Canyon road beside the Rio Santa in Peru

A pale gray dusts hides loose rocks on the road through the Rio Santa canyon in Northern Peru. A cliff into the river and a nearly vertical desert rock wall are it’s boundaries. Only a one lane tunnel allows passage in thirty-seven places.

One bad rock, one slip, and...

Our narrow tandem tires cut into the dust and bounce and slide from one auto-tire slickened rock to another. We  hope to avoid the shattered and sharpened hidden ones, capable of ruining our day, and one of our tires. We have one spare, and wonder if we should not have brought two. A few times a particularly vile rock (by the second day I was attributing evil intent to certain rocks) would throw the front wheel toward the abyss, necessitating a dual bail out.

After a day on the Rio Santa Road

All this is more than a little stressful. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for Claire on the back of the tandem, not being able to see what is causing the bumping and swerving (and not a little cursing).

Road cutting through the desert Andes above the Rio Santa

The two days along this road were among the most physically demanding of 40,000 miles of touring, and yet I am beginning to let go of memories of aching shoulders and hands, and the mental exhaustion. Claire said I would. And she said I would probably get us into something just as bad in the future. She’s usually right. But maybe not this time. Maybe I’ve learned it’s possible to have an adventure without such a high degree of physical punishment. I think so.

I call on my friends to remind me to come back and read this post, if I seem to be hankering for something absurdly difficult, and not hearing Claire’s subtle hints that it might be over the top. That’s what friends are for.

Stark Beauty of the Andes and the Rio Santa

I won’t forget the stark beauty of the desert Andes and the Rio Santa, our star lit bush camp, the Southern Cross sinking behind a knife edge ridge, leaving us with a cool restful sleep.

Stay tuned for more posts we didn’t have time or internet for in South America.

Miami International Airport Hotel

In case you missed Claire amid our luggage and Zippy

Air travel is not always comfortable. American Airlines is doing their part to make sure we don’t get too soft. We arrived early evening at Miami International Airport. We had to claim our luggage, and Zippy, to go through Customs and Immigration, always a mad rush to get the luggage, sometimes for us a wait at oversize luggage for the bicycle, then wait in line, passport in hand to get cleared.

We ran and got near the front of the line then made our way to the American Airlines desk to re-check our luggage for our early morning flight, now a good eight hours away. It was around 9pm and the desk was manned by one woman. No other customers. She wouldn’t check in our luggage. The conveyor belt was humming away, just waiting for our luggage, but it was, “against the rules.” She wouldn’t even take Zippy, or the exorbitant $200 cost to get him to Tucson. She seemed to enjoy saying no to us, multiple times. American must have special training schools for nose-in-the-air acrid pronunciation of the word “no”.

So we were stuck in the airport all night with all our luggage. No way were we going to order a van big enough for Zippy and put ourselves at the mercy of a driver to find us a hotel, that fit our budget, for a now at best six hour sleep. There was a hotel in the airport, prices starting at $139, but we didn’t even check, anticipating that exorbitant $200 to get Zippy to Tucson.

So we had foot-long at Subway and went wandering with our little cart filled with Zippy and not much else. I was reminded of the street people in most cities, schlepping their worldly possessions all over town in a grocery cart, looking for a comfortable spot to have a lie down, and maybe a little sleep. At least we didn’t have to worry about being told to move on; airport security knows about over-nighters. And of course airports are much more comfortable than sleeping outside, even in Miami in September, which felt cool to us after Guyana.

We weren’t alone in our search for an out-of-the way place to test the carpet padding. We passed several nice looking looking spots before finding a quiet corner for ourselves. Some people were trying to sleep sitting up in chairs; not for me. Give me a flat spot, with just a little padding, something just the right size for a pillow, and I’m ready to get horizontal and sleep. We sort of took turns sleeping and guarding our stuff, for awhile, then realized nobody would know the value of that big long shrink-wrapped thing, so we both slept for a few hours. We almost didn’t wake up in time for our required 5am check in time.

Sleeping in airports is all part of the experience these days if, like us, you go for the cheap ticket, no matter what. But lots of people get stuck for reasons of weather or airline screw-ups, so if you travel much, your day will come. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow and enjoy the experience. You’ll be surprised how comfortable you can get on your own little corner of carpet.

