:: playing catchup…
March 7th, 2010Once again I’m behind…however, the photo page is being updated and hopefully I’ll get to the blog shortly…
http://drinkinginflipflops.shutterfly.com/
also, Elisha’s blog is more current than mine…
Once again I’m behind…however, the photo page is being updated and hopefully I’ll get to the blog shortly…
http://drinkinginflipflops.shutterfly.com/
also, Elisha’s blog is more current than mine…
It´s been a long time coming, but I just haven´t really felt like writing anything recently. We´re currently in Puerto Montt, Chile waiting patiently to board the Navimag boat to Puerto Natales and slip into Patagonia! After leaving Perú we entered Chile and quickly made our way down the coast to meet friends in Santiago…I´ll try to write updates while on the boat and post them when we arrive in Puerto Natales, but I´m not making any gaurantees… In the mean time, the photo site has been updated through most of Chile and Elisha´s blog has been updated more than this one, so check that out…¡Hasta Patagonia!..
New Year’s came and went in Arequipa, Peru; the small hostel we were staying at celebrated by setting off fire-crackers in the street, hanging yellow lei’s around our necks and passing out glasses of champagne to ring in the approaching new year. This along with the bottle of champagne Elisha and I bought and the full moon hanging over the nearby volcanoes mad for a pretty good new year…
We spent the following week enrolled in Spanish classes just down the street from our hostel. …not too bad, however, we found that such long gaps between our studying really doesn’t advance us like you would think, rather it just keeps reviewing. oh well… About the only thing of any significance that we did outside of studying Spanish was to visit the old monastary/convent in town. It is a huge winding and rambling complex, a small village really, enclosed by high stone walls and painted up in lively red, orange and blue colors; quite eye catching! Many of the rooms are small cell-like affairs that don’t leave a lot to be desired; although I read that the nuns in the convent were all from very well-to-do families, so I assume some luxuries were permitted…
After finishing up Spanish classes, we caught a bus that Friday afternoon to the Southern border town between Peru and Chile where we passed a pleasant night before an early start at crossing the border. The crossing was fairly simple: We made our way to the bus station and found a taxi company to take us across the border (the border was about 30 kilometres away, but the colectivo taxis seemed to be the way to go), exchanged some U.S. $ to Chilean pesos (at the actual exchange rate!), and hopped in the car. At the border we passed through with minimal formalities and were then on our way. Even the desert seemed cleaner once we crossed the border! Once into Chile we hit the ATM and caught a just departing bus further South to the desert/beach town of Iquique.
Once in Iquique we passed a few pleasant days laying out in the sun on the beach along the Pacific coast, and otherwise marveled at the Chilean drivers who not only appeared to see the pedestrians standing along the side of the road, but actually STOPPED to allow us to cross the street with out any sort of prompting! We looked at each other in amazement and wondered aloud where we were!…
In addition to hanging out on the beach we did manage to make it up to the ghost town of Humberstone: an abandoned nitrate mining town in the middle of the desert. It was a bit eerie wandering through the town, left standing exactly how it was the day the mining company pulled out; it’s easy to understand why they say the old theatre feels haunted…
After a few days in Iquique we caught an overnight (24 hours!) bus to the capital, Santiago, to meet up with two of Elisha’s co-workers who were coming down to join us for a few weeks.
photos arequipa, peru: http://www.drinkinginflipflops.shutterfly.com/1335
photos iquique, chile: http://www.drinkinginflipflops.shutterfly.com/1383
Finally, the photos have caught up to the blog!.. All the pictures are posted up through the Colca Canyon Trek; hopefully I can keep things pretty updated from now.
…I also added the photos from Nicaragua to site as well…
http://drinkinginflipflops.shutterfly.com/?role=-1
After arriving in Arequipa we decided to do a 3-day trek through part of the Colca Canyon, supposedly the second deepest canyon in the world (the deepest canyon is also nearby in Peru). Supposedly there are a bunch of tours to the canyon offered by companies in Arequipa, but for the most part I don’t think they actually hike down INTO the canyon, so we decided to do it on our own as we’ve talked to plenty of people who said it was easy to do… Normally people take a bus to the tiny village of Cabanaconde, and from there they hike down to an area called the Oasis, then the following day hike back up; and then either on the way to or from Cabanaconde they stop at a mirador to spot Andean condors.
