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.
