Yes, I Canyon!

• Gypsyslice's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Celendín

Trip Start Apr 24, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End May 29, 2008 Next
Entry

  Celendín, Peru
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

After finally finishing my travel blog last night, I went to the desk at the internet place to hand over my 8 soles. While I was paying I asked the girl where exactly the restaurant Cely is located. I´d enjoyed my lunch there so much that I thought dinner would be a safe bet, and I knew it was somewhere within a block or two. The girl responded "Turn left out this door, then right at the corner....but the señora from the restaurant is sitting right behind you." I turned around and there she was, laughing that I was asking for her restaurant! She stood up and said, "Let´s go."

While we walked to her restaurant I asked her what time she thinks the bus to Celendín pulls into Leymebamba. She wasn´t sure, but thought around 6:30 am. When we got to the restaurant the door was closed and all the lights were off! I told her "Señora, I´m sorry, I didn´t know it was closed...you don´t have to open the restaurant for me!" She waved my protests away and opened everything up. She said for dinner she had creamed chicken to offer me. That sounded just great, so I had a seat and the next thing I knew I had in front of me a huge plate of creamed chicken, rice, potatoes, sliced avocado and a big pot of coca tea. I didn´t think I was hungry but apparantly I was because I ate every morsel and washed it down with 3 cups of tea! All this delicious goodness was only about $1.40. I can´t believe how much cheaper things are in these tiny towns as opposed to Cusco, Arequipa, Trujillo, etc.

When I was leaving the restaurant I asked the señora where I could buy some snacks and water for today´s bus trip. She pointed me to her friend´s shop up the street. I got a few bottles of water there and asked that señora what time she thinks the bus arrives...she directed me to a pollería on the Plaza de Armas where the owner would know for sure because he sells the bus tickets. She was even nice enough to walk me to the Plaza and point it out, while leaving her store unattended! I´m telling you, Leymebamba is a special place.
At the chicken place I asked the owner what time the bus arrives from Chachapoyas in the morning, once and for all! He said unequivocally at 7 am. Then I walked the 2 blocks to my hostal and asked the lady at the front desk the same thing and she said 7 am. So I decided 7 am is the time to shoot for...no need to sit in the Plaza for an hour if the bus won´t arrive before 7.

I went up to my room and thought about how much I love Leymebamba and what a pity that I was only staying one night. Everyone had been sooo nice and friendly! Then I took in my freshly-washed underwear hanging on my balcony and saw that someone had thrown mud at them. Uh oh, that made me sad! I´m guessing it was stupid kids and even lovely little villages in Peru have stupid kids. I rewashed them and hung them up *inside* this time! And I was so tired I decided to shower in the morning.

I slept terribly last night. I woke up every hour or so afraid I had slept through my alarm and missed the bus. When I did sleep I had dreams that I missed the bus, or that when I got on the bus I had a seat with no windows. I think I was anxious because the bus only runs 3 times per week and I really needed to be on this bus! Needless to say, I woke up in plenty of time to shower and pack my bag. Remember how much I was looking forward to my hot shower? No such luck...cold water! Patti, I am with you. I just wimp out at cold showers, no matter how bad I need one. I used some bathing cloths that Peter suggested I bring with me and they did the trick! Eight cloths equals a complete bath. Thanks Slice! I went downstairs to check out at 6:45 am and told the lady that there was no hot water. She said, "Yes, we have hot water in all our rooms." I said, "This morning in my room you don´t have hot water." But I told her I loved the hostal and Leymebamba anyway (all true) and I headed to the Plaza.

Once I was there and saw no bus, I decided to get some breakfast. I went to the same pollería I´d gone to last night and ordered a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs, bread and tea (88 cents). A few minutes later a couple of tourists walked in, also waiting for the bus, so we had breakast together. He is from London and has worked as a chef in Dublin, but most recently has worked as a head chef in Bogotá, Colombia. He said Colombia is beautiful and safe and a terrific tourist destination -- without all the tourists! I told him Colombia has a bad rap as being very unsafe...but then again, so does the Bronx and I become exasperated with every person I meet asking me, "Isn´t the Bronx dangerous?" Yeah, if you just watch TV and movies! Real people like me live there every day!

