Northern Peru: of Mud and Buses

"packs of dogs and cigarrettes
for those who aint done packing yet
my clothes are packed and I want to go
Idaho, Idaho"

Just before I left the Galapagos, I began to plan my route to Lima. If you are thinking, wow, there is a lot of land between any place in Ecuador and Lima, you are correct. And I am a poor planner. I knew that I would have some long days on a bus, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I could have been smart and taken a fancy long distance bus from Guayaquil or Cuenca, Ecuador to Lima, or better yet a plane, but there is so much I would miss! So I set out on (relatively) short buses. First I went to Cuenca, a beautiful Spanish colonial town in the south of Ecuador. Then I easily crossed the boarder into Peru and was dropped off in a town called Tumbes. I quickly discovered over the next half week that most towns in Peru do not have a central bus station. Considering I would be taking many buses, changing buses and companies frequently, this was a VERY BAD THING. Not only was it difficult to find the next company I needed (inevitably the bus company I had just used did not go to the next town I wanted to go to), but it was equally impossible to figure out where I had been dropped off. In Tumbes, I was intentionally (I assume) told the wrong direction to the next bus station by a cab driver, who then proceeded to follow me and repeatedly ask me if I wanted a taxi. Eventually another man on the street took pity on me, told me I was indeed going the wrong way, and offered to walk with me to the correct station. In Chiclayo, I broke down and got a hotel room just for the day, because I arrived at 5:30am and didn´t leave again until 7:45pm. I finally made it to Chachapoyas, after what I believe to be 2.5 days of travel, though I lost track. Apparently I slept through a 1 hour mud slide delay as well. It was worth it though, as Chachapoyas is pretty far off the beaten path. My new friend Jo and I spent a great morning at Kuelap, the largest stone structure in South America which was built by a pre-Incan society, without another soul in sight.

I then spent another day and a half traveling to my next destination, Huaraz, which is a nice mountain town in the Cordillera Blanca. This trip wouldn’t have been so bad had I not made such bad decisions. (Maggie, I definitely should have listened to you and just taken the night bus). I decided instead of spending another full day in Chiclayo, I would continue on to Chimbote and see if there was a different bus to Huaraz. I knew there were two roads to Huaraz, but failed to pay attention to the fact that one road is much, much worse than the other. Inevitably I ended up on the very bad road in a very bad bus. I now know what sleep deprivation as torture feels like. I had not slept all day, as I was stuck in a bus station, which is not really a safe place to fall asleep. I was counting on sleeping all night on the bus ride, however, the bus was tiny, crowded and unbelievably hot. I was in the back row of seats, right in the middle, with a guy sitting in the aisle practically sleeping in my lap. My eyes, and for that matter the rest of my body, hurt so bad from sheer exhaustion, but I was so uncomfortable and the road was so rough, I swear I might have died before actually being able to fall asleep. It reminded me of those experiments done on cats where the cat is forced to stand on a narrow beam above water and the scientists waits to see how long the cat can stay awake before it finally falls asleep and falls into the water.

Finally the bus stopped. But then I realized it was 2am and pitch dark. We weren´t supposed to get into town until 5am. Some people got off the bus to see what was happening. I could not possibly care at that point. When enough people got out of the back row, I laid down and fell asleep. I woke 5 hours later to see we still hadn´t moved. At this point, I finally had the energy to get off the bus and find out what was happening. I found one large truck stuck in the muddy road and lines of vehicles lining up behind it both ways. This was a one lane dirt road, definitely no getting around this truck. Despite the fact that there were now over 100 people standing around, many of them able-bodied Peruvian men, I was singled out and several people shouted at me, “Gringa, ayuda!”. I spent the next two hours unloading cargo from the stuck truck and loading up the other truck that would pull the stuck truck. Two hours, 50 long metal poles, 20 bags of potatoes that weighed more than I did and two burned out engines later, we managed to move the truck. We made it to Huaraz at 11am, only 6 hours late. I´ve heard of worse.

Huaraz was worth the horrendous bus ride though. It was more touristy than a lot of places I had been recently, but not in a bad way. It was comfortable – I was able to find good food, good coffee, a good hostel (despite getting locked out one night and being rescued by a Peruvian girl at a bar who happened to work at a second hostel and let me stay there for free after calling ahead to be sure that there would be someone there to let me in), and some new friends that I would be able to reconnect with in Lima. I went rock climbing one afternoon, which was pretty much the most frightening thing I have ever done as I had never climbed that far and my guide spoke no English. My camera, unfortunately, became a casualty of that climb. I also went to some great ancient tunnels – an absolutely astounding archatectual feat for an ancient culture.

I realized after a couple of days in Huaraz, that the area was receiving an unusal amount of rain for this time of year, which was contributing to things like the mud slide I had encountered. They just do not have the capability to maintain roads in weather like this, they (myself included) are at the mercy of the rain. Unlike some of the smaller towns I had been through, Huaraz shows the income gap more clearly. I was there during semana santa (holy week) so there were many Peruvian tourists. I saw more wealthy people, nice restaurants and more expensive cars than else where, but I also saw many despiritely poor people. While driving to Chavin, the underground ruins, we saw many children begging along the road. These children obviously knew where the tourists (both national and international) would come. Our guide stopped for none of them. However, on the return trip, we ran into a mud slide. Two boys, who could not have been older than 12, were just finishing clearing it for us. Our guide did stop to let us give these boys money. I tried to imagine this situation in the States, but could only imagine that this might happen in a rural community where older, stronger boys might do this out of curtosy and not because they were starving.

I apologize for leaving this on a down note, but being right in the middle of some of the problems that face these communities has really got me thinking and reflecting. Perhaps the most interesting, confusing part is knowing that I am often a phone call or credit card away from escaping these problems should they become really unbearable.