Far Horizons

Two days ago, we had the bus ride of a lifetime. it was amazingly, amazingly beautiful!  we started in the semi darkness from Chachapoyas and soon were on dirt roads for the next 12 hours. and what a road, usually a single lane.  this road took us up the Utcubamba river, passing a number of small towns in the canyon, to the quite lovely but not much going on town of Leimebamba which is on a green cloudforest hillside at about 8000 feet or so. from there, our bus climbed up, up, up to a pass at about 13,000 feet, going from the lusher cloudforest into the higher andean plain type of vegetation with the beautiful silver white grasses.  as soon as we topped the pass, it was amazing, we were looking far deeper than the grand canyon into the Maranon River canyon.  now and then the bus would pick up a local passenger or two, some with bags of potatoes to stash in the luggage in the back.  it was a comfy bus, always full but not overfull, the only real drawback was that when we passed over one of the places where small runoff streams cross the road, the bottom of the bus carriage would scrape bottom in a somewhat scary way. at around this time in our journey, craig mentioned to me, hey, didnt Dan say he got stuck on this road and had to hike a long way somewhere?  since the journey is 12 hours and about 150 miles long, and the homesteads are far, far apart, this was daunting.

Many people are absolutely terrified. for whatever reason I found it absolutely exhilarating to look down out the window (in this direction, chacha to Cajamarca, you want to sit on the right side) past 6 inches of road shoulder and straight, straight down thousands of feet.  you could see the white ribbon of road far, far below sometimes and think how the h   are we going to get there.  The colors of the close and far ridges was amazing. about 3 hours from Lemeibamba, we made our next town, Balsas, which, because it is now down at 2,000 feet, is toasty warm, grows bananas and is a small sliver of green in a very dry sandy cliffy area with cactus, desert shrubs and occasionally a small dry tree or two absolutely covered in either purple, or pink blossoms due to the rainy season probably having caused a shower 3 days ago.  but only another hour later did we get a bathroom stop!  we climbed straight up again out of Balsas, to a lovely andean valley with brown adobe houses and some pastures, to a whitewashed one room roadside cafe with ... well sort of bathrooms. a little scummy.  we had lunch offerings of duck or some type of pork on plates stacked with rice and french fries. the usual andean fare, plus some inca cola if you wanted it.

this journey was particularly fun because since Tuesday we have been hanging out with the nicest group of travelers.  Martin, a norwegian chiropractore aged 26 traveling from a short term job in Chiclayo to a future job in Brasil, with his incredibly sweet and lovely blonde sparkly eyed girlfriend Delphine Flan from Bergerac, France; Irene, a forty year old from spain who got laid off from her job at a Disney subsidiary because of the crisis and is taking 6 months to travel and reflect and she is also beautiful and cheery,  David, probably also in his 30s, a writer and computer engineer from Catalonia in Spain but working out of Germany for 4 years and now traveling for the past 9 months starting in Moscow; Thomas, a dutch guy who loves to clamber on rocks in his flipflop, and some folks we left behind in Chacha, a peruvian woman Jessica with her Italian boyfriend Mauricio and a belgian couple named Sylvie and Olivier who are back for their second time to this area since they love it so much.

So, the bus is festive and the scenery, amazing. climbing out towards Cajamarca we again topped 13,000 and scenery became greener with white stone walls and lots of dairy cattle, and then, to a red colored soil and therefore buildings. one of the great thing about the adobe buildings is that even when abandoned they look fabulous. 

we reached the 2 hour radius of Cajamarca and things changed a bit in that there is an incredibly huge strip gold mine here, Yanacocha, and the money from this mine has resulted in some paved roads, towns with newly constructed stadiums, stuff like that. But, money does not buy happiness. the mine took away an entire sacred mountain and has resulted in lead, mercury and other heavy metal problems upriver from Cajamarca. the water in the city has become turbulent with suspended chalky particles of soil and the entire town has been trying, since 2004, to get the mine out of here. unfortunately they are the biggest taxpayer in peru! So the government and the gold company which unfortunately is largely U.S. owned, has not paid any attention. for that reason when we reached Cajamarca we landed in the middle of a friendly but intense demonstration in which entire roads in and out of the city have been blocked off with chunks of concrete.  they just want to keep their city from becoming contaminated with heavy metals in the entire water supply. sounds pretty reasonable to me that they would be pretty worried and upset!  apparently in 2004 there was a peaceful demonstration of 70,000 --- which was ignored. so today they are trying again and we are in the midst of it.

anyway gradually we wound down towards Cajamarca as dark fell.  the first part we reached is the suburby town which has the Banos del Inca, the very hot springs where Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, was resting with an army of about 30,000, when the first Spaniards came over the hill.  The steamy baths are part open air and some of the original inca, and pre inca buildings are there reminding you that this is a very, very ancient city.  from there you got across what for Peru is an amazingly large flat valley into the exquisite and properous city of Cajamarca.  we are using the best fastest computers of all the trip!  the old buildings that remain are really lovely, the newer ones are clean, there are a sprinkling of traditionally dressed women here with tall white hats and full colored skirts, but its modern and pleasantly cosmopolitan. also its festive, the first night we stumbled on fireworks and a brass band at a church celebration where they brought out a huge virgin, and right now there is a very long happy parade of about 20 groups of school children with bands, balloons people on stilts and the kids carrying school banners and also happy signs saying dont drink and drive, stuff like that.  In fact a parade is going right now with a brass band playing andean music very well and its time to go to lunch! more later!