Around 7:25 the bus pulled up onto the Plaza de Armas. It was largely empty but that was about to change with the stop in Leymebamba. After everyone had breakfast, people started piling on. It wasn´t a very big bus, with capacity for only about 45 people. It was a chicken bus, to be sure. Chicken buses are those really cheap buses that ply the roads in Latin America, piled high with bags, boxes, food, and chickens (or whatever) -- hence the name. This bus wasn´t falling apart, but it wasn´t anything like the nice buses I´ve taken here or like we have in the US. The front door had a big crack with duct tape over it, most of the seats were ripped and it goes without saying a chicken bus doesn´t have AC. I took my seat, which was actually kicking a young girl out of the seat she´d occupied since Chachapoyas, but damnit I really wanted a window seat and that is what I requested when I bought my ticket 3 days earlier. So I claimed my seat and watched the bus get stuffed to the gills. My backpack went on the roof with everyone else´s luggage. They put as much as possible on the roof and then had to start piling things in the aisle...boxes of evaporated milk, boxes of vegetable oil, sacks of corn, sacks of sugar, cartons of eggs, metal tubing, a box of live chickens, etc. etc. etc. There was so much that the driver had to climb over a stack 4 feet high to get to the driver´s seat, which didn´t phase him in the least. The chaufer -- his helper, a kid in his late teens -- kept accepting more packages and finding places to put them. One passenger in the front seat sat on a box. When the bus finally started to pull away a lady in the back yelled, "Wait, my baby!" and a woman in the street handed in her baby. She was so busy finding places to put her evaporated milk she almost missed taking her infant!

We got maybe 1 or 2 miles outside of Leymebamba´s center and picked up another passenger and more stuff. This happened throughout the day...someone would jump on and the chaufer would find a place for their things, and maybe someone would jump off and the chaufer would have to dig out their things from the pile on the roof. Mostly this was people getting off at a single house on the side of a mountain road, walls made of packed earth, a wooden door and no electricity. And every so often the driver would stop the bus, the chaufer would jump out and remove some big rocks from the roadway...the driver would start up again and the chaufer would jump back on while the bus was moving. For a long time the bus was so crowded with people and things that he stood on the lowest step in the stepwell. Eventually things cleared out enough that he could take a seat in the front next to the driver.

As I expected, the scenery was magnificent and totally made this tough 8-hour journey worth it! Heading out of Leymebamba we ascended for a few hours into magnificent green mountains. It was beautiful, but nothing I haven´t seen before in other places, including southern Peru! For Peter´s reference, I would compare it to the beauty of the countryside around Sapa in northern Vietnam. That´s very beautiful indeed!

About 2 hours into our trip we turned a corner and my jaw dropped. I was looking out on the most gorgeous scene: a huge swath of the Andes Mountains below me, along with the clouds -- also below me. We were above the clouds and they were dotted all through the mountains. It was awesome, especially to have such a panoramic view! This was what we saw for the next hour or so. I got one chance to take a picture when the bus stopped and backed up to let another bus pass by. Yes, the road is definitely too narrow for 2 vehicles to pass at the same time. The driver honked his horn when approaching a blind curve, and that´s as much as anyone can do. Of course he was blasting music in the bus, so I doubt there would be any chance we would hear another vehicle´s honk if they were approaching! But throughout the entire 8-hour drive we probably only encountered a handful of other vehicles.

After the long climb up to the jaw-dropping view, we skirted the top of the mountains on a level road for quite a while. At around 11:30 am we stopped at a little restaurant for lunch. The restaurant looked extremely unhygienic and I did NOT eat at it! Instead I ate the orange and banana I had bought that morning on the Plaza and chatted with the English chef while he smoked. It was good to stretch my legs and I really had to go to the bathroom. The restaurant didn´t have one so I walked down the road around the bend expecting to use the bushes. I was pleasantly surprised to find an outhouse! (Outhouse = a hole in the ground with four tin walls propped around it. Gross and smelly, but better than squatting in the bushes and it works for me!) During the rest of the lunch break I got a kick out of watching an enormous turkey puff himself up and strut around the bus in an aggressive manner. I took lots of pictures of him!

Soon we were back on the road and the next few hours consisted of descending into the Marañón Canyon, which is deeper than the Grand Canyon. I didn´t expect it, but this was the BEST part of the bus trip! As soon as we started the descent, things started looking increasingly canyon-like: dry, rocky formations dotted with more and more cacti. I don´t think I´ve ever seen a real canyon so I was fascinated (my mom and dad taking me to the Grand Canyon when I was just an infant doesn´t count!). Once again, at some point we turned a corner and I couldn´t believe my eyes: the bottom of the canyon was lush and green! The Marañón River runs slices through (and obviously created) the canyon, so the very floor of the canyon is completely fertile. We spent about an hour getting down there, and once we arrived it was like a tropical oasis...lots of palm trees, banana trees, fruit, flowers, grass, and the rushing river itself. We stopped in the little town of Balsas on the canyon floor and we unloaded a lot of people and stuff! The temperature difference was also tropical and rather nauseating. It was oppressively hot and humid. Everyone was wilting and sweating, including me. The girl next to me got off in Balsas and was replaced by a nice but large woman who was seriously infringing on my real estate! She was overflowing into my seat and making me sweat even more! I thought I might melt. Everyone was calling to the driver to hurry up and get going again...he was inventorying all the packages that had been unloaded.

Finally we got going and crossed a little steel bridge over the Marañón River. We started ascending again gradually, then rapidly, and the scenery became very dry and canyon-like again. After about another hour we were on the other side of the mountains and they were green like normal mountains again! I looked up and saw a road doing a perfect zig-zag into the side of a mountain and I thought, "Oh, God, please don´t tell me that is our road." Yup, it was. At this point I was still hot, hungry and my ass hurt from sitting on it so long!

