kimmykimmykokonut

After changing our plans multiple times, we have decided to head to Ecuador for a few weeks to renew our visas and work on an organic farm. We won’t have much computer access but be patient, the blogs and photo updates will come!

We took a 5 hour daytime bus from Cajamarca to Celendin on a bumpy steep pot-holed dirt road. Apparently they are widening the road since it is barely wide enough for me to walk on it alone and think I will not fall down into the steep valleys, let alone for 2 coach buses to pass each other without crashing or tipping over into the beyond. This road project of widening a dirt road full of potholes and steep switchbacks may last until January. The ride was beautiful and frightening at the same time. We had to stop a few times (once for about a half hour) so the workers could clear the rubble for us to pass. Buses in this country are amazingly hardcore. Great views, big mountains, lush green valleys and low clouds.

Anyways, 5 hours of up and down and around these mountains, seeing not much more than some little cottage or farm here and there, and we come to Celendin. Which has plazas, electricity and very friendly people. We spent most of our time in the town eating and sleeping, which is basically all there is to do. Oh, and I bought some yarn and now have a project for future bus rides, if I can ignore the bumps. The town is cute and has huge potential for developing tourist-wise, if only the road there wasn’t so uncomfortable or scary.

Our reason for heading this way was because the ride is beautiful and the less-taken route to Leymembamba. Plus there’s a hotsprings and mud bath near Celendin that we had to check out. When I say nearby, I mean a 2 hour cargo bus ride (at 7am) up a mountain and down the other side into the valley below. When I say cargo, I mean lambs in the aisle, shite-ing on my sneakers and socks, giving me fleas, momma lamb tied up and lounging on a front seat with baby chicks in a bag underneath her. We were obviously the only non-locals. It was an entertaining and smelly morning. Just in time for the hot springs in the town of Llanguat.

I don’t know if it’s really a town, a few houses clustered together and a church at the valley floor. We went the the thermal baths, which seemed to be in some guy’s backyard. He was very friendly and very interested in having volunteers or some sort of assistance to help him develp an eco-tourism project. It makes me so happy to talk to locals that care so much about protecting the environment around them. Not only does he live on the river, but there’s a day hike to a tunnel and a waterfall nearby (but we ran out of time). We spent our afternoon swimming in the brown pool filled with river water and hot springs water. We attempted to get to the mud baths across the river but it was quite dangerous to cross the water. We got halfway across and had to turn back. Hopefully I will find mud somewhere else to roll in. We also got to use of of his baños, which were similar to the private baths at Cajamarca, where you get a room and can fill the tub up as high as you like and relax. All of this for sl. 2 per person! The scenery was gorgeous and on our adventure to try to cross the river, we hiked through some farmland and found some free range cows that didn’t mind us trespassing to find a suitable river crossing.

We assumed we could just find another combi to return to town (we saw a bunch passing us on the way down…but apparently in the morning the trend is to go TO Celendin, and in the afternoon it is to go the opposite direction…which we didn’t know). We walked in the rain for about 2 hours (6 km) before a bus came and squeezed us into backwards unpadded seats for the bumpy remaining 15km. Lucky for us they got us just in time because a few kilometers up the road we passed some other people but there was no room for them. I don’t think I had the energy after a hot bath and a muddy pool to hike the entire 21 kms.

The next day we woke up and went to the Banos del Inca again. The Banos are natural thermal waters that are about 70 deg Celsius. The first day Matt and I went to the public pool at sl. 3 each. The “turno” lasts about an hour and a half and you share the pool with a LOT of other people with no regard for personal space or tranquility. It was basically a YMCA pool with twice as many kids and no control. Some people were swimming laps where they could find room, but you couldn’t go a few feet without bumping into someone. I think I got splashed at least every 5 minutes. I imagined a quiet spa experience, laying in the hot water and relaxing. Nope, but I had an experience nonetheless. Day 2 Matt and I thought we’d try the private rooms and at sl.5 per person, we rented the Imperial Baths for 25 minutes. This room you filled the pool yourself and controlled the temperature, so we were able to make it HOT. 25 minutes was more than enough with that hot water. I think you could boil yourself if you weren’t careful enough.

