Getting to Huancabamba

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So far the majority of my adventures have been in transit between places and getting to Huancabamba was no exception! Firstly Scott and I took a combi from Chacapoyas to Bagua grande which took about 6 hours on a pretty bumpy mountain road, stopping every so often due to the clapped out Toyota on it way out. We didnt quite figure out what was wrong with it but the excelleration def wasnt working as we crawled along at roughly 10mph. Once finally in Bagua Grande we then had to find another combi to take us to Jaen where we planned to stay the night. By this point it was dark and raining really heavily. So we hopped in another combi and made our way to Jaen, this time with a little more acceleration. When we arrived in Jaen the rain was so heaving it had practically flooded the town, at least a foot of water on the main roads. Fortunately the combi stop wasnt flooded too, but finding a mototaxi to get us to a hostel proved to be a dampened experience.

Jaen turned out to be quite a nice town with a really good chicken house - best ive had in a while. Anyway, the next morning we set off to find another combi to take us to Huancabamba. This mototaxi was like all in peru, adament to fit as many people in the car as possible, thus i sat on a cushion over the hand break and scott in the front with me, while 4 sat in the back and at one point a man hitched a ride in the boot for 20 mins too, so you can image it was pretty cosy. After driving on normal roads for about an hour we turned off onto a dirt track which wasnt partucularly smooth in any way what so ever - pretty uncomfortable for me too! About another hour in we managed to get the car stuck in mud (really quite entertaining watching 4 men push a car further into the mud!) It must have taken us 30mins to get free, but I didnt mind so much, along with the entertainment, there were loads of very beautiful butterflies all around us, and in the end we had to walk 20meters up the road through the mud to get to the car which has skidded and revved all the way through this stretch of mud. It was a fun first audeal....however towards the end of this 7 hour combi ride my arse was seriously suffering from what can only be described as a road, although very questionable standards!

When the combi stopped we realised it wasnt taking us all the way, and it just dropped us off in this little village in the middle of nowhere in the mountains to collect a mini bus. There we found out it was a public holiday for 2 days and potentially we were going to be stranded. Fortunately there was another family also trying to get to Huancabamba which meant we had enough people for half a mini bus, which was enough to leave with, only it cost us alot more, boo! This part of the journey I have to say was the first time I was pretty scared on a mountain road (dirt track) mostly because it was dark, raining heavily and there were several instances where the driver had to get out and dig away at the mud in the road so that we could drive through it, usually skidding....on the edge of very steep cliffs, hmmmm! Scott thoroughly enjoyed it though haha! THis part of the journey also took a good 8 hours, this time in a mini bus with little suspension and windows jammed open. By the end i was pretty cold, tired, had a very sore bum, needed a pee and was pretty hungry - only mum knows how bad I am to be around in such sircumstances, however I think I was fairly tolerable as scott wasnt complaining 😊

Finally we arrived at 9 in the evening, having travelled for a day and a half, I was pretty relieved to be there!

Oh the photo upload got a bit messed up so some of the photos from the next entry are included in this one.

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Photos

car stuck
in the mud, on the way to huancabamba