Thankfully as we ascended this mountain the air immediately got cooler and it felt great. What a relief! I had looked up at the zig-zag thinking it would be forever, but in no time I was looking down on it and thinking, "Wow, we were just at the bottom of this mountain, and now we´re at the top!" As we made our final turn (of thousands of turns) and final ascent (of many ascents and descents), my neighbor turned to me and said in Spanish, "This is it, now we´re going to arrive in Celendín."

Sure enough, we turned another corner and I saw the town of Celendín below us but not far away. It´s much bigger than I expected! It only took another 30 minutes or so to reach the town´s edges and a few people jumped off and collected their belongings when we were near their destinations. Shorterly thereafter the bus pulled up to it´s company office and we all got off. I think the back of my pants were actually wet from sweat! It was a relief to get up, move around and get off that bus. I have to say though, the entire journey wasn´t as arduous as I had heard and expected it to be. I thought the whole ride would be more like the roads we drove on yesterday going to Ravesh -- so potholed that you´re jouncing around and the driver is zig-zagging all over to avoid them and other cars. It was much calmer than that, and I think that´s lucky because northern Peru had a particulary long and wet rainy season this year. During the rainy season this route is not recommended, and often impossible anyway. As for the heights, yup -- it would be really tough for anyone afraid of heights! There were a few points where I looked down and didn´t see any road, just the sheer drop right under me! That wasn´t constant throughout the day, but a few times I thought, "Ohmygod, is there a road under us? Will the back wheels be on the road when we finish this turn?" But it was fine and the driver was really good (relative to many bus drivers I´ve seen in Latin America!). He took the hairpins slowly and always honked a warning, and slowed to an almost stop when he was crossing a stream. So all in all, it was pretty easy (by my standards) and definitely worth the fantastic views!

One funny thing about changes in altitude: I´ve already mentioned that at high altitude (Sacred Valley, Cusco, Puno, Arequipa) my toiletries explode. When I descend to lower altitude, all those same bottles pucker up. Well, today I went from medium to high to low to high altitude. My water bottle went back and forth from bulging to puckering up and then bulging again. What is up with that? Maybe my supersmart engineer Uncle John can answer this for us. Patti -- this is your mission! We want a full report!
When my backpack was handed down off the roof of the bus I said goodbye to the English chef (they were catching another bus to Cajamarca immediately....I´m staying in Celendín tonight and going to Cajamarca tomorrow). I walked my backpack and my sweaty ass 5 blocks to the Plaza de Armas and into a hostal right on the Plaza. This isn´t where I originally planned to stay. I have been communicating with a nice Dutch woman who runs a B&B in town with her Peruvian husband. She has been really helpful in telling me about the bus trip and the road between here and Chachapoyas, so I emailed her a few days ago and asked for a room. She said if she has availability when I show up, I´m welcome to a room, but they all share a bathroom. The way I felt getting off that bus was worth a private bathroom tonight! Turns out the hostal I got is actually cheaper than the B&B, has a private bathroom, a TV in the room and I have a balcony overlooking the Plaza de Armas for $9.60. It is OLD with rickety wood floors and a courtyard with a fountain and goldfish in it! They also have an adjoining restaurant which I hope it decent because I don´t feel like looking for anything else.
After getting settled in my room, I headed straight out to book my onward transportation tomorrow. I´m taking a 12:15 pm bus to Cajamarca (yay, no early morning alarm!). And it´s only a 3-4 hour bus ride which will be nice! I called a hostal there and booked ahead. The price was 45 soles but I asked for a discount and got a single room for 40 soles ($14.25). Already prices are going up as I return to more touristy destinations like Cajamarca, and I´m sure Lima will really be a shock when I get there.

I haven´t seen much of Celendín so far, and to be honest there isn´t much here to see. But it´s a very pleasant stop-over and the Plaza is pretty to look at. It is flanked on one side by a small cathedral that is painted bright blue and there are small mountains in all directions. Mostly I just plan to hang out here until my bus tomorrow...have some dinner, watch whatever the movie of the night is, and maybe stroll around tomorrow morning. There is SO much to see and do in Cajamarca that I´m going to save my energy!

Note to Mom: Leymebamba, Celendín and Cajamarca are all well within northern Peru. I am traveling south, but not back to southern Peru. These places are all well northeast of Lima. For some reason TravelPod can´t find Leymebamba or Celendín on their map (I think they´re too small), so unfortunately it won´t update the progress of my route. I´m sure it will recognize Cajamarca tomorrow.

That´s all for now, I hope you enjoyed taking my bus ride with me! Trust me, you ended up a lot less sweaty than I did. Until tomorrow from Cajamarca....

Love,
Kim

Print this entry Share Lima hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry