Pictures are below

I am happily tired today, but I will get to that later.

I finished my tour of Cuenca, deciding it was better just to know the city well than take day trips. I also spent a lot of money of gifts. However, I am now free of gift buying obligation because everyone has a gift. Not everyone in the world, but everyone I was buying for. Now, if I want to buy something, I don´t have to, and shopping has become fun again. I can´t spend too much because I want enough leftover money to go to MN. I do have budgetted plenty of money to live off for the next few months, but having a little more when I get back to the states will be good.

I met up with Couchsurfer Lorena and her roomate. I don´t have a working cell phone in Ecuador, so we made plans to meet up at night. I was looking at her as I passed thinking , is that her? I passed because if it wasn´t her, the person would have been really confused. They came up to me a few minutes later and we laughed over the matter. We went to dinner and talked for a bit. They are studying environmental engineering, so that was a common topic. Then I asked what kinds of typical foods I needed to try while in Ecuador.

Speaking of food, if people want to worry about me, they should worry about my very risky eating habits. I love street food. It´s good and it´s cheap. However, more people get sick off street food than restaurant food. My stomach is pretty solid though after surviving two years in Honduras.

So, after Cuenca, I headed to Baños. In the guide it said it was really touristy but it reminds me of a sleepy little town. The first day I just walked around a bit. I didn´t do too much.

Today, I rented a bike. Now, when I first got on the bike it was really scary because I hadn´t been on a bike in 9 years. The trip to Puyo is 60km and almost all downhill. However, if you don´t trust speed on a bike, you break constantly. Not helping the fact was that it was lightly raining on and off. I was amazed though how fast I did get to the different points.

The area I biked in is a river valley and has a lot of waterfalls, which means a lot of stops. The best falls is 10km from town and the whole river drops about 100 feet or more. I am really bad at judging distances, so it might have been a bigger drop. You get there and it´s amazing the power of the water and how wet it is because it is spraying up from the bottom. Then you can go into a little cavelike passage and actually get behind the water fall. You get really wet doing it but it is worth it.

Now, at this point I realized I forgot my bike helmet on my bike and anywhere else in the world it would have been robbed. Luckily, it was still there. Now, most people on bikes went back at this point, but I went on. It was a good and bad decision because the weather didn´t improve and I was tired. I did manage another 8 km, making a total of 15 miles riding. Like I said, it was almost all downhill which made it easier.

I got back and got dry. And now I am trying to upload a ton of pictures, so I hope you appreciate them.

Jill

Too many photos to load after 19 days

Markings on a round house found within the ruins of Kuelap.
Bases of round houses in Kuelap.
Me in the cave.
Pretty picture.
Sarcophagi Karajia. This is a very zoomed in picture.
Me on the bridge on the way to the waterfall.
Turn your head sideways. This is me at the base of the third largest waterfall in the world.
These two waterfalls total 771m of drop and count as the third largest in the world.
Men dancing during the parade.
Women carrying traditional foods from their village.
A look down the parade route.
A woman who is showing off that her village does a lot of weaving.
Parade in Chachapoyas. These women are showing typical foods plus how grains used to be crushed with the giant rock and flat rock.
My friend and I with a group of really old dancers. The youngest was 69 years old.
I just like how they combined old giving food offering ways with catholicism, it is a cross.
Beach at Mancora.
Surfer at sunset.
Trip up to Ecuador.
Colonial arquitecture in Cuenca.
More pretty buildings.
Church. I like the two colors of walls.
Plate of food I got on the street. It was only $1.50 nd had some kind of grain on the bottom, meat, fried potato creation, and a salad all piled on top of each other.
View from the bus on the way to Baños.
Beautiful countryside on my bikdride.
The road and bike path are but into the mountain side.
Just joking, that is not me.
Twin waterfalls.
This is the big falls where the river falls down.


Ok, there are a lot more to load, but it is being really slow. I will try to upload the rest later.

End of Peru

Ok, so last time I left off, I was in the Amazonas.

Saturday was the big day for the week. All morning and well into the afternoon there was a parade. Not too much like parades in the States though. Here, people from nearby villages walked the route. Some had bands with them and performed traditional dances, others had traditional foods, and others had religious displays. The whole parade was from 9am to 3pm. Some groups had 20 minute performances, so it wasn´t moving very fast.

I met up with my new friends and we hung/balanced very precariously from a school{s fence to overlook the parade. My new French friend had a shell/husk cup made for the week and every time that people with traditional foods/drinks went by he hung out over the crowd and got a sample for all of us in his cup. I later got one. The food I tried was very good, and let me just say that Peruvians know how to make alcohol out of everything!

After watching the parade, we all watched a movie together and then made plans to meet up for the night.

That night we met up with more friends and watched the fireworks. Now, before the traditional fireworks that we have in the states, there is a tower that has small fireworks that spin and have a lot of colors all connected on a bamboo tower. One layer would go, then the next higher up until the end. According to the locals, it wasn´t a very good one, but we foreigners who had never seen a "castillo" or castle, were impressed. Then came the real fireworks. My friend Karina and I wanted to watch the real fireworks but everyone else was itching to go so we kind of walking backwards while taking a lot of breaks to watch as much as we could. It was an impressive fireworks show.