It happened 130 kilometers from the Guyana border in Boa Vista.  We took a no travel day to stock up for the pedal to the Guyana border. We filled the right rear pannier with food and bottled water, and were headed back to our small hotel. We’d just turned into the empty roundabout and headed for the first exit, legally, when we both saw the car headed for us from the right, at excessive speed.

There have been a very few times in my life when time seemed to slow, if not stand still, and this was one. I could see the car headed for us broad side, in slow motion, too late to brake, to late for our acceleration to help.

Thud.

Zippy’s back end went sideways, but we somehow stayed upright. I steered for the center island curb and we dropped Zippy to the curb. I could tell Claire was okay, she was already running for the pannier laying in the middle of the street. Quick thinking: save the food!

The car stopped in the middle of the street, the driver yelling at ME in rapid Portuguese. I ran to the open passenger window to give him what-for in English, Claire arrived seconds later, gesturing to our pannier, and giving him hell too. He was blaming us, but I knew the culprit; the cell phone he had dropped on the passenger seat.

I made a show of memorizing his licence plate, as he drove slowly away, but there was no point is trying to detain him.

Neither of us was hurt, the food sustained minor damage. The pannier was the one we crashed on in Tibet two years ago, and was by now getting accustomed to taking hits. (Thank you Cannondale for making equipment we cannot destroy!)

It was a minor accident, but instructive.

The point of this post is not our close call:

The point is that neither the driver or us even considered involving the police: he because he was Brazilian and has known all his life to distrust them, and we because we had been warned not to involve police in anything, not even an injury accident.

Joe, owner of our small moldy, but relatively clean hotel back in Manaus, told us he had been the victim of a hit-and-run the year before on his motorcycle. He called the police to the scene (someone got the license number) but before they would pursue the motorist, they demanded a bribe. He said often both motorists in an accident are threatened with fines, if they don’t pay up. Joe told us to try and work it out with the driver, if it ever happened to us.

Have you ever considered offering a police officer a bribe in the U.S.?

I grew up knowing I would end up in jail if I did. Most of you did I’d guess. But in much of the world that is not the case.

In much of Latin America, a culture of corruption from above, makes it seem to the minions that it is just the normal way of doing things. The reasons for rampant corruption at lower levels of government are complex.

One of the reasons can be low, or non-existent pay. On our first trip around the U.S. we were told that the Mexican border patrol agents at a remote outpost near the Stillwell Ranch, and Big Bend National park, received no salary. They lived on “fines” levied against poor Mexicans bringing in used tires and other goods to sell in the remote villages near the frontier. It’s pretty hard to argue against them, but what about the higher ups who probably pocket the salaries before they get to the agents?

Corruption around the world is a huge subject, far too complex for this blog to cover properly, but is a huge drain on the cultures affected, and ultimately on the creation and preservation of a strong middle class worldwide.

On our Silk Road Crossing, four years ago, in Western Turkey, we were told by a local business man, that the mid-day black-outs are a normal part of life in Turkey, and cost untold millions in business losses. Corruption in electric power administration is the cause. He also complained that, though he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in carpet sales each years, that he only pays a few hundred in taxes.

He would rather see a corruption free public sector, pay significant taxes and have a reliable infrastructure.

That won’t happen soon, because too many pockets are lined, in all levels of government, and sometimes in business.

Do we, have we, had corruption in the U.S.?

Yes, of course. But, we don’t have a pervasive culture of corruption. As long as we have a strong middle-class, we will resist widespread corruption.

Would you want to live in a country where you are afraid to call the police?

Just one more reason for Americans to be appreciative of our system of government, our government employees and a culture with reasonably high values. Even though the highest level of our government is in a temporary period of confusion, and political uncertainty is high, we have much to be thankful for.

Zippy on a mini-bus, waiting for the ferry in central Guyana

Georgetown/Letham Road

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and Zippy has to take a ride on a bus, in this case a mini-van packed sardine-like with 12 passengers, on a dirt road across Guyana. It’s always a mini-adventure traveling the way the locals travel. All South Americans seem to like their pop music, and because they like it so much, they play the same top hits over and over again, at speaker-buzzing volumes. I once liked Latin music; no more.

Georgetown/Letham Road and pop music Mini van being destroyed by potholes; 18 hours of this teaches patience and tolerance, or at least it should.

Story telling on a Guyana ferry

Claire in hammock in Guyana. Long sleeves for mosquitoes, not cold!

