The Road Less Traveled

There is a road less traveled. Frost liked to idealize it. Trust me, there is nothing ideal about it. This road is nothing but a one lane, dirty track that winds and weaves through the jungle and then up over the Andes Mountains. Just when you think can´t take any more, it starts back through the jungle all over again.

Last Tuesday we began our push into Peru with the hope to make it all the way to Chachapoya in a single day. We didn´t think this would be too much of an issue since it is only about 400 kilometers. That is roughly the distance from DC to New York City. We even left at 5 AM to ensure that we would make it by the end of the evening; South American roads can be unpredictable so you need to allow for extra time. A bus, a flatbed truck, a four-wheel drive taxi, two military checkpoints, and several immigration offices later we finally crossed into Peru. It took us over fourteen hours to travel about 200 kilometers! Well short of our final destination.

So Tuesday night, we found ourselves (Drew, me, our friend George, and a random German tourist we picked up along the way) stuck in a small Peruvian town called San Ignacio. Daylight is long gone, there are no way to keep moving forward, and we are the only gringos in town. We were also a hundred miles from the nearest ATM and without any Soles (the Peruvian currency). This isn´t a section of Peru that receives many tourists. It sits right on the edge of the Amazon jungle and is loaded with untouched ruins for a variety of civilizations. These ruins are exactly what led us here, but there is little infrastructure to support any robust tourism. We people say ¨getting there is half the adventure,¨ this is the place they were talking about. Banks only exist in the largest towns, so we had to change dollars for Soles in an small appliance store. Luckily you can generally find someone who wants US dollars. These small towns often aren´t on any bus routes, so the only way to get around is to catch a cab to the next town. Cabs only go to the next major town, so you end up hopping in and out of cabs at every town.

Since we didn´t make it to Chachapoya on the first day, we decided not to take any chances on day two, and we left at 4 AM. We caught a small VW van to the next town and packed in with 15 of our new best friends. It is rather difficult to sleep when you are crammed in between a couple of Peruvians and a chicken. About four hours later we arrived in the next town of any note. We jumped out of one cab and into a couple of scooter pedi-cabs for the trip to the next taxi stand. It would make sense to put all the cabs together, but that would make it way too easy.

We dashed into an second taxi and pushed off for the next town. This next town was large enough to catch a bus to our final destination, Chachapoya, but we had to rush to make it in time. Two hours later we arrived at the bus station only to discover that the morning bus was gone, but there was an afternoon bus if we wanted to wait until 4 pm to catch it. Since it was now 10 AM, we decided to just hire another cabbie to take us to Chachapoya. It was only 2 hours away and if we made good time we could still see one of the ruins in the later afternoon. Foolish gringos.

The final taxi ride started uneventfully. Our driver was insane and never missed an opportunity to try to kill us, but this is normal. After about an hour and a half we rounded a bend for the final 30 kilometers of our trip. Parked in the road was a dump truck and a large sign that read ¨Road Closed! Open Daily from 4:30 pm to 8 AM.¨ This was the only road to Chachapoya and we were stuck. We got out of the car, calmed our new German friend, and assessed the situation. It turns out that this road construction had been ongoing for about a year and was well know to everyone in the region. So we yelled at our cabbie for not telling us. He decided it was a good time to take a nap and ignore us, so he got a pillow and blanket out of the car and spread out in some shade.

There was a single roadside restaurant nearby, so we decided to grab some lunch while we killed 4 and a half hours. Generally,in small restaurants there is no menu. You get whatever they cook that day. Our lunch consisted of soup, rice, and stomach. Yes, stomach. Not surprisingly, beef stomach tastes like fuzzy chicken.

So on day two of our trek we finally made it to Chachapoya. It only took 24 hours more than we anticipated. We has started this trip with rough schedule that culminated with a bullfight in Lima on Sunday afternoon. It was now Wednesday evening, so we planned to catch the ruins on Thursday, cut out some extra stuff we wanted to see, and take a 26 hours worth of bus rides on Friday and Saturday. With luck we would arrive in Lima on Saturday afternoon.

Our delays/adventures were just beginning.