Blogs from Cajamarca, Cajamarca, Peru, South America

With a bit of a flight delay we arrived in Cuenca fairly late on, we’d booked ahead and were staying in an old part of the town. On first impressions Cuenca appeared to be very nice, lots of small cafes, and wide streets leading down to a tree lined river. The next day having found our land legs we wandered around the town. It had a lovely central plaza with a number of cafes and as normal lots of churches. It was easy just to wander the streets – it wasn’t full of people rushing around – it had a nice pace of life. The town has many small museums a couple we visited included the Panama Hat museum – Panama hats not being Panamanian but actually Ecuadorian in origin and a museum with an extensive ... read more

Après Copacabana et le lac Titicaca côté Bolivien, j'ai fait un long voyage pour me rendre de Copacabana à la frontière Pérouvienne, puis Puno, Arequipa, Lima et finalement, Cajamarca, et ce, sans arrêt dans ces villes, sinon le temps d'attendre mon prochain autobus. Soit, ce fût plutôt long. Pour l'occasion, je me suis offert la meilleure compagnie d'autobus de Pérou, Cruz del Sur, qui offre le meilleur service et confort, incluant même du wifi à bord de ces autobus. Quoi que la connexion fût plutôt mauvaise, j'ai du me résigner à ne pas en faire usage... Avant le départ, on vous filme à votre siège et vous demande gentiment de regarder la caméra pour quelques secondes, question sécurité.. En cours de chemin, on joue même au bingo.. idée d'occuper les passager un certain temps et de ... read more

South American Wanderings We left Galapagos a month ago now, semester ended, visas expired and we were sent flying back to Quito where the Andean climate was crisp and cold and beautiful…such a change from the humid sea level of the islands. Sad to leave but the time was right to move as I suspected I´d feel. After leaving we spent a week at the home of one of my teachers about an hour out of Quito. A beautiful German woman called Judith with a big mud brick home, horses, chooks, children. We spent our time debriefing about uni, discussing conservation and planning and dreaming future research ideas. Riding horses in the golden light of the late afternoons, cooking delicious food. One day we climbed to the first refuge of Cotopaxi mountain, Ecuador's highest volcano…at ... read more

Cajamarca - Carnaval From the humid jungle to the mountainous, dairy capital, and largest Carnaval celebration in Peru we went. Cajamarca is definitely my favorite spot in Peru. It is absolutely beautiful and the people there are very kind. It is surrounded my green mountains, full of day hikes and pre inca ruins. It has an awesome plaza de armas, that is absolutely wild during Carnaval. Carnaval was full of parades, elaborate costumes, reynas, dancing, live music, parties in the plaza that went on all night long for 4 days with people singing and dancing while passing around bottles of warm, homemade liquor mixed with maracuya juice. The last day of Carnaval is a "mourning" celebration. Las viudas (widows), which are actually men dressed as old woman from each barrio compete to see who does the ... read more

Well, as we bid farewell to the hot and humid tropics of the Amazon Basin and moved inland the scenery of Peru changed dramatically. On our bus journey from Tarapoto to Chachapoyas I was barely able to stop taking photos of what appeared to be awesome landscapes, but in fact turned out to be essentially the same shot of a mountain with clouds surrounding the very top, and although spectacular first hand the views just didn´t translate so well to our cheap point and click digital camera. My over zealousness meant that Jules had to spend at least an hour deleting many of the 120 photos of said hills and much to my chagrin and attempts to convince her that all the photos taken from a quick moving bus were of equal validity and high quality, ... read more