Jungle Hammock Sounds of the night in mid Guyana

Travel With The Locals

The cramped ride was for 18 hours, but we did have about five hours in the middle to have a nap stretched out in the hammocks we brought from the Amazon barco (boat) portion of this trip. A nice tropical rain made for a deep sleep, and it was back on the road again.

The Georgetown/Letham Road.

A paradise of flowers

botanical garden birds

Georgetown, Guyana Market

Selling newspapers at the market in Georgetown counting her cash

Peppers in basket in the Georgetown, Guyana Market

Not Your Vision of the Caribbean

Beach near an upscale hotel in Georgetown

A common view in Georgetown

Encounters in Georgetown, Guyana

Morning commute across the river in Guyana

Delivery horse in downtown Georgetown

Strong Gun Control Laws, Violence Rampant with Cutlass (Machete)

Almost daily news in Georgetown

View from our guesthouse in Georgetown

Sign at lunchette by day, bar by night, we had the Cook-up at noon.

Place of quiet in Georgetown

Fake palm: metaphor for Georgetown's future?

Guyana is one of those countries on the cusp of some difficult decisions. It’s still mostly third-world rapidly being dragged toward a developing-world role by(mostly) China’s thirst for natural resources. What they will do with increasing wealth will determine what kind of life Guyanans can expect. As we have heard in Peru and Brazil, internal corruption is the biggest threat they face. We were told the maintenance on the Georgetown/Lethem Road was contracted out, and most of the money went into the pockets of government officials and the fixed bid winner, and little goes into the road, at a cost of millions in lost efficiency of travel on the only north south road, and repairs to vehicles.

The pattern is reportedly being repeated in contracts for China mining Guyana’s resources. If they are to become a true developing-world country, they will need to develop value added manufacturing and exporting. Now China (and others) buy natural resources and little else. Perhaps this is due to corruption, or a lack of middle-class education necessary for the development of an entrepreneurial class. Now Guyana is a divided country: we often saw expensive automobiles parked beside crumbling park benches, the beds of the many homeless. The lack of a middle class, and the conditions that produce a middle class, will doom any country to the dustbin of economic history. We currently have a shrinking middle-class in America.

Guyana is not a tourist destination for most of us. If you have thousands to spend per week at a fly-in high end resort in the jungle, I’m sure it would be wonderful, as large tracts have been preserved for the few. One interesting development is that Guyana is selling carbon credits based on it’s thousands of square miles of jungle. It’s sort of like an export not requiring capital; earning money by letting things alone. Where is the money going? Hopefully into education, and developing manufacturing and infrastructure. We didn’t see evidence of that. It’s a good bet that when China develops a taste for tropical hardwoods, the jungle will be for sale, by the powerful corrupt.

America’s lack of corruption is rare in this world. It’s one of the things a strong middle class doesn’t tolerate. We have much to be thankful for, but I’m afraid Americans are more prone to complaining than thanksgiving.

More on corruption in South America in a future post: If you have an accident in America, are you afraid to call the police?

Claire was still sick at her stomach when we bought tickets on the lancha Eduardo V for Iquitos; brave, since most of the guidebooks say the food is cooked in river water, and “you will get sick.” Happy to say they are wrong. The food was simple and starchy, rice, plantains, papas, and a little meat, but reasonably prepared and came in generous proportions. We didn’t get sick, and Claire was downing the whole bowl by mid trip. We bought two plastic bowls and metal spoons to eat with.

sunset on rio maranon

“Not for getting clean. For getting the stink off”

There were toilets (no seats) and even a couple of river water showers; a sign, roughly translated said, “Not for getting clean. For getting the stink off.” They were also nice in the heat of the afternoon. I showered twice in shorts and shirt and stood by the rail to drip and cool while enjoying a view of life on the Amazon.

The lancha is a sort of large barge with a motor, two decks and a wheelhouse. The vessel’s purpose is carrying freight; rice, and more rice, scrap steel, fertilizer, cement, bulls, pigs and at least one rooster, none of which were fed or watered during the trip, every manner of household goods and appliances, general merchandise, bags of unidentified stuff, and one tandem bicycle.