After the baths, Maelys was sick so Matt and I checked into a new hostal in town, since the French crew were leaving that evening. By the time we had ourselves situated, Maelys felt better and we took a hike through the countryside, heading towards the Ventanillas de Otuzco (pre-Inca graves dug into the volcanic hillside that look like a bunch of windows). We only had a tourist map of lines and apparently a river connects the Banos del Inca to the road near Otuzco, so we just decided to walk along the river and find our own way. It was so much fun to walk along and see the pigs and cows and sheep and people just doing their own things. The landscape was beautiful. It’s so much nicer to be around green plants and mountains after the desert coast for a month. We arrived at the Ventanillas and checked them out until it started to rain. We picnicked at a small family restaurant across the street. They were nice enough to let us eat our own food under their shelter, so we ordered some chica de jora.

Chica de jora is the homemade corn beer that tastes like apple cider with a kick. If you don’t think about the fermentation process, it’s quite tasty. To make the beer, you must cook the giant corn and traditionally the elder women would chew it up and spit it into the pot along with the rest of the corn. Nowadays I don’t think it has to be any specific person to do the spitting. There is an enzyme in human saliva that activates the fermentation of the chica. Add sugar, let sit. We drank the 3 day old chicha and it was delicious. The woman who made it told us that the 8 day old chicha is quite harsh (maybe it tastes like apple cider vinegar…why apple cider from corn, I don’t know.) Chicha de jora is not a mass-produced beverage; you can only find it in people’s homes or small restaurants. Maelys ordered a 650ml coca cola and it cost sl.2. Our 1 liter of chicha de jora was sl.1. I didn’t think the alcohol content was too high; perhaps a little less than beer, but it’s sweet so it’s difficult to really taste the alcohol clearly.

When it stopped raining, we took a combi back to town to catch another combi to Llacanora to hopefully get to the waterfall before dark. The trip from Cajamarca to Llacanora is only 13km away, but the road is dirt and full of pot holes, so it took about a half hour to get there. The town itself was really cute, an old church, a small plaza with clover growing as a ground cover. We hiked through town and the trail was about 1km through hilly farms along a river. The waterfall itself was pretty and the drop was big, although there wasn’t a lot of water in the waterfall nor was there a pool to swim in. It was a little chilly anyways, I’ll find another waterfall to swim in later on. We hiked up on one side of the river and we hiked back on the other side to come across two smaller (and more scenic) waterfalls before reaching town again. Our French companions left that night to enjoy another 6 hours on the Hornas bus and Matt and I stayed in Cajamarca two more days.

We visited the Cerro Santa Apolonia, a garden covered hilltop with great views of the city. At the top there are some rocks carved from the Inca period, one of them said to be an Inca throne, where they can review their troops. We hiked down the other side of the hill and entered some unknown neighborhood and hiked up to the top of their hill (well, almost to the top) and found a lot of ugly pigs, some cows and a donkey. We met a nice old lady who was wrapped up in her mantas and we couldn’t understand anything she said (except “gringitos!”) because she had her mouth covered with the shawl. Her friend/daughter wasn’t covered in mantas and talked with us for awhile. She told us at the top of their town is a guy with an alpaca ranch. It was really fun to just wander around the town and enjoy the view.

That night we had some of the best pizza so far and returned to the Banos del Inca again. We rented the “Humboldt” bath this time, same price but 30 minutes. It was about half the width and length of the other bath but twice as deep. It was nice to just relax in a hot bath. Peru has a lot of hot springs and I look forward to jumping into as many of them as I can. Our last day in Cajamarca was spent relaxing, blogging and walking around town again before we catch our 1pm bus to Celendin. Thank goodness this 5 hour busride will be spent in the daylight because it’s supposed to be just as bumpy, if not more than, our previous bus ride.