We decided to try something a little different, an attempt at a 3-day trek from the top of the canyon to the small town of Tapay on the other side, then onto Sangalle (the Oasis) and then up early in the morning to catch a bus out of Cabanaconde…
We caught an early, and I mean EARLY bus out of Arequipa at 3:00 am, and then slept for a few hours before waking up, passing through the high, windy plains. Llamas and vicunas (smaller, endangered cousins of the llama and alpaca) dotted the grassy slopes at the bottom of the mountains. We passed through a few smaller pueblos before being dropped off at the Cruz del Condor viewing site. This roadside viewing station has one (or several, I’m not sure), condor nests nearby and it’s rare not to see the condors flying about. We didn’t see any condors close up here, but we did see two floating high above the hillsides about 1km away…
To get to the start of our proposed trek we were told that we had to walk a few kilometres down the road, past the next mirador, and then head down the canyon. Easy enough, so off we went. Once at the next mirador we took a break to take a few photos of the canyon; now this may be one of the deepest canyons in the world and at some point twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, but it isn’t as spectacular or posses the beauty of the later. In fact if no one told you, you wouldn’t really know. Colca Canyon looks just like any other valley running through the mountains, it is not like stepping up to the Grand Canyon and staring into it’s gaping maw… As we resting a condor flew past us a little way below the viewing station and then circled up above us, again and again off into the distance. It was quite awe-inspiring as you could hear the wind whooshing through it’s feathers and see the enormity of the bird.
We headed off to the start of the trail to Tapay, only we couldn’t find it. We had been told it was about 1 km past the mirador, and had a sign, but we saw nothing. I actually think that you may have had to start the trek from the mirador, but it was too late for that so we continued for about 8 miles to Cabanaconde where we had lunch and decided to head down to the Oasis and come up with a plan there.
The hike down into the canyon was about 3 steep hours through the late afternoon sun. The trail was easy to follow, but was what one might expect a long slog down a gravel pit to be like; loose stones and rock dust everywhere. By the end of it we appeared to be covered in ash, and the dust was so thick that taking a drink of water left you with a thin coating of mud and slime across your tongue. Large flowering cacti covered the sides as soon as we began our decent, only to give way to several large palm trees at the bottom: the ‘Oasis.’
The Oasis, while having the requisite palm trees, is really nothing more than a collection of shacks (hovels really), arranged around several man-made pools of what I assume to be water from the Colca river. We had already arranged for a place to stay once we arrived, and were quickly shown to our abode. We were put up in a bamboo thatch hut with a dusty, dirty floor and a bed to one side with a large amount of vines and creepers invading the overhead space from the outside. It really wasn’t too bad (the bed was pretty comfortable), but anything that touched the floor instantly turned dark grey…
We took a quick dip in the pool as the sun was starting to go down and it was beginning to cool down for the evening, then had a beer before retiring for the day. Earlier, on our way down the canyon, we had thought about doing our proposed trip in reverse, but we really couldn’t find a way to justify it too ourselves as we could see the towns we were thinking of visiting and we just didn’t think there would be anything to do at them. The next morning we woke up and began our 1000 metre ascent back to the top and Cabanaconde, where we planned to spend the night before heading back to Arequipa in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve…
Feliz navidad from Caraz, Perú! Today is basically a rest day for us as we weren´t sure what would be happening here on Christams. Turns out just about everything in town is open and it´s not too diferent from any other day. We probably could have done the Santa Cruz trek and found some form of transportation back, but probably better that we didn´t risk it…
Tomorrow we have a bus bright and early to Lima and then an overnight bus down to Arequipa shortly there after… We´re still hoping to get a little trekking done there (Colca Canyon), and we might take a week of Spanish classes. (i was going to try to summit a higher peak, but it seems that most of the guiding agencies are on vacation through january…)
…Merry Christmas everyone!
We spent the majority of our first day in Caraz wandering abou the mercado looking for foodstuffs to take with us on our 4-day hike through the Cordillera Blanca, via the Santa Cruz Trek. We were even able to buy a map from a local tour company/outfitter and white gas for the camping stove from the local hardwear shop. Even though it’s the rainy season we were going to make an attempt at the trail and the 4700 metre high pass; we’re here now and unfortunately weren’t able to plan everything around the right seasons… With all of our gear packed up and ready to go and the stove tested I began to look around the room for my shoes. Alas, they were nowhere to be found! (and these were the shoes I just bought in Bogota because my pair before that fell apart). Elisha remembers seeing them under the bed back in Cajamarca and I’m sure they’re still there…
Thus our hike was cancelled (because even if I found a new pair we were a bit leary about finding return transport on Christmas day if we postponed it by a day, and we already had our bus tickets to head to Arequipa on the 26), and we had to spend the next day shopping in Huaraz. Once again I was a bit on edge about looking for shoes as the good imported stuff tends to be quite a bit more expensive than back home. While wandering around Huaraz looking for some stores mentioned in our guidebook we came across a branch of Tatoo Adventure Gear, which seems to be a South American Outdoor chain; they carry imported stuff as well as their own clothes. I was in luck, as they had a nice pair of Keens for the same price back home (they also had sales on other coats and jackets, and I was tempted to pick upa Marmot softshell but I didn’t really need it…). With my feet newly shod we returned to the tranquil confines of miniature Caraz.
