Finalising Preps...

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Finalising Preps...
Well, the time I had...
We left Arequipa on Wed 19th Dec at 5am and arrived in Juliaca safe in the hotel at 10.30am. Due to the not-so-nice nature of Juliaca we decided that I would stay in the hotel ´resting´ while Wayra met up with his aunt and went shopping! Its possible to be caught and buy ´bamba´ goods in Juliaca (and many other places in Peru) so they needed to be sure that they were buying the original stuff. They arrived back to the hotel, Wayra on a tricycle (see pics on Facebook) with 60 Panetones (special Christmas cake, which are delicious and huge). We stayed in Juliaca that night, meeting up for dinner with a lovely friend of Wayrá called Nora. We went back to hotel early and were sleeping by 10pm! Wayra had arranged with his aunt to meet the next day to go to buy the toys at a special market that opens at abuot 3am! Glad I didn´t need to go but I trusted him 100% to do a good job! And so he did. He met his aunt at 4.30am and off they went. They came back a few hours later with everything sorted. More than 500 presents wer purchased and stocked in the hotel til later!
Want to mention the weather... in that part of the country it is now the rainy season and it really pours down, but if you look at the pics you wont see much rain. The sun shone practically the whole of Christmas! Couldnt believe it, neither could anyone else cause it had just stopped pouring down the day before we arrived!
So off we went to the bus at 5pm to head to Ayapata... a long and horrible journey that can last anywhere from 6-10hours depending on what lovely delights were awaiting on the road. (When I visited in March 07, the bus broke down up the mountain about 12am and didn´t get going again til 2am, in the meantime I was trying to sleep in the freezing cold) so I knew to expect anything! Well, true to form, when we were about 2 hours from Ayapata we came across a broken down tanker lorry. Normally, you just drive on and say good luck but you cant do that on these roads. WHY? Well, because you simply cant drive past as the road is only really big enough for 1 big vehicle! So while they farted about and decided what to do, a few men got off and helped sort the lorry. So sitting in the front seat of the bus is great for leg room, but when we are stopped for an hour high in the mountains with the door open, its f*cking freezing! A hairy passing of the vehicles ensued and we finally got on the road again. We arrived finally at Wayra´s mammy´s house a good 2 hours late at 3am... couldn´t believe it. But we received a lovely warm welcome from his mother and had mate de coca before off to bed...

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