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We finally finalized our plans of where to go two days before we left. Marilyn’s brother, Maibel, is going to see if we can start a pilot program in his village in the mountains. The program that we planned on doing (and was confirmed 3 months ago…but I’m not bitter) is currently occupied by another couple. So we kind of have a volunteer project although it’s still not certain (this is becoming quite common. planning is not encouraged, it will only cause frustration). So we will meet Maibel in a week to see what’s what. In the meantime, we will slowly travel east towards his village. Lucky for us the mountains are beautiful and there’s plenty to see.

We left Huanchaco and took a bus from Trujillo to Cajamarca, a beautiful mountain town at 2650 m. Most of the buses were sold out and we had to settle for Hornas, an old bus with uncomfortable seats and grumpy passengers for 6 hours of hell. The night buses are encouraged so you don’t lose any time, but there was no way to sleep on these buses. It was basically a pot-holed dirt road for 6 hours, and I was sick most of the time. So it was miserable. Don’t take Hornas if you have another option. Or Bus Peru, which a few friends took to Cajamarca a few weeks ago and had a similar experience. I don’t think a luxury bus will help much, though, since the road is shite.

Cajamarca is famous for their gold and silver mines and it’s the place where the Inca king, Atahualpa, was captured by Pizarro and held ransom for rooms of silver and gold. Good old Pizarro didn’t release the king once the ransom was paid off. Instead he planned to burn the king alive at the stake, but at the last minute the king converted to Christianity and they strangled the king instead of burning him.

We were joined by some volunteers from Huanchaco for the weekend, the French sisters Maelys and Priscille, and Maelys’s fiance, Antoine. They were great to travel with, they are all very positive and active and adventure seeking. I spent the first morning being sick, but in the afternoon we met in town (they walked the 5 km from the Banos del Inca) and did some tourist stuff, seeing old churches, hospitals and the ransom room where Atahualpa was held (which is the only standing Inca building in town. All of the other Inca buildings were taken down and the bricks and stones reused in the churches…which is strange, but at least it’s recycling). We went to the cathedral for mass and heard the nuns sing and play the guitar (all of the nuns were so young, I felt like I was in a movie). We wandered around the market in the evening and gathered some food to make sandwiches back at the Alburgue for dinner.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 8:11 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.