the Presidential election and everyone was going home to the places they were registered to vote. Hence, the buses were packed.

I finally leave Cajamarca and roll into Chiclayo at 5am. I had to wait a few hours until the next bus company opened it{s doors to customers where I bought another overnight ticket out of town leaving at 8pm. To review, got in at 5m, left 8pm. That is a lot of time to kill.

So, even after waiting until 8am to buy my ticket, I had 12 hours and nothing to do. The next town over has a very famous museum here in Peru, but didn{t open for a few hours. I went to a park and wrote in my journal for a while and contemplated the church.

Here is one thing about Peruvian women: they don{t walk. I get to the bus station and ask where can I go, like a park or something to sit and kill some time. Answer: Take a cab. Here is my thing, I hate cabs. I would rather walk for an hour versus get in a cab. They cheat you on prices here.

After a few hours, I get directions on the buses that go to that neighboring town and get on the bus to go. I am in typical developing world transportation here, so that means little van full of people. Safety on that is not so high. Side note: This is how you get there, and how thousands of Peruvians get there every day, so while it might be below standards US safety, people do it here without thinking about it. Next time you drive on the highway think about how much damage one drunk driver could do to you, and you realize that you driving isn{t that safe either.

Anyways, I get to the town, and it is packed. I finally make my way the few blocks to the museum and it is closed. Closed for the elections. Argh!

I walked around because I still had over 9 hours to go

Now, I made a small error getting off the bus back in Chiclayo, meaning I didn{t wait until we got the terminal, so I got myself a little lost. I walked around for about a half hour before I was like, maybe I should get a taxi to get me back to that park. But, as I have already mentioned, I don{t like taxis, so on the thought that maybe I was really close and would be wasting that money. So, with a giant hope, I rounded a corner and started walking again. Then finally I found the park. The city is just wall to wall three story building on flat ground so it is impossible to look up for landmarks.

Anyways, I sat around talking to random people who sat down next to me. Creepy people got the cold shoulder and others I talked to. I met a man who went to the states to work and actually worked in maine for a while. We talked about different areas in the state. He apparently was an itinerant farm worker in maine, I didn{t realize we had them there. He worked the blueberry fields and potato fields. You learn new things everyday.

Well, that is enough detail on a day when I essentially did nothing. I eventually made it to the bus and we went to Chachapoyas.

I get in at 5am again. My worry whenever I do this is that they are going to charge me for going into the room right away, so normally i just ask if I can leave my bag and then they show me to my room. My first plan was to kind of wait until sunrise then go exploring and book a tour for that day. Then the bed called to me. I eventually woke up again and then just walked around the town.

The next day was the same, just catching up on sleep and the town is really cute, so I walked around. It was their anual tourism week, so there were a lot of activities. I went to the opening on a photo exhibit and felt really under-dressed. Everyone else was some kind of representative of the local government or a university professional (the exhibit was at a college), and then there was me. I was wearing my new pants, so I was clean at least. They also had a bunch of local food there, so I got a free lunch. It was good to try the traditional food, I had the goal of eating a lot of that but hadn{t been doing it so well.

THe next day was Wednesday and I did my first tour. We went to Kuelap, a ruin site two hours out of town. It is amazing. It is built on the top of a cliff basically and is so beautiful. The site is not cleaned up like Machu Picchu is, so you see the jungle inside the walled complex. I can{t say enough good things about the site. The houses inside were all round and had big cone roofs. They had little troughs to raise guinea pigs in right outside the houses (remember: guinea pig = food), and big stones inside to ground corn into flour. Also, each house had a small hole in the ground which they placed their ancestors in. That{s right, grave in the middle of the living room.

The people I did the tour with were nice. I talked to them a bit. Knowing spanish is fantastic because I wouldn{t do half the things if I didn{t speak it. My camera battery died halfway through the tour which was awful, but one of the guys from Lima said he would go to the internet cafe with me and pass me a bunch of his pictures.

FOr these day tours there is normally a stop for lunch, although lunch is around 3pm or something like that. This lunch was really good, it came with soup, plate of food, and drink for under four dollars. It had fried plantains which reminded me of Honduras!

That night I called a couchsurfer and we met up. She introduced me to a lot of people. The activity for that night was actually a boxing demonstration. We all just sat there and chatted in the plaza for a few hours. It was a really nice group of people.

The next day I did the cave quiocta, and an archeological site Karajia. The cave was pretty cool. The thing is so big that the whole group can walk side by side and not touch the walls. I had my flashlight on me which is pretty strong for its size so I could shine it around and see everything, while most people had these little tiny pen lights that barely lit up their shoes. I rented a pair of black rubber boots for the cave for which i was really grateful because it is solid mud. or not so solid as mud is normaly muddy in texture.

After another lunch, not quite so good, we went to the site of sarcophogi, that{s the plural of sarcophogus, which i learned on this trip. The pictures of this place look great, but that is because they used a camera with a good zoom. My camera is not so good in that sense. TO get there you walk about a kilometer (.7ish miles) and it{s all downhill. That means on the way back up it is uphill. I walked really slowly for me, but because I didn{t take any breaks I got there well ahead of anyone else. I got to the top then played volleyball with a bunch of local girls. I had a lot of fun, but everyone in the tour was amazed that I could walk up that hill that fast and then have the energy to play volleyball.

The next day{s activity was going to a waterfall. My plan was to leave the next day, so I rented the black rubber boots again to not get my shoes nasty for the ride out. We walked really slowly there, a walk of 2 hours. It rained almost the whole time though so everyone was getting wet. I had the presence of mind to grab my umbrella, so I was comfortable. The waterfall, Gocta, is the third largest in the world. You walk down to the base of the second fall. Once we got there everyone in the group took off their ponchos and were posing in almost model like poses. Then there is me. I am in my raincoat (i wasn{t about to take that off) and rubber boots posing like, yep, I am here. The walk up I just took off and didn{t wait for the group. I knew several of them were going to take a lot of breaks and I wanted to walk and really stretch my legs. I did the 2.5 hour hike in an hour and a half. I was really happy to finally be able to walk comfortably and get some decent exercise in.

That night I met back up with the couchsurfer and we made new friends with other couchsurfers in the town. We just kind of hung out for a while and talked. Two were from peru and then a french guy and me.

Ok, I have been here a while typing and I want to do other things. Saturday was the big day for activites so stay tuned for when I get that written.