The moral of this story is get a guide!

Saturday, 12th May.

Bird of the day

Unfortunately, the lunch that we had yesterday at the lunch stop was true to the very unsanitary conditions and Pete was feeling quite nauseous. If going this way, avoid eating anything from this place. We wondered why only a few ate there. Usually it's all the people on the bus. It was a laid back morning today because of Pete's poor health. At least it was not "the runs".  Towards lunch time we decided to walk to the hot springs. Our host told us that sandals were OK, and that we could catch a motocab for 5 sols to the beginning of the walking track at Shururo. Well, we did this and were taken to a spot along the road where we were told by the driver it was the place. It was high above the valley into which we needed to descend.

Celendin

Our first observation was that it was not the right place, but with the scant directions we were given, we took a more careful look and found a track. We walked along this track, meeting a local with a horse and a donkey each pulling a swag of bamboo. He sort of indicated that were on the right track so we continued down to find the track being overgrown. Finally when we encountered a one metre snake, we decided to turn back. After trying out a few other tracks we got back to our starting point 1.5 hours later.  Another track was found at the top and this appeared to be the right one. We hiked down it until we met the same problem, another 1 metre snake. Pete trod on this one, but luckily it slithered away rather than biting him. We decided to give the springs a miss and returned by walking back along the road. There were many birds but very difficult to see through the green foliage. Barb found numerous flowers not seen before and other we had been seeing since Chachapoyas.

Plant of the day

Scenic view

Yet another plant