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.

Complejo Turistico Banos del IncaThis place has expensive bungalows (sl. 120). We rented in the un-gated alburgue (sl.60 for a 6 bed room (bunks!) with private bath). The beds were comfortable, the staff was a bit manic (upon checking in at 6am, the front desk person told us the night is based on 24 hours…meaning we’d have to check out at 6am the next day. Luckily, the woman working the next morning told us we had until 1pm). It was quiet except for the rowdy baptism party that was happening in the banquet hall. Our window overlooked a beautiful garden and they let us use the kitchen to make our own dinner. Nice location if you want to wake up and have a baño first thing in the morning (4:30am-8pm); and it only costs sl. 0.50 to ride the combi into the center of Cajamarca or one hour by foot.

Hostal Plaza (located in the Plaza de Armas in town)
sl. 25 for a “double” room with a shared bathroom and frigidly cold showers.
This old, rickety wooden building has two internal courtyards filled with artisan shops. The beds are decent, the room is clean. The only strange thing is that we asked for a doble and we got a room with 4 beds. There was a doble available the following night that had 2 beds…same price. The front desk was friendly and will hold the room key for you while you explore the town. They will also hold your baggage in a locked room after the 1pm check out time.

Hostal Las Tejas (Amazonas 700 block)
When most of the rooms were filled in the budget hostals, we found this hostal (sl. 38, hot water) and upon asking for a double, we got a room with 3 beds..all of them painfully uncomfortable. If you want to know what it’s like to sleep on sheet metal and have dead spiderwebs in every corner of the room, this is your place. It’s clean on the surface, though (no cockroaches) and it’s set back from the road so there isn’t too much street noise. (Although our room was against the parking lot behind the building and we heard the cars coming and going).

—————————
Heladeria Holanda
Yum! This ice cream puts the D’Anfria on every corner to shame. It’s locally made ice cream with local highland fruit. My favorites were pushgay (just like huckleberries) and poroporo (a tart orange creamsicle flavor). There’s one on the plaza de armas and one across from the Banos del Inca (and another one, but I forgot where it was). sl. 3 for a sugar cone with two scoops for the perfect tummyache.

Vegetarian Restaurant (400 or 300 block of Puga)
This place has almost the same carta as most of the veggie restaurants in Lima. Most things are with the soya de carne or the flat fillet of soya (but it tastes like wheat gluten). The best deal is the menu, sl. 2.50 for breakfast and dinner and sl. 3.50 for lunch. My dinner was a vegetable soup and locro de zapallo (a nice orange stew of squash and potatoes on rice). The burger is strange, the lomo del jugo is delicious, the special juice is amazing and tastes like peanut butter.

Don Paco (Puga 726)
This place was crowded with Peruvians and gringos. The carta was a bit on the pricey side but the food was delicious and the presentation was pretty. Order the caldo verde (sl. 6), which is a green soup with potatoes and local cajamarca cheese. The greens are unclear: cilantro, parsley, and perhaps huacatay (a mint like herb). The lentil burger is hearty and on good bread (ask for aji to kick it up). Don’t get the chicha morada, it’s grossly overpriced and not worth it. Spend sl. 0.50 on the street for a pint instead of sl.3 at Don Paco.

New York Pizza (Puga 1045)
A medium to thin crust, lots of toppings and plenty of cheese to make you miss pizza back home. They even understand the concept of large pizzas. (In Huanchaco the large pizza was a 12″). There’s a guy who tosses the dough in the air to stretch it and it’s all made right in front of you. Good prices, yummy pizza.

Market (North of the Plaza de Armas, across the river).
Don’t stop when you first see the fruit and veggie vendors, keep heading straight and left until you reach the tarp covered, dense market with vendors on both sides. The people before don’t post their prices, won’t weigh your produce for you and basically rip you off without a smile. At the covered market, the people are friendlier, nicer and you can easily get everything you need for a packed lunch or simple breakfast.