On Friday, after three full days in Miami (which again felt like one maybe) we had checked out of the hostel (getting the money back for the one day we cancelled required some negotiation) and got into her the cabriolet with Gerlinde heading towards key west. On the way we missed the Whole Foods, but stopped by a Walmart to get some food and drinks (they sell water in a one gallon – 3.79 litres – container for $1, which is enough for a whole day with these hot temperatures and being active). The nature of the keys is incredible, but you also get another impression of what rich people like. A lot of the land is still protected, but everything else boasts expensive mansions, gardens and cars.
We stopped at a tourist information about one hour before arriving in Key West. They gave us a map, but a hotel room would have been about $50 per person, so we decided to sleep in the car. Unfortunately I put my camera on top of the car and forgot it there, so when we arrived, I called them and they had indeed found the camera. We would pick it up on the way back, so I had no camera in Key West.
We wanted to see the famous sunset, so we settled at a nice restaurant right at the sunset bulevard. At first we had some ice tea (with free refill) and afterwards some real food. I wanted to try lobster so I ordered the lobster burger and it was really delicious.
We also booked a snorkeling tour for Saturday before we went off looking for a place to sleep. Since all the keys are small islands place is somehow scarce so we ended up on a nice spot with a facility to water boats, but where parking was prohibited. It was extremely hot, so it was difficult to sleep. After midnight we walked around a bit and saw a police car pass by without light first, and then observed a sheriff speeding after cars to pull them out of traffic. After he was done with one car he came back and came right towards us pulling into our parking lot, so we thought we would definitely be screwed. Luckily he was just turning to follow the next car, so we went back relieved, to get some more hours of sleep.
On Saturday we went to Subway for breakfest. They were really unfriendly and the food was mediocre, but at least we weren’t entering the catamaran with an empty stomach. It was a huge boat and relatively crowded. Drinks were free and the weather was extremely nice. The ride was about an hour at a pretty fast pace and soon we were snorkeling around the riff, looking at very colorful fishes. Together with Gerlinde I went pretty far away from the boat and almost hit the rocks at a shallow point, because with the high waves navigating was not too easy. Additionally you couldn’t see very far underwater (I admit having tried to watch out for sharks closely). Still it was a very nice experience – we even had showers on the boat to get rid of the salt.
Finally we went to a small Marine museum and left for Miami in the early afternoon (this time stopping at Whole Foods of course!).
After a tasty vegetarian burger and some fresh juice for breakfest we went to the Gocta Waterfalls. Although locals knew them a lot longer (see story below), a German cartographer made their existence public just in 2006. When the waterfall was measured it turned out it was the third highest worldwide with more than 700 meters height.
We had to buy an entrance ticket and when we should have been introduced to our local guide my group was somehow lost (although there weren’t many people) so I decided to just proceed alone. The path was extremely nice, always up and down and we were told it was about two hours. A local boy was following me although I was mostly running downwards. He was really curious and told me he was just 11 and from Huanuco. I told him a lot about Germany, but after some time he was exhausted and wanted to wait for his father. Just afterwards I met a family from Lima who had all been to Germany several times and their father spoke almost perfect German. We talked all the way till the falls and had a nice time. Luckily for me they had a private guide, so I joined them at the falls to listen to the history of the place.
The locals (obviously) knew the place for many years, but they were afraid to go there, because they believed in a blond mermaid living there, cursing everybody who would touch the water.
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.
Yesterday (Sunday) we went to Laguna 69 together with a girl from Australia. The tour was organized by hour hostel so we were conveniently picked up at the front door. When we started to talk German the Australian girl immediately joined our conversation and it turned out she was half Swiss. Very funny. From that point on we constantly changed languages from German to English to Spanish. Very confusing, but also a lot of fun.
We started on time at 6 a.m. but with a short stop to buy bread and a stop at a breakfast restaurant were we ate bread and a fried egg together with some coca tea we arrived at 10.30 at about 3900 meters. From there we had to climb up to 4600 meters. At first only Andreas (my German friend from Lima) had some problems with the altitude and in the end he made it very close to the Lagoon. I seem to have overestimated myself a bit in terms of the altitude. Its a very strange feeling to not feel exhausted at all, but still suddenly get a headache and not be able to eat anything. I should have had more water, but afterwards you always know better. I made it to the lagoon and it was just beautiful. We were quite astonished that there were just a handful of people there, even though it seems to be one of the most known tourist destinations around Huaraz.
We were quite unlucky with the weather, because in contrast to the heat people told us about, we had no sun and it was very cold. We even had some snow up at the lagoon. Still one guy did take a short swim in the water, which was supposedly about 8 degrees.
Because of the cold we just stayed a few minutes to enjoy the beauty. While descending I felt very bad and was just hoping it would get better back in Huaraz. It did although a slight headache remained.
Since Andreas had to catch his Lima-bound bus in the night we grabbed some good food in a touristy restaurant right at the main square, the quinua soup was delicious. Afterwards I fell into bed exhausted.
The next day there was no trek (not enough people), so I thought about what to do and ended up going to the thermal baths again with 5 chicas from the hostel. We had nice weather and enjoyed it a lot. Pia, the Swiss-Australian girl was also going and afterwards we went to a nice restaurant and the legendary Cafe Andina (perfect hot chocolates!). There she met a Peruvian guy who persuaded us to start a three-day tour tomorrow. We will go together with a French girl, so we will be three tourists and two guides. The price is quite expensive, but includes everything and they promised us the only tourists we will meet along the way will be Lamas
Since I planned to leave Huaraz one day earlier already, I will have to take the bus to Trujillo right when we come back on Thursday.
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 😉
Bikram Yoga has been on my list of things to try for far too long and when I heard the girls wanted to go yesterday I had to join 🙂
Acutally it was not *real* bikram, because it was “only” 27°C, but the exercises were original. It was a 90 minute course and I didn’t expect it to be that intense, given that it wasn’t that hot.
The first half was mainly strength excercises (hadn’t expected that either) followed by flexibility. I guess I didn’t exactly do a bad job, but my muscles were quite sour the following days. We’ll defenitely go there again, but I still want to expecience the real bikram, maybe there’s an opportunity in the U.S.
