Worst Vacation EVER. Though it was adventurous and actually kind of fun.

Playing frisbee on the beach:


Sunset in Huanchaco:


The extent we saw of Amazonas:



So, it all started in the madrugada (the hours between 12 midnight and about 6 AM). I was supposed to hitch a ride down the mountain with Misael. He has a truck and rides down to Morropon every morning at 4:00 AM. So, heeding Isoe’s (my host dad) advice, I decide to wait at 3:30.

I wait for an hour and once 4:30 rolls by and Misael doesn’t drive by I decide to jump on the next transportation that comes by. The next transportation is a camioneta (a transportation truck in Peru with a large truck bed where they store things like 50 kilo bags of flour, cases of beer and a sleeping person…or maybe just the one I took). I jump on board to ride just an hour an a half. It was the most violent, painful descent from my site ever. I’m still healing some blister wounds and I think my butt was black and blue.

After a whip-lash inducing hour and a half I am let out in the plaza of Morropon and fortunately jump immediately onto a bus headed to Piura. I get to Piura no problem, meet up and talk to Marian for about 10 minutes and get some Malaria pills from the post office. Then, I hustle over to Trasnportes Chiclayo to board a bus to Chiclayo and meet Micah, Alisha, Elizabeth and Tim who are my travel buddies heading to Chachapoyas, Amazonas. The bus is pretty fancy and S./2 less than Linea (which means like $.60) which is awesome.

I get off the bus in Chiclayo and meet up at the mall (Chiclayo has a mall with Starbucks and this place that is basically Target). We get some awesome Goat for lunch and then the fun really starts. We head to the mall again (we left to get lunch) and claim Starbucks as our own. We throw our numerous packs in the corner and take all of the comfortable chairs. We remain largely immobile for the better part of several hours because our bus to Chachapoyas doesn’t leave until 7:30 PM.

We head to Movil Tours and this is where the fun begins. We board the bus and begin a 10 hour bus trip into the jungle. In order to accomplish the drive, we drive North through Lambayeque, touch just the corner of Piura, cross the department of Cajamarca and head into Amazonas and begin making our way south. Most of the road is paved. But that’s not as exciting. To make things exciting, the non-paved road decides it doesn’t want to be a road anymore and returns itself to the mountain. AKA, mudslide. Therefore, 8 hours on the bus and we have come to a complete standstill.

The bus stops at 3:30 in the morning and doesn’t move. We figure something further ahead has happened, but it will clear up in an hour or so. We heard the road was bad or something. We sit on the bus (sleep on the bus) for another 3 hours. At 6:30, having not moving an inch and sitting in the bus which has become a sweatbox we decided to investigate. We learn about the road up ahead washing out. It’s holiday in Peru, so the road wasn’t going to be repaired for another 4 days.

We weigh our options. Shall we hike across the collapsed road or shall we turn around and hike to Bagua (a large city we had passed about an hour before coming to a stop). Both of these options suck. The first one means that we get to experience our vacation more or less, but will have trouble getting back to where we need to be. Some of us had things we had to get back to, so couldn’t afford to get trapped in Amazonas. The other option sucks because 1 hour by car means roughly 8 hours walking. We suck it up and decide to walk.

We grab all our stuff off the bus and begin an 8 hour hike to Bagua. Luckily, when we reach the end of the traffic (which is apporoximately 3 minutes after we began hiking) there is a bus turned around and selling tickets to Chiclayo and Trujillo. Elizabeth makes the executive decision that we are going to Trujillo and we climb on board. (This is around 8:30 AM)

We decide that since we are a group of five, we should sit in the last seat since it sits five across. And this is awesome…….Anyway, the bus starts driving and 9 hours later we arrive in Chiclayo. This is cool, but we’re going to Trujillo so have another 4 hours before we arrive at our destination. In total, we were traveling by bus for 25 hours. It was kind of the worst day of my life.

In Trujillo, we get off of the bus and take a cab to Huanchaco which is my favorite Peruvian Beach town that I’ve seen so far. We all go to bed. The next day, we wake up sore from the intense sitting we had done the day before. We play Frisbee on the beach, eat the best pancakes ever and lots of vegetarian food.

We go into Trujillo at night to watch a Peruvian Eric Clapton cover band….hilarious. I don’t remember what day, but we also went to a microbrewery.

Highlights of the trip:
-A lengthy discussion of burial practices including how we would like to be buried (or disposed of) including Viking burial and enormous pyramids.
-Bonfire on the beach (did you know there are tropical vanilla marshmallows, what does that even mean?)
-I open a beer bottle (actually 2) with a log.
-Frisbee
-Friends


Anyway, afterwards I came back to Piura and then to Chulucanas because I had a meeting called PEPFAR. Which means President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. The director of the school in my town and the obstetrician came. It was cool. I learned a lot and will hopefully start some workshops in my site with the help of the other two. Now, I’m just sweating profusely though Piura has cooled off a lot (meaning its probably only in the 90s….). Heading back to the ‘Rumbe tomorrow where I’m going to be working further with baking.

And libraries.

The end.