Elisha and I both agreed that we made an excellent choice by avoiding Huaraz in favor of Caraz, with it’s small palm lined plaza. (to be fair though, we really didn’t see much of Huaraz, but neither of us are really big fans of most big cities these days). The mountains closing us in from all directions is also a nice touch. While we can’t really see the tops of the White mountains due to the almost continual cloud cover, we can see a bit of the Black mountains, and I’m sure the view is even more spectacular in the summer.
The following day I decided to go on a mountain bike trip up into Huascaran National Park (the Cordillera Blancas). I rented a bike and had a taxi drive me for two glorious hours up into the mountains to the pass of Portochuelo at close to 4800 metres. As we were still in the drier, browner lowlands I got my first glimps of the snow-capped peaks that had been hiding amongst the clouds for the past three days. I almost peed my pants I was so excited! Every turn in the road brought a better view of the peaks and surrounding areas. Once dropped off at the high point my driver departed and left me alone in the silence and wind to stare in awe and amazment. I was hardly able to make it down on the bike as I kept trying to look up at the mountains until I careened to the edge and had to swerve back onto the road. One side of the valley would clear of cloud cover and the peaks would shine down on me, and then a bit later it would cover itself back up and the opposite range would reveal itself. I could hardly believe it. I was a bit dissapointed at myself for having left my shoes, making us unable to trek through all this countryside; but the view was still spectacular. I think it may have been better than Glacier National Park back in Montana. And if Patagonia is anything close to this it will be amazing…
Winding my way down the mountian, with shear cliffs dripping with waterfalls, I was in heaven. About halfway back to the park entrance I passed to milky-blue glacier fed lakes that reminded me of one back in Glacier. I actually passed a guy biking UP the road, which I thought was crazy. I was winded on the straight stretch and minor uphill that I had to contend with; I have no idea how he managed to pedal his way over up and over the pass…
The following day we were going to do a day hike to Lago Paron, a short bus ride and hike form Caraz, but Elisha wasn’t feeling well and we postponed it for the following day. We woke up at 5am to catch the 6am bus and on our walk to and from the station we noticed that for the first time the high snowy peaks of the Cordillera Blanca were visible from the plaza. And almost everywhere in town. The clouds had even pulled back from the top of the Cordillera Negra and we could see that they had a sprinkling of snow crowning them as well. Well, at least if we couldn’t hike I could sit on our balcony and stare at their majesty… On the way back to the hostel we saw a woman sitting on the side of the street with a large mesh bag of guinea pigs, someone is getting cuy for Christmas!..
Once again we woke up early to try to find the early collectivo to Pueblo Paron in order to walk to the lake. We had been informed by everyone that there was a collectivo leaving at 6am; however, once there we were informed it wouldn´t be until 7am. We decided not to wait any longer and caught a cab up the mountian. Again the road was just barely big enough for the taxi, and we probably could have used 4WD. Numerous snowy peaks began to appear as we wound our way upwards, and I was excited to be back up in the mountains again.