The Eduardo V

(This is for James Rovang, my nephew, a marine electrician specializing in exotic navigation equipment in Anacortes, Washington) The Eduardo V has one piece of navigation equipment, that doubles as a depth finder: it is a panga (long open motorboat) the Captain sends ahead with two men when he is not sure of the channel (Peru has no channel markers of any kind). One runs the motor/tiller, the other uses a long pole with depth markings to try to avoid sandbars. This information is not sent back by radio, they don’t have a radio, but the panga charges back to the Eduardo, the depth finder crewman scrambles back on board to tell the Captain where not to go. Very efficient, eh? At night, a crewman stands on deck with not more than a one-thousand watt hand held searchlight; he scans both shores and the middle for about ten seconds, turns the light off for twenty seconds, and repeats. From this the helmsman steers a pretty big ship through the night.

well-and-truly aground

The Amazon and its tributaries carry a heavy load of silt, and the channel is constantly changing. Being a riverboat captain must be a very difficult job. I thanked the Captain for his hard work one morning and he told me (with bloodshot eyes) he had been at the wheel all night. We were stuck a few times that night; you can tell because the ship lurches up and sideways, and the engines labor and speed up. I wondered how many extra days it would take us to get to Iquitos if we were well-and-truly aground. A rescue ship would be two days away. No worries, we had a year’s worth of rice on board, and a dozen emaciated bulls.

view from a hammock

hammock is where you sleep

Passengers are an afterthought on these life-lines to Iquitos and many small villages along the Amazon’s banks. You buy space, bring a hammock to hang crossways above the deck, vying politely for some personal space. The hammock is where you sleep, and sit during the day. We became very familiar with our hammocks over the 48, mas o menos, hours it took to Iquitos.

evening light on our hammock home

a new baby

We also met and “talked” to our close (very) neighbors and crew. One family was returning to Iquitos with a new baby, either four weeks old, or four months, we couldn’t discern, not being very expert in such matters. We did however enjoy smiling at the baby, and having her smile back. The parents are very proud. I thought the father was going to cry as he told me how happy his baby made him. I told him (somehow) that his baby was making everyone on our ship happy; true.

our neighbors

One young man was so proud of his position in the cavalry of Peru’s military he showed me his military ID. Claire said he wanted to talk to me because of my military style haircut. I can be a good listener too; even when I don’t understand much.

radar, depthfinder and GPS panga

stumbling, quiet cursing and occasional vomiting over the rail

One group of young men nearby got drunk on some clear liquor, but they didn’t last long, crashed in their hammocks long before midnight. There was a kerfuffle sometime in the early morning hours, when one of them awoke and discovered something important of his missing. He was blaming his compatriots and very upset. Flashlights searched the decks, hammocks were turned upside down, bags searched, all with considerable stumbling, quiet cursing and occasional vomiting over the rail. We looked carefully beneath our hammocks. You see they had a large, live snapping turtle tied up in a plastic bag with them, probably as a celebratory dinner gift for their welcome home dinner. We worried it had managed to wander off, and our butt laden hammocks were inches from the floor. I know what a snapping turtle can do with its beak! My father and grandfather ran a “trotline” in the Coal River; don’t let a snapping turtle get near any tender parts!

a friaje

We slept well each night except one. A heavy squall hit us hard one afternoon, raining hard for two hours, bullets streaking the brown water and shaking the ship. The riverscape, usually pudding brown, selva (jungle) green, and sky blue, was now an even shade of streaked gray blue, and animated,  a fury of sound and motion. The constant meandering of the river meant a short fetch, and held the waves down. I wondered why the downstream current, against the wind usually, didn’t get choppier that it did. It was fun to see some real weather. We’ve had sunshine almost every day (except flat fog on the coast) for six weeks, and the storm was a treat. However, the weather system left some very cold air in its wake (locally called a friaje), and I almost wished we hadn’t already mailed home the winter gear, stuff we mostly didn’t need in the Andes. Claire complained of a cold butt, pressed against the hammock, and my toes took until noon to recover. We knew it could get cold down in the Amazon Basin, but it was only something read in a book. Now we know, really know, in a way you can only know by feeling it on your skin, in your bones.

exotic fruits, cakes, handicrafts and parrots

At most village stops, women and children clambered on board, selling everything from gaseosas (sodas), to exotic fruits, cakes, handicrafts and parrots. The mud banks are filled with them vying for position to make the first round of the passengers hoping for a sale. Iquitos and Yurimaguas are very far away, and we few passenger/customers are delivered to their very doorstep. No wonder they are in such a hurry to get to us.

