When I checked out at 4 a.m. I was surprised by the price of my hotel room. They gave me a discount without me even asking for it. This never happened to me in any other city (usually you have to be alert, because they try charging more than the list price), but this is already the second time here in Cajamarca. Well – I don’t mind.

The bus to Chachapoyas was pretty ok and comfortable, althogh the bumper was missing. We stopped in Calendín for some time and when the bus suddenly left ahead of time I had to ran after it (luckily I always stay close to the bus, because you just can’t trust the bus companies here) and nocked the door. They let me in, but pointed out they were just changing some oil and would come back. I guess they could have just told us earlier.

The ride itself was scenic, but Wikitravel nails it: “This is a spectacular road to travel and in a big bus definitely not for the faint hearted.” We were driving about thirteen hours, out of which 2 hours were on what we would call “road”. It was shaking so badly most of the time, that reading was difficult, but managable.

All the six Gringos on the bus turned out to be Germans (counting one Swiss girl as German too), which was quite funny. I had no idea what to do or where to stay in Chachapoyas and the Swiss girl was so kind to give me her a map and recommended a hotel.

Chachapoyas is really small, so taking a taxi is completely needless.  As always just walking to the Plaza de Armas offers a variety of Tour Agencies and Restaurants.

I find it quite interesting how different all the towns are. For example I was always looking for Panaderias to buy some bread, but they are scarce in almost all Peruvian towns. Here every second shop seems to be one and I’m in heaven.  Unfortunately I’m having difficulties finding a store offering fruits, but it seems like you just can’t have anything at the same time 🙂

For about 9 € I had booked two tours today that cover most of the tourist spots in Cajamarca. At 9.30 we left in a small bus to Cumbre Mayo, an interesting formation of rocks at an altitude of about 3500 meters. Our guide was really nice and took us to a walking tour a bit longer than the usual tours (about 2 hours walking). He pointed out several times that the walking was very easy for “you young people”, so that the Peruvians had no chance to object in any graceful way. Still afterwards all the people from Lima complained a lot about how exhausting it was.

Luckily I was not the only Gringo, there were two Swiss tourists who had travelled all the way from Mexico by bus. We had some talk, but it disturbed me that I almost couldn’t understand anything when they were talking to themselves – even though technically in German (I usually feel good understanding most peoples’ talk, except for French and Swiss German). During the walk we saw ancient water channels the Inca used to get drinking water from the mountains to Cajamarca, but unfortunately I had forgot to recharge my camera, so no pictures of that. Up there almost everybody was freezing, because the cold wind was not what we had expected after the very nice weather in Cajamarca.

In the 90 minutes break until the next tour I got to recharge the camera a bit, so I could take pictures of a dairy business run by a Swiss couple (Cajamarca is famous in Peru for its dairy products, in fact most of those are produced in Cajamarca, because they have very fertile soil and a lot of grass). They had a lot of Swiss cheese and posters, but even if they use Swiss technology it is quite old (or let’s say traditional). The Swiss couple was again with us and commented that dairy factories in Switzerland would have looked like that 50 years ago. Additionally they seemed to apply Peruvian standards of hygiene, because everybody can walk through and touch almost everything. What they gave us to try was very tasty, though and most of us bought at least something.

Afterwards we went to a nice garden and the other major tourist attraction, the Ventanillas de Otuzco, a pre-inca necropolis. On the way there our street was blocked by workers and we had to turn around, which was very difficult. In the end we had to enter a private property to make the turn and the owners eyed us very suspiciously. That did cost us some time, but we just made it to Otuzco before it closed.

After the tour I had a nice pizza and went to bed relatively early, because the alarm for the next morning was set to 3.30 a.m. for the bus to Chachapoyas.

It could have been so easy, but the bus from Máncora to Chiclayo already was a bit late on departure and since it picked up some passengers at unplanned stops (probably the driver made some extra money) we arrived about 1.30 hours late – exactly the time to change to the Cajamarca-bound bus. Of course that one was punctual, it left the terminal right before we entered. The next bus would leave at 1.30 p.m., which is 14 hours later. Luckily a Peruvian lady was also affected so we were two discussing with the remaining staff in the bus station (they were about to close). In the end we agreed to take the next bus (what other chance did we have), but I managed to make the bus company pay for my hotel (a very basic one though) – I had not expected that to be possible.
So I walked around Chiclayo a bit in the morning, but it really seems not to offer a lot for tourists. At least I found a nice café for breakfest.
The next bus was absolutely new and very nice. Apart from that the curtains were closed, because people often throw stones at busses on this route, the view was spectacular. So besides wasting almost the whole day I would have definitely missed those views on the overnight bus.
We arrived in Cajamarca when it was already dark. Because most bus stations are in close proximity to each other I walked around asking for a bus to Chachapoyas and was slightly disappointed again. There is no overnight bus at all, so I’ll have to waste another day. Thursday I will have the pleasure to catch the bus at 4.30 a.m.
The rest of the evening was more successful, I booked two tours for the next day and found a decent hotel close to the main square. It’s just 7 Euro per night in a single room and has hot showers (which is a luxury at times here in Peru). It was a bit spooky finding my room in the labyrinth-like structure of the hotel with most floors being dark, but in the end I even managed to turn on the light on my floor (one of three switches did the trick).
Good thing the tour starts at 9.30 tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it 🙂

Both me and my roommate in the hostel got up shortly after 5 a.m., to start our treks. I met Pia at 6 a.m. and we walked to our tour agency. Kevin, another French tourist had decided to join last-minute so we were four tourists and two guides.