Once at the hamlet we cornered by an apparent park employee and were told we had to sign the log book and pay a 10 soles entrance fee. No big deal but all we had was a 100 soles bill and he had no change. We left him the 100 and he told us that he´d be waiting for us when we returned, so we headed off wondering if we´d ever see our change again…
The walk was pretty spectacular with the high mountain walls draped in thin ribbons of water, and the shear faces reaching towards heaven. Some of the peaks reminded me of Zion National Park in Utah. We continued walking for aboiut 4 hours before we decided to turn back and head for the pueblo. We had read varying accounts of the time it took to walk to the lake (between 4-6 hours), but the ast collectivo headed down the mountain between either 1pm or 2pm and we didn´t want to miss it. Even though we never saw the lake, we did see several spectacular mountains and had a great walk…
Back at Parón the bus didn´t leave at 1, so I guess we could have hiked a bi longer and possibly seen the lake IF it was only a 4 hour walk (which I don´t think it was). No sooner had we crossed out of the park, the gatekeeper came up to us with our 80 soles change! Not bad. Then after lounging about on the grass for a bit the minibus pulled up, disgorged it´s current passenger load and we hopped on for our most crowded bus ride to date: in our 13 passeger van, we crammed in 25 people (we counted!) with 5 more young boys on the roof along with stacks of firewood and other pckages! And to be quite honest, I think we could have fit in another 4-5 people easily…
We arrived in Cajamarca after a long day on buses, and after shopping around for a decently priced hostel we headed out to find some dinner. From just the taxi ride from the bus stop to the Plaza de Armas, we both agreed that Cajamarca was going to be a better town than Chachapoyas. The town is loaded with quaint colonial style buildings and is built on the side of a hill with several cobbled- and tree-lined streets closed to traffic…
There were supposedly a few sites to see around town and in town itself, and as Elisha is ever so ready to point out, I can’t pass up the opportunity to try to look at some old rocks or churches… Thus established, I found a colectivo bus to take me to the site of “Ventanillas de Otuzco.” These are pre-incan (I think) burial sites carved into the side of a mountain. There is a cliff covered in 1m x 1 m x 1m squares carved out of the solid rock, that at one time were filled with either bones or mummies, I’m not sure. The site was nice, although the short ride through the country side and dairy farms helped. Supposedly there is a second similar and nicer site about 30 km outside of town, but the only way to get to those really is on an organized tour; and as the tour companies had no one else signed up to go it would have been expensive…
Our plan was to get to the tiny town of Caraz back up high in the Andes to try to do some trekking in the Cordillera Blanca if the weather held out. It’s the rainy season now, so we’re not sure what the weather will actually be like in the mountains. I wanted to take the lesser used route through the Canon del Pato, so we needed to be in Chimbote before 8am in order to catch it. We thought that we would have no problems doing so, catching an early bus to Trujillo and then onto Chimbote for a night and then up bright and early for the bus. Our plan was derailed however when we found out our laundry wouldn’t be finished early enough, but we got lucky and managed to find a direct bus to Chimbote (thus saving us a night there) that should arrive just time.
Our ride from Cajamarca to Chimbote was, I think, probably the worst bus ride we had been on. The bus itself wasn’t so bad, but we sat in the very front which turned out to have limited leg room as the buses are built for the considerably shorter Peruvians. It also felt as if the bus driver just gave up on the road and decided to just point it in the direction we needed to go and covered the majority of the route off-roading. Either that or he found a set of stairs to drive down. I don’t think I fell asleep until the ride was almost finished and I was too exhausted to care anymore…
We pulled into Chimbote and easily found the bus heading up the Canon del Pato. This was our second pass through Chimbote (Elisha got her 3-chicken foot soup right outside town on our first pass South), and I believe we were lucky not to have stayed the night. The town is permeated with the smell of fish from the multitude of nearby fish factories. The beginning of the trip through town and the outskirts was uneventful and I managed to catch a few moments of sleep.
Once again we started to enter the dry ascent to the mountains, only this time there was nary a green thing in site. The road, the mountain side, the houses and the air were all a dung colored brown and dry as death; and below us the river raged passed a thin grafite smear through the countryside. At some points the air was so filled with dust that you couldn’t see out the windy and we were covered in a brown grime; after taking a drink of water you were left with a thin mud coating in your mountain. We continued upwards with the occasional mud brick house randomly placed alongside the road, more mud bricks drying in the front yard. As the bus rounded corners you could feel the back wheels sliding out from behind us as the tires spun in the slag heap of a road. We rounded corners just wind enough for one vehicle only to find that part of the shoulder was eroded off into the water below, and I could picture the tire stretching to maintain its fickle grasp on the dirt and air barely keeping us from plunging over… This was the most nervous I’ve been on any bus ride so far. Creeping higher into the mountains the canyon became so steep and so close together (maybe 15-20 metres wide at some parts), that the engineers had constructed over 35 hand-carved tunnels through the rock. Most of them only a few bus lengths long, but a few so long they had to carve holes into the side and out the canyon to let in the light. I’m not sure what would have happened had we been whipping through the tunnels and came across another bus or truck as there wasn’t room in the tunnel for us to pass a person standing sideways, let alone a vehicle.
