Royal Family Times: The Road to Chachapoyas (July 17, 2010)

My initial impression about industry in Peru is that men are either taxi drivers or wear orange highway worker outfits and are employed by the state. The highway workers along the road to Chachapoyas seemed to number in the thousands. We hunkered down for what we expected to be a rather challenging trip and . . . it was. Hermano Ramirez and Jorge talked non-stop in Spanish to each other. They are very friendly. I used one of my Spanish/English translator i-Phone applications to communicate with them, which was fun. They got to where they liked playing along with our effort to communicate things like: “Could you please roll your window up” and “Seriously, don’t kill us!” As our time together increased, our ability to communicate improved. We intuitively figured out some global sign language and played a lot of charades, which got the job done. Along the way we saw a monkey (tied to a chain), a lot of gross stray dogs, a lot of poverty, a lot of smiling children, and plenty of beautiful scenery. The road to Chachapoyas is really windy, bumpy and occasionally treacherous. However, it is, in a word: Beautiful. I could not believe the beating the vehicle took along the way. Oh, how could I forget? There are speed bumps all along the highway - everywhere. Some are clearly identified with yellow stripes, others are not. Therefore, we made some, we missed some. Maralea and I did not eat much on this journey. We would only eat food that was wrapped or sealed, afraid of getting sick. I probably allowed myself to get a bit dehydrated.


The landscape begins to change as you head east of Chiclayo on the road to Chachapoyas

Seriously spectacular views along the mountain pass on the road to Chacha

This is a familiar sight along chitty chitty Chacha road

Our buddies: Ishmael (left) and Jorge, with Maralea, the language barrier did not keep us from becoming friends!

This was our first taste of the local Peruvian cuisine, here with Hermano Ramirez. (Inca Cola es muy bueno.)

We stopped in Bagua Grande for lunch. We were totally willing to go without eating, but our Peruvian guides were not so willing. They picked out a spot, a small little diner that definitely represented the local cuisine. Maralea and I panicked, so we called David to tell him what was on the menu and got his opinion on whether we should eat anything. He recommended the chicken or beef. The fish, complete with eyes, scale and bones, was just not an option. The food we ordered was great, but we ate with anxiety, hoping that we were not inviting some kind of health disaster that would put a damper on our trip. So far so good. We had several delays in our trip, including nearly an hour wait at one point due to road construction (and from what I can tell, the road construction is going very, very slowly). At one point, Jorge offered to have me take the wheel. I think he was joking, but fully expect he would have allowed it had I accepted the offer. Even though we were on the highway, far from the tricky city traffic, I had no interest in driving. We were getting anxious as time passed, but I knew fretting over time lost on the road would not get us there any quicker, so I tried not to worry. When we passed the sign Chachapoyas 50 km, I thought we were about there, but no - we were instead still more than an hour away, traversing down a windy road in torrential rain that was causing mud and rock slides. There were big newly fallen rocks all over the road, and it was pretty nerve racking driving past areas with hanging rocks. We stopped at one point for a couple photographs and, while outside the car, we heard rocks falling about 200 yards away behind us and decided to get going. As we made our way up the mountain to Chachapoyas, we noticed a significant change in the landscape, including even large fir trees. We arrived at about 6:15 p.m., and it was already dark. That threw me initially as it was summer when we left Las Vegas and Atlanta. It then dawned on me that this is winter in Peru - it gets dark early and, at 8,000 feet in the Southern Hemisphere, it also gets a tad cold.