At this point we made a new friend, someone that Karina had met in Mancora named James. He is an American, so I finally had another american although we were still well outnumbered by the French. We had a beer then went to the party. At a park there was a stage set up and vendors and just a festive atmosphere. We fought our way to the middle and started dancing. At one point we were dancing next to a crowd of 6 young to middle aged women and they just grabbed James and started dancing with him, he was quite the hit! I danced with few people. I love to dance and latin music is made to be danced to. We called it a night when I had to go to the bathroom and since there were no public bathrooms, I RAN to the hotel. To be a guy and be able to go in any sort of private place.

The next day I made arrangments to leave on Monday. Again, I met up with the crew at night . We hung out in the park then eventually made our way to a local viewpoint where some people played guitar. It was a rather relaxing night.

When I left monday night my friends went to the bus terminal to see me off which I thought was really sweet.

Now, there have been a lot of comments about my safety. During this week I was with a local woman about my age, so she knew what was and was not ok to do. I was out a lot but had local guides and was generally in a group. I really can´t do anything more to guarantee my safety besides end up the old crazy cat lady in South Gardiner, Maine who never leaves her house.

THe bus ride was anything but sweet. I was so sick, the ride was windy, I couldn´t sleep, and my knees were killing me. THe worst bus ride yet.

I went back to Chiclayo, and this time the museum in Lambeyeque was open. The museum basically has everything from the 1987 excavation of the ruins of Sipan. This was an archeologist´s dream. The tumbs they found were just jam packed with bodies and rather well preserved things. Each tumb had a minimum of 100 ceramic bottles, lots of jewlery, and other things. Look up the museum Señor de Sipan for more information. It was really impressive.

Then I went back to town, caught a bus north, followed by another bus north and ended in teh seaside town of Mancora. Now, I was staying at a hostel, and when I got there none of my roomates were in the room and everyone was huddled into groups at the bar which makes for an interesting time. I decided to delay that uncomfortable scene and ran out to some of the last vendors open to buy flip flops. Before this point I had been almost exclusively to cold places and didn´t need them. THis time when I got back all my roomates were in the room and I went with them to the bar.

THere was a giant beer pong tournament which made for a crazy time. More than that everyone was walking around and supporting strangers, so it was easy to introduce myself to strangers without it being awkward. The party died though when it was over.

I then spent three days in the sun. With plenty of sunscreen. I had a good time, didn´t do too much. My last night there the guys had left and were replaced with women from Argentina, so I hung out with them for a while. Thank goodness I speak Spanish. THey were really nice and I think we are really similar. The big event that night was crab racing. Nope, not with humans doing the crab run, but real crabs. I will have to post pictures, because it was just the weirdest thing. A lot of fun though.

The next day I got my last few hours in the sun then left for Ecuador. I do not recommend the company I went with. I got into Cuenca around 9pm, had to call a hotel to see where I could stay for the night, then got dropped off at the wrong hotel (the have the same name). Luckily the right hotel was two blocks away. Oops.

Since then I have been exploring the city, it is gorgeous! I have also spent way too much money because gifts are a lot more expensive here! Stupid me for not buying everything at the beginning.

Still having fun, meeting up with people tonight them heading out to another place.

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.

oops

Ok, so it says here that i last updated 10 days ago. Now, I promise to update at some point but I am rather busy living. And considering i just booked into the roudiest hostel ever, I probably wont have time later. I promise i am having tons of fun and have met some really great people.

Jill

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Chicken feet!

Me at the glacier

Mountain

Me at the laguna

Spot where the town got smooshed. What you see in green, used to be the town.

Two layers of the temple that have been excavated. That scary dude in the middle is the main god.

The outside of the temple had layers that people think represented the hierarchy. See last blog post for why my bag is so big.

Best self'photography.

View from the "Seat of the Inca"

Cumbemayo, look closely at the little space ub the middle. Zoom in, what do you see?

Woman selling crafts. For once I wasn´t cheap and paid too much for something. But look at her, you feel sad.

Garden

"windows" or tumbs.

Really rocky suspension bridge. Why was a modern pedestrain bridge? who knows.

On the Road Again

Ok folks, for today´s blog update, Jill finds herself in Cajamarca, Perú. It is a city in the mountains and is famous for cheese because it is surrouded by dairy. I have tried some of it, not bad. This does come from a person used to really salted Honduran cheese, so it might actually be very good, just not salty enough for my tastes.

Before I get in depth, I took a daytour (it´s a detour that lasts one day) in the city of Trujillo. First, let me just say that I prefer Trujillo, Honduras.

The city is the third largest in Peru and hosts some pre-Incan ruins. Now, the Inca are not a really old group, they came about later and were then vanquished by the Spanish, I´ll get back to this later.

