Saturday morning was phone time again. Because of the 7 hour time difference to Germany it’s the only time nobody has to get up at odd hours to talk.

I was actually invited for a barbecue at the hourse of a nice guy from the U.S. who owns a local Pisco bar. But since I couldn’t reach him the invitation was useless as I didn’t know where to go. The students traditionally play soccer on the company-owned field outside the office on Saturdays, so I decided to join them this time. We played 5 against 5 and it was a lot of fun, luckily there were some people who were not too much better than I am in soccer.

When I came back to the hostel I was introduced to the granddaughter of the owner, who just finished school and wanted to play at one of the many local concerts in a park in downtown Lima that evening. I spontaneously decided to join, so I had my first trip to the historic center of Lima at night with some friends of my host’s daughter who went by car and kindly gave me a ride. Unfortunately the band was late at the concert, so they couldn’t play. Instead we listened to a kind of rock concert for about an hour, but our position next to a bass-speaker wasn’t really optimal. Besides that it was interesting to see another part of the local culture – public concerts in parks are really common over here and are free due to sponsorship from the city government.

When we came back in the night I quickly snatched up some stuff to take for sunday (headlight, sunblock, water, bread and bananas) and set the alarm to 5.10 a.m.

In the morning I took the Metropolitano, a modern bus which has its own track and is operated by the government. It is powered by Peruvian natural gas and runs very frequently, even on sunday morning. I met a small group of Couchsurfers (one was from Berlin, living here for two years) a ten-minutes bus drive away (still Miraflores) to share two cabs and go to the meeting place, where our bus would depart to the Cañón de Autisha. We arrived there very early, but the 90 minutes until our bus finally departed passed quickly, because there were so many people to talk to. Except for some German and French only Spanish was spoken, so I had some difficulties.

The group was really interesting. We were about 40 people with only a few tourists and most of the group Peruvians. The age was range was probably from 15 to 40 years. There were solo travelers like me as well as small groups, but everyone seemed to share the CS spirit and talked to everybody.

The bus ride was only 20 soles (6€) and I would say the bus was local standard, definitely without ABS 😉 We went up the whole time and soon reached the really nice village of Chosica, where I unfortunately didn’t take pictures as I was talking to a cute Peruvian girl all the time 😀

Soon after this village (we had already reached an altitude of about 1800 meters) the street turned to a path, where most people would not think about driving a normal car in Europe. The bus was shaking like crazy and almost didn’t make it around the steep curves. Additionally there was so much dust inside (the driver would not close his window), that you could barely breathe. We went through a small river and the chassis of the bus hit some rocks really hard, so that everyone thought it would break, but nothing really happened. I really didn’t want to think about going all this way back downwards and the local people seemed not really used to such a ride as well. At one point we had to decide whether to continue walking for 90 minutes or go by bus for approx. 30 minutes some people didn’t want to walk, so everybody had to take the bus to not waste the other’s time. At about half the way up it took 10 minutes to get around one curve, with the bus going back and fourth all the time and some guys on telling the driver how many centimeters he had on each edge, half of the people couldn’t stand being on the bus anymore and continued walking. I joined them of course and enjoyed the absence of dust after the bus had passed.

Shortly afterwards we arrived where the bus was parked. There was a small bridge from one to the other side of the canyon, where a small group did bungee-jumping. We wondered whether we might get close to their level of adrenaline 😀

After walking some 15 minutes on a small path we reached the chasm of the canyon and the first obstacle – we had to climb down about 3 meters on a rope. A discussion about who should go first started and somebody said “why not one of the Germans?” so I went, but it wasn’t that difficult for me, at this point height was a huge advantage. Because we were so many people, we went on directly in small groups. Now we were inside an abandoned hydroelectric power plant and descended down into the canyon inside an elevator shaft. Inside there was no light except that from our torches and we met some bats.

After about half the way down we continued walking in a tunnel, which was obviously made for Peruvians and encountered another difficulty. A wooden ladder of about 5 meters was fixed almost horizontally there (it somehow looks more vertical on the picture) and stringed with some net. The gaps between the steps were quite huge even for me and I didn’t really trust that net. The view at least 20 meters down contributed to some pulse rise as well, but this is what we came for 🙂

Now it was done and we took a brake to enjoy the waterfall and took pictures. Two guys even went for a swim in the small lake, which supposedly had about 10°C.

When we had almost reached the bus in a group of about 10 people a girl came running behind us and told us to go back in order to rescue another girl who had fallen into the canyon. I didn’t understand the details she told us, but from looking at the other’s faces I was certain that I did understand the main point. Honestly, at this point I was thinking we had no chance of doing anything for somebody who fell down this high, but when we reached the canyon again the girl was already back on track with just a few scratches. She had – maybe exhausted from the climbing – slipped of the way and fell a few meters where she was able to grab some root and climb back up. So she was really lucky and everybody was relieved. At least at this point I guess everybody had enough adrenaline, but we still needed to survive the bus ride.

When everybody was back at the bus it was 6 p.m. and almost dark. The prospect of driving that dangerous road in the dark almost appealed to nobody, but we wanted to go back. Except for that one curve, where we needed 10 minutes again and the top scratched the rocks at one point we soon reached civilization again and stopped in the first small village to buy some food and sodas from women selling it directly on the street.

Still the street was more suited for Jeeps and quite small, so as you probably expect by now we encountered the next problem. A broken car stood right in the middle of the street and the owner – a really old man – insisted on repairing the car there, so we couldn’t move. After about 45 minutes our driver lost his patience and went by, but it was really tight again.

When we arrived in Lima at about 10 p.m. there was a big goodbye ceremony and people headed in all directions. This day was incredible – first time out of Lima and first time to experience the CS spirit. I can definitely use more of it!

If this post wasn’t enough, you may also like this video 🙂