We crept along slowly making our way higher. Eventually you could see past the dry mountain tops next to us and make out the base of the high peaks ahead, their heads buried under a thick blanket of clouds. As we continued the scenery slowly started to change and a few cacti and other shrubs appeared beside us. Finally we shot out of the last tunnel and onto tarmac, and with that the mountain burst into lushness: mango and other trees appeared in the valley and a light mist fell down on us and cooled off the air. After almost 15 hours on buses we pulled into Caraz, happy to finally be amongst the snow covered peaks of the Cordillera Blanca…
We had read in the guidebook that road we planned to travel from Chachapoyas to Cajamarca would traverese some hellish dirt roads across two high mountain passes, and would entail us stopping for the night in Celendin after 16 hours only to continue on the following day for another five. This, fortunately, was not to be…
We woke up at the ungodly early hour of 4am in order to catch the 5am bus from Chachappyas to Celendin. Once onboard the bus we decided to may two passes through the town for no apparent reason before we finally got on our way. Since we had already been on part of the road before, we both slept for teh first hour and a half unti lwe arrived in the small village of Leymebamba. The town appeared quite pleasant, sent on the side of verdant green mountains. There was hardly any vars in town and the town itself seemed infinitely better than Chachapoyas appeared. Elisha and I both agreed that had we known what Leymebamba was like we would have spent the last several nights here instead… As we were walking about on our 15 minute break, we noticed a sign for Movil Tours (another bus company) that stated it had a bus leaving at 8am from Leymebamba. This came as a bit of a surprise as we thought there was only one bus company heading that way, and we were already on it.
Pulling out of Leymebamba we passed small mud brick houses lining the side of the road before gaining greater altitude, twisting and turning our way forward up the mountian. The views of the surrounding peaks and countryside, with its lush tapestry of shimmering greens was well worth the upcoming long hours on the bus. After another hour or so we passed a road crew with a grader and roller making sure the road remained smooth (this was one of three such crews we would pass along the way), and then we came to a stop in front of a small shack purchased on the side of the mountian. This is where we would eat breakfast and use the bathroom. Well, sort of… The bathroom was located another 50 metres down the road: a tin-roofed latrine also perched on the edge of the world…
We continued along for another four hours with nary a bump in the road, arriving in Celendin around 2pm (had the guidebook been correct we wouldn´t have pulled in for another 3 to 4 hours. Originally we thought we would stay in Celendin for the night and catch an early morning bus on to Cajamarca, but just down the road from our bus company we spotted the Movil Tours office and went to check it out. Sure enough, they had a bus leaving for Cajamarca at 3pm and would arrive before 6 (apparently they have a bus leaving Chachapoyas at 6am, and after a breif break in Celendin it continues on to Cajamarca). Without any hesitation we bought our tickets.
The Movil Tours ride was a little more comfortable as we were able to get the front seats with more leg room; however teh bus smelled of vomit. We shortly figured out this was due to the old lady in the back, as the bus´offsider had to run back to her a few times to deliver a few emergency plastic bags and newspapers. The scenery was similar to the previous bus ride, but the mountains began to take on a golden hue as the sun lowered itself in the sky… At one point we stopped to pick up an aged indigenous woman, and as she was tossing her bundles aboard the bus a donkey loaded down with large tin milk jugs raised his head to watch, obstinately chewing his cud…
After spending a day in Lima we decided to head North to the little beach town of Huanchaco. Here we settled in for a few days of relaxing: sunbathing on the beach and otherwise really just doing nothing. It was nice to be away from all the touts of Cusco and Nazca and just be able to relax; although there were people selling trinkets on the side of the road they left us completely alone. The one odd thing about the beach were the naked, grey mountains poking their heads up behind town. It was quite a different beach experience from the beaches we had previously visited in Colombia and Venezuela. After giving our road weary bones a bit of break we decided to head a little farther North and back into the Andes…
We caught the only night bus from Trujillo to Chachapoyas, teh capital of the Amazonas province. We arrived bright and early in the morning and after settling into our hostel I decided I would try to make good use of the day. Our next destination is the city of Celendin, a remote and hard to get to town, supposedly over rough but spectacular scenery; since buses were said to be infrequent I searched out the bus station and bought tickets for 5am on Wednesday morning (our other option was on Friday morning). Tickets in hand I decided to head off to the sarcophogi of Karajía… Immediately I found a collectivo taxi leaving town on the first leg of the journey to the small village of Luya, our barely held together little Toyota hatch-back tackling routes fit only for 4WD vehicles. Once there it was another 45 minute wait for the taxi to fill up to head to the next village of Cruzpata.