At first we ate a basic breakfest, then our car arrived and we rode a bout 1,5 hours to our starting point at 3800 meters. There we paid the entrance fee to the National Park Huascaran (65 soles) and started our hike. It was very cold and windy, but beautiful. The first few hours we walked straight through the valley were we met a British mountain biker and two Australians hiking without a tour. Then we went up to our camping spot at 4500 meters. When we arrived, it was already getting cold, so we quickly set up the tents. While we had tasty sandwiches for lunch (with cheese, meat and avocado), the dinner was just awesome. A soup, pasta and tea – pure luxury far away from civilization. Meanwhile my clock showed 5 °C and we were all freezing. Our guides told us it was forbidden to light a fire, but we still had a small one. Otherwise our only option would have been going to sleep (and it was not even 8 p.m.). They had even brought Marshmallows and we had a lot of fun when they started reading our future in the fire. Kevin felt a bit ill and went to bed early, but we enjoyed the fire a bit more.

The equipment (tent and sleeping bag) were also really good, but still it was cold during the night, so we did not get too much sleep. When we got up at about 7.30 the sun was just beginning to unfreeze the frost that covered all our things. My water from the little river that I had filled in the evening to let the purification pills do their magic overnight was also half ice.

The breakfest was incredible – we had pancakes with banana and apples as well as chocolate cream. It was without doubt my best breakfest here in Peru till now. At about 9 a.m. we were all ready and started our climb. Kevin was still feeling bad (most probably due to the altitude), but was determined to continue the trek, so we went all together.

The path was ascending quickly and at about 4700 meters I was beginning to feel the altitude as well (slight headache) and was really hoping it would not get worse. Fortunately it did not. Still the altitude causes a very stange feeling of exhaustion that is not comparable to the feeling e.g. after running a competion or working hard for a long time. It really felt like being seriously ill and you had to decide between going on or dieing there. When we finally reached 5094 (thats what my GPS said) everybody was relatively quiet – quite a contrast to the first day when we talked a lot and made a lot of jokes (including dirty ones, quite a challenge in Spanish…). Kevin was feeling very bad, but he went on without complaining much. The view from our highest point was really astonishing, but it was cold and we were all wanting to go down again, so we just took a few pictures.

We decided to have lunch at 4700 meters, because Kevin just could not go on and the girls were hungry as well. I still had some headache and was not very keen to eat anything, but they persuaded me to eat some sandwiches and afterwards we were really all feeling a lot better. Soon we reached 4200 meters and it felt like being newborn. We ran the last meters to the campsite and climbed a big rock

Unfortunately we were not relatively close to civilisation again, so we could not make a fire. When it was getting really cold we were trying to set up a very small fire, but watching out for people Leo and me both saw a light for half a second. Nobody answered our “Hola?”, so the Peruvians felt they had to search the whole area, but there was nobody. Because Because robberies seem to happen at remote spots, we to ok precautions and put anything valuable into our tents this night and distinguished the fire. We were in bed directly after dinner (which was good as always) at about 8 p.m. The night was slightly warmer, but still we did not sleep more than half of the time, so I had some time to recalculate my travel plan. I was already staying longer than planned in Huaraz, but it is so nice I might have stayed longer. My conclusion, however, is that I would have to take the bus the day we end our trek to avoid too much stress the rest of the time or having to shorten the trip.

On our third day (Thursday) we enjoyed the luxury of waiting until the sun was really warm and got up at 8 a.m. We enjoyed our nice breakfast a last time and started to walk at 10 a.m. Because we were just going down and the way was easy we already arrived at our final point at 11.30 and the car arrived 5 minutes afterwards, so we were back to Huaraz even earlier than planned. After having our last lunch we all went to take a shower and Pia gave me her pictures (she has a really good camera). We had agreed to meet at Café Andino at 5, so I went a little earlier to buy my bus ticket. I used the Peruvian way of asking people how to get to the Movil office, but due to the descriptions being quite vague I was arriving late at the Cafe, but still was the first one

Soon we were all enjoying the great hot chocolates and talking about the trek, our past experiences and upcoming travel plans. We had also invited Moshe from Israel, who was also taking the Movil bus tonight, but to Lima.

Afterwards we were all hungry and decided to have Pizza. We somehow finished 4 family pizzas with 6 people, but it was extremely tasty. The only downside was I had no time to get some information about Trujillo online and write this blog post, but sometimes you cannot do everything at once… After the Pizza we had a kind of goodbye ceremony and it really felt like leaving people I had known for a far longer time.

The bus went almost on time and after receiving the included snack and saving it for breakfast I was already asleep till we reached Trujillo.

Friday was really stressful. I finished my thesis almost the whole night (I know it was my fault not to do it earlier), went to IBM to say goodbye to everybody, packed my thinks, enjoyed a really nice farewell dinner with almost everybody from my house (the Casa Roja) and head to the bus at 10 p.m.
It was quite a different experience compared to Flores, the bus actually left on time and was really clean, silent and comfortable. Here in Huaraz we are staying in a very nice hostel and have used the day to acclimatiyze (had no problems fortunately) and tomorrow we will get up at 6 a.m. to go to Laguna 69. Hopefully there will enough people for forming a group to do the legendary Santa Cruz Trek for three days. We just met a lot of Germans here in the hostel and have to get some sleep now. The next 4 days will be tough and directly after the trek I will most probably take the night bus to Trujillo. Stay tuned 😉