After the somewhat philosophical parts I’ll now switch to fact-based reporting 😉

Thanks to Marco we had a wonderful breakfest and headed to the huge market that takes place in Huancayo every sunday afterwards. When we entered the busy and colorful place we almost immediately bumped into the Belgians again so we continued exploring all the offerings together. The traditional handicrafts, clothes and other small things were really nice to look at though I couldn’t decide to buy anything (the others made up for that though). Additionally you could buy various food, all kinds of shoes and international brand clothes (the prices suggesting they were not genuine), cracked DVDs and software and much more. So it was really diverse and after going on a few blocks the offerings started to repeat themselves. I guess the pictures tell you more than anything I could explain here.

Afterwards we checked various restaurants for lunch and finally decided to go to a chicken restaurant. The Belgians, who had left us to check out at their hotel, were already there ready to watch the final soccer game Spain against Italy. They were right in their anticipation of Spain’s victory.

After lunch we actually wanted to go rock climbing, but in the taxi Marco decided we would go to Torre Torre, one of the few really popular tourist attractions in Huancayo. Unfortunately it was too late to invite the Belgians now, but we enjoyed it a lot. At Torre, Torre we chilled a bit, talked to a very nice Canadian family backpacking in Peru and Marco played his flute. Time passed quickly and I found myself at the train station again to enjoy the last rays of sunshine with the Belgians.

According to the train staff at the station only 100 people would be on the train now with the vast mayority of about 80 in the touristic cars. Still there were many empty seats so I convinced the Belgians to try to sneak into a touristic seat. It didn’t take long until we were thrown out, but we were told we could upgrade for 15 soles (4,50€) which would be well worth it. Unfortunately it tourned out they wanted to have 120 soles in reality, which was too much obviously. So we each got four seats in our clasico car and made ourselfs comfortable. Some elderly Peruvians were upgraded for free. We found that fair because it was getting very cold at night and even we had problems sleeping in those seats.

We continued to chat a bit until we got food at 8 p.m. and afterwards everybody put on all clothes we had and tried to sleep somehow. It worked more or less, but we were still relieved to arrive well on time at 6:15 a.m. in Desamparados Station, Lima.