A little over half way to Cruzpata we were stopped in some intermidiary town due to an assembly taking place in the town square. There was also another cab there trying to get through to Cruzpata, so our driver had me and another gentleman hop into that cab and then we had to crosscounty up and down barely there roads in order to circumvent the plaza. (we ended up driving through part of it anyway, so I´m not sure why we had to make the original detour in the first place).
In Cruzpata, which was more of a ramshackle collection of mud-brick shantys than a village, my driver told me he would leave town at 4pm and meet me right where I was dropped off at. Return transportation secured, I paid my 3 soles admission fee and started my kilometre trek to the sarcophogi… The sarcophogi were more interesting than I had anticipated, they were about 2-3 metres tall with elongated heads and with symbols painted in red ochre across the bodies. It was nice being the only one at the site, and after an hour I made my return to town. I spent the remaining our waiting for the driver, and as it turns out he and his wife (who I had thought was just another passenger before) were visiting family for a nephews birthday party. At a little after 4 we piled back in the car for the ride back and the search for more paying fares… On teh outskirts of town we found what we were looking for: a whole family! In the back of the station wagon piled in two young boys, next to me sat a young girl and following her in the car was the mother with another baby under her left arm and chicken under the right! Thus fully loaded we proceeded without incident back to Luya…
The following day Elisha and I decided to go see the main attraction in the area: the ruins of Kuelap. Built by the Chachapoyas people prior to Incas, the site was rumored to be second only to Macchu Picchu. Our guidebook said that there were collectivos to the village of Kuelap just below the ruins, but everyone we talked to in the area they were supposed to leave from denied there existence, so we hopped a car to Tingo about halfway to Kuelap where we hoped to find ongoing transportation or hike up the 6 hour trail to the ruins. When we got dropped off there weren´t any waiting cars to take us further up the mountains and no one seemed to when, if at all, any would come along. As our taxi driver was less than helpful with any knowledge of the trail up we decided to ask police officer standing nearby; he didn´t know, but he started to ask another person standing there. As she was trying to figure it out the officer pointed at a nearby truck loaded with bags of cement and said they´re heading to Maria (a town a 2 hour walk from Kuelap), you can ride with them. The officer walked over to the driver and his helper and ionformed them of what they were going to do. At first the offsider said that there wasn´t any room in the truck for two additional people, so the cop pointed to the back and said we could ride there. With that sorted out we hopped in the back of the truck as it started to rumble and shake its way up the dirt path…
From what I can gather, Kuelap is about 40 km from Tingo, and it took us three hours to go the first 30 km to Maria in the back of the jostling truck. When we got to Maria we were dissapointed to discover no further form of transport, and we started walking up the road. After a few kilometres a lady with 2 hourses pulled up next to us and asked us if we wanted to ride them to the top. Even after our last horse riding experience we inquired as to the cost and time savings. The cost was 15 soles per horse, but apparently they walk no faster than me because she said it would still take the 2 hours we were planning, so we passed. Turned out to be a good idea as they were never more than 100 metres ahead of us, and the horses sounded like they were panting just doing that pace… The road to the top was long, dusty and hot with a marker every kilometre so we knew just how much longer we had until we hit the ruins. We were a little nervous as we hadn´t seen a single vehicle pass us heading up to the ruins all day, although we met two guys coming down from the site that claimed there were two minibuses up there. It looked like we would reach the top at about 3pm, and if we couldn´t find a ride back we would either ahve to hike the trail down to Tingo and try to catch a ride back from there (and we were told the collectivos leave Tingo at 6pm and it was at least a 3 hour hike down), or be stranded somewhere in the mountains and try to find a way back the following day. Just then an absolutely jam-packed minibus passed us heading down the mountian. Great. Just one left at the top. Then just as we were rounding the final bend up to the entrance area another fully pakced minibus pulled into the parking lot, but it didn´t look like they would have room for us on the way down. As soon as we got in the parking lot I headed for the one other minibus and asked if they had space to take us back to Chachapoyas with us. The driver said yes, but that his group was already on their way back from the site, so we wouldn´t have time to see it ourselves. Shit! We came all this way and would have to settle for a picture of the fortress from the parking lot! After weighing our odds on the chance of getting another car down or hiking out in time we decided to skip the ruins, cut our losses and head down with the minibus. Oh well, something to look forward to see next trip to Perú!..
Tomorrow our supposedly beautifully horrific 14 hour butt-slapping ride through two high Andean passes to Celendin…