I hired a taxi to take me to all the interesting points during the day. First we went to the best place which is called Huaca de la luna, and it also encompasses Huaca del sol. They are temples used by the Moche people, who basically existed between 100 and 800 AD or after christ. The museum here is very well done. There is a lot of pottery found in the ruins and I am guessing some replicas.

These people had their stuff together and were very religious. One notable fact is that they did human sacrificing. They were also very good at pottery, textile weaving, metalurgy and other artesan stuff. There was a city between two temples and it was very organized with streets and avenues, as well as canals to bring water around the city.

The temple Huaca de la luna is also amazing because the color of the murals still exists. FOr some reason, these people really liked temple building. Every so often they filled in the old temple and built the new temple right on top of it. There are literally layers of temple. The new temple was pretty much exactly the same as the old, but just a little it bigger.

Archeologists think that only the truly elite were allowed in the temple, everyone else stayed in the courtyard. The main god was a compilation of different animals, from the land and sea. HUmans, warriers who lost fights, were believed to be sacrificed to appease the gods and make for better weather conditions. I think I have mentioned that most of the Peruvian coast is a desert, so they couldn´t really afford dry spells.

THe Moche people are believed to have abandoned their religion when a El Nino wave hit them and it became clear that the priests really didn´t control weather. They then lived by more traditional government for a while before finally disbanding the culture. Most probaby assimilated into the Chimbe culture.

Only a few miles away you find a few ruins of the chimbe people. Two are literally within the city limits (all cultures from all times gather around water sources, in this case a river). These ruins are really less interesting. Right outside of town there is a huge complex where it is believed that 50,000 people lived. That is a lot of people for that time frame.

Now, the museum here is sub-par. THen, guides cost a bit of money, so most people just wander around on their own. There is nothing or very little of note. There are few designs on walls, and what there is has been covered over, for protection against the elements, but it just makes them look fake.

Finally I went to Huacachaco, or a name like that, and saw the beach. I really didn´t do much more than look and take a few pics. I had lunch. Now, if you don´t like seafood, beach towns are a problem. THey just don´t do other food well.

Then I hit up to main plaza in Trujillo. It is ok, nothing special. One thing to note is that there was a political rally for Keiko, the female presidential candidate, so there were a lot of people. THe rally didn´t officially begin until later, so i wandered around. I bought a shirt because all my clothes were dirty at the time.

The rally started 2.5 hours late. Imagine if Obama had ever showed up that late, all but the diehard supporters would have left. However, I am in Peru, and those who are from here and understand how things work, didn´t show up until 2 hours after the start time. I however, had no where to be, so sat on a stone staircase for 2.5 hours.

Ok, so like I mentioned, this was just for the day. Someone might wonder what I did with my bag for this time. Well, I bought my overnight ticket at 8am and checked my bag then. So, I needed everything that I could possibly need in 24 hours with me. My purse got a little heavy. Here is what I had in it:
book (i knew at some point i would still have to wait for a while for the bus to leave)
water bottle
wallet (and it´s a large clutch purse but it organizes everything well)
camera
phone and headphones
toilet paper (there is never any)
handkerchief (still getting rid of the last bit of cold)
candy bars for snacks
guidebook section for peru
sunglasses
sunscreen
Gifts that I forgot to take out of my purse the day before

now, what is not in there is a jacket of some sort. I was travelling in the desert for the day practically, so i didn´t have a coat. However, that night it got cold. Waiting around for the rally to begin was a little chilly. I only stayed for a few minutes of the actual rally because i had reached my cold limit and i didn´t want to sit on the step for any longer.

The buses all thankfully come with blankets for each seat, which is so nice.

I pulled into Cajamarca around 5am, got out my sneakers and coat (did i mention i was also in sandals) and then got a cab to a hotel. They let me check in right away without paying extra which was nice.

Cajamarca is also the place where the Inca people lost to the Spaniards. The last INca leader was betrayed and eventually killed here.

The first day I did my own walking tour of the city. It was ok, nothing too exciting.

The second day I opted for tours. I went to Cumbemayo in the moring, which is a rock outcropping a little ways outside the city. THe tour was very so-so.

In the afternoon I did a tour where we visited a dairy farm, saw the workings and did some cheese tasting. Cheese with oregano is very good. Then we went to a garden and saw some artesan stuff. THen we went to what are called the ¨windows¨ which are actually preincan ruins where they used to store the bodies of dead people. It´s a cemetery basically.

On the second tour there was a better guide and more active/talkative people, so it was much more enjoyable. I went to dinner with a German woman who is also travelling alone. We tried some traditional dishes and they were very good.

During the break between tours I pretty much did a tour of the bus companies. I wanted a ticket out of town that night, but everywhere was sold out. I ended up having to stay another day, which is why I can write this update. I slept in late, watched cable (including old Big Bang Theory) on tv in English! I am going to try cow brains for lunch and then see if I can get another tour for the afternoon.

I will do another daytour tomorrow although since the elections are tomorrow, i don´t know if i will be able to or not. I hope so. After that it is back to the mountains and more ruins. I like ruins, what can I say. Then several solid days at the beach.

Take care all,

Jill