yelps and whistles of excitement and encouragement

We arrived well after dark in Iquitos, and had to navigate the hoards of moto taxi drivers and tour touts, while we loaded our gear on Zippy. We managed to fight our way through the hotel bound traffic in darkness, receiving many yelps and whistles of excitement and encouragement from the moto taxis, even as they seemed to nearly run us down. We survived again, found modest accommodations, slept okay on the funny flat bed, and are learning our way around Iquitos, a most fascinating city of 400,000, deep in the Amazon. It’s time to pinch myself. We are indeed here in the middle of nowhere, yet again. How do we keep making these crazy plans?

Caldo de Gallina

In the village of Pongo, I ordered a common soup in Peru, Caldo de Gallina. Usually it is chicken noodle soup with a leg or thigh, sometimes an egg stirred in while cooking. Not this time. I got the real deal. I turned over the chicken back and found it filled with chicken innards. Now, I grew up on a farm, and we ate the heart, gizzard and liver of the chickens we slaughtered, but let the rest of it go to the hogs. After closer inspection I discovered a complete egg, shell and all, just ready to  be laid. That was cool. I ate it, Yum.

Egg number two

Next to the uterus containing the fully formed egg, was a coiled mass that looked something like intestines, but was in the wrong place, up against the backbone. A quick taste revealed it to be yet more egg in formation. Quite good. Toward the neck was a yellow mass that was all yolk, also good. The soup was also good. I had no ill effects from the meal, and would eat it again. My mother would be appalled to know how much food she fed to the hogs all those years.

You’re never to old to learn something new.

Finally, we think, we can tell the whole story. We don’t like to alarm family when we are (seldom) ill on these trips, and so we don’t post the gory details. Well, one of both of us has had a respiratory illness for the complete five weeks plus of this trip. I have just begun a course of antibiotics for a lung infection, after more than a week of unpleasantness. We think we’ll be whole in a few days when we plan to catch a cargo boat to Iquitos on Rio Amazonas.

Claire’s first bout was just a bad chest cold, which I caught just as we started up the Andes. I managed the first two days of climbing, but in Cajacay I simply couldn’t breathe deeply enough to go on. We stayed two days, and fortunately there was a fiesta of the mountain people to entertain Claire. I didn’t get better, so we took a bus to Huaraz for another three days of recovery. We continued north in the Cordillera Blanca, through Canyon del Pato and down Rio Santa. We attempted a direct crossing of the high Andes, and turned back after an exhausting day to a small village where we were assured the road was not passable by bicycle. We knew two cyclists who had descended the road, but no one who’d gone up. That we were so easily talked out of the attempt proved to us that we were not recovered.

After Cajamarca we succeeded in topping out the Andes’ first high ridge on a rocky, dusty road at 3765 meters. Claire began coughing at the most excellent bicycle resort, (an earlier post) and I at first thought it was the thick fine dust we’d been subjected to over the pass. It wasn’t dust. By the time we reached Celendin, Claire was as ill as I’ve ever seen her, coughing violently and choking. I was very concerned, and mentally planning how to store or abandon Zippy and get us back to Lima. She did improve over the next two days, but certainly not enough to consider cycling. We took a bus to Chachapoyas, and stayed for a week, where I got my current lung infection. Bummer.

From Chachapoyas, we rode a series of passes over the second ridge of the Andes, into the Amazon Basin proper, both of us hacking and spitting all the way. Neither of have felt fully fit since Lima, but are slowly feeling better daily. Adventure is much more interesting than illness, but in this way of travel, it is what it is. We just keep on keeping on. The adventure part will come.

The Andes are behind us. We expect better from the Amazon.

Claire:

We’ve had an eventful week and feel like we’re finally hitting our stride. Though Chachapoyas was a good place to recuperate from our respective colds, after a week we were ready to get moving. And move we did; it’s all downhill through a beautiful canyon to Pedro Ruiz, where we expected to find a “dusty little crossroads”, as described in LP. It was actually a very friendly, welcoming place, and we enjoyed a clean, quiet room at Hotel Amazonense, where Marina had us sign her guest book and took our photo. The next day was a difficult climb, so we kept it short and at Pomacochas, we were invited home with Jannes. He and his mother cleared space in a room we would long ago have called a parlor and laid out a mattress.  The family is opening a posada/guest house/restaurant in October to accommodate birdwatchers who come to the area.

Though we’re now on paved roads, gravity takes its toll and we have to stop frequently for road work. We knew we had a few more serious climbs before dropping well into the Amazon Basin, so when construction workers cheered and clapped for us at one pass, we guessed we must be close. We did still have one more big hill that day, but we again had the benefit of construction workers to tell us we’d crossed into the department of San Martin. Having the Andes at your back feels as good as it sounds. The new landscape is extremely energizing as well. We’re in a place now where we race iridescent blue butterflies and listen to the liquid lilt of lorikeets. With just a few tough climbs we’ve come into a place with a new style of architecture, new foods and drinks and people (and less agressive dogs, thankfully) with a laid back attitude.

We’re adjusting to the heat and humidity, and sleeping with all the windows open also means adjusting to street noise, which on Saturday night, will run at least until the roosters start crowing on Sunday morning (ear plugs work great). We’ve found a blissfully quiet and cool room at the Hotel San Antonio in Tarapoto, and amazingly, it also has a door knob, a toilet seat, a faucet that doesn’t rotate with the knob, first floor rooms, enough space for Zippy in the room and a double bed (we can and do crowd into a single often here in Peru). Yowsa.

Most fun of all, while waiting for a room to come available here in Tarapoto, we were interviewed by a reporter from Diario Ahora (diarioahora.pe) and were profiled in today’s Tarapoto edition. Some people on the street recognized us from the front page photo.

If there are no photos with this post it is because I can’t get them to upload. I’ll keep trying…

Typical accommodation in Peru, former small grocery

Buying an apple empanada in Ancos

Those eyelashes!

Claire's favorite food, cacao beans, good from the bean!

Likely Inca trail

At the bull fight

Llamas guarding fortress Kuelap

Indigenous woman in Kajamarca

Shoe shiners compete in Kajamarca

Market Woman in the N. Highlands

Cruz Conga Resort Room

It’s all part of being travelers. Sometimes things don’t turn out as expected. The day began beautifully; a 300 meter climb, on pista (pavement) for a change. Sunny, lazy dogs, Zippy behaving, and a change of landscape over the top. Our legs felt good. It was to be a short day, 40k to a village just big enough to have accommodation and food. We found the food, but wasted an hour looking for the hospedaje, and failed to find it, after being pointed to all corners of the village.

We decided to tackle the following 600 meter climb, hoping the end of the pista wouldn’t mean another shoulder and butt wracking ride. The climb went fairly well, though the fist sized imbedded rocks made the effort much greater. We began looking for bush camping spots at the cold summit. As usual In Peru, there are people living and working everywhere, and the rough hillsides are much too steep to pitch a tent. If it’s too steep to farm, it’s too steep to sleep on.

Collapsed in my luxury bed at Cruz Conga

The descent was difficult, rockier, narrower, and with heavy afternoon traffic. A couple of interactions with vicious dogs didn’t help. After a ten kilometer descent we were exhausted, and asked for a hospedaje in the village of Cruz Conga. No. We asked about setting up our tent in a bosque (small forest), and were refused. The idea of private real property is very strong in Peru. The woman we’d asked indicated she did have an unused room. Claire returned with the news that it was, “Pretty basic.” We paid 20 soles for a dirt floor, bare mattress, on a slope, wandering pigs, dogs and chickens, scraps of trash, animal feces, a shared outhouse, and the lack of a door. I collapsed on the bed, shoulders pounded tender by the rocky descent, chilled by the effort and the altitude. We ate cookies and saltines, to save the dried fruit for breakfast.

Claire set up a booby trap using fishing line and an empty water bottle. The effort, the altitude, the cold helped me to sleep soundly for twelve hours. The next morning was more of the same for half a day until Celendin, where we were greeted with a wildly celebrating populace anxiously awaiting the afternoon’s bull fight, and a concerned night with Claire’s second cold in three weeks, this one really bad. Another story.

We had cuy for lunch. A little greasy and not much meat, but not bad tasting. Claire shot some video. Many photos coming.

PS. We love Cajamarca; brightly painted, clean, good food and music, friendly people who don’t seem to look at us a tourists. Maybe it’s because Gringoes don’t come here. More Andes tomorrow.