Robbed.

Camera gone, Laptop gone. Stolen in the nightbus from Cuzco to Arequipa.

Another sad fact: Just before those things got stolen, I had typed another 10 pages of blog entries, that would have updated you up until our trip to Cuzco & Macchu Picchu, talking of more pyramids, sandboarding and my first oasis experience.

Sorry guys - next blog posts won't be written too soon...

More Mochi. Way more Mochi. Too much Mochi.

Chiclayo is the biggest city in Northern Peru, with some 730.000 inhabitants. But it is not a nice city. It’s big, noisy, grey. Somehow boring. After we had booked a tour to see the three most important sights in and around town, we asked the travel agent what to do in the remaining three hours, until the tour would start. He couldn’t really tell us much, some kind of small garden/park was the only sight he could think of.

Lucky enough that I had forgotten my camera in the bus, so at least we had something to do trying to get it back. A helpful lady at the ticket office of the bus company called the bus, some service staff there found it, and it would be send back on the next bus. So they said.

We had breakfast, visited the local market and read in the newspaper that Bayern Munich had kicked Real Madrid’s ass 2:1 in the first game of the Champions League semi-final. Good job. :) As our two internet-free weeks had not passed yet, we were absolutely out of date regarding world news. But it’s a great feeling to not having to care about internet etc., just fully concentrate on the journey. Maybe one should switch of the internet in general every now and then.

The tour was pretty interesting: We started off at the pyramids in Túcume, the burial site of the former ruler of the Mochi, el señor de Sipan. And his daddy, the old señor de Sipan.

The sad thing is, the Mochi, unlike the Egyptians or the Inca, built their pyramids with clay, as it was the easiest accessible material nearby. And this clay has taken a lot of damage from the rain over the centuries. So the pyramids aren’t anymore what they must have been once upon a time. But hey, with a little imagination they a still quite stunning.

Next stop: The museum of Sipan in Lambayeque. In this three-story high building one gets all the background information about the excavation of the pyramids. Furthermore, all the findings are exhibited, including a lot of gold, weapons, jewelry and the bones of the old señor and his son. And, of course, one can buy hundreds of replicas of those findings in the on-site museum shop.

The restaurant the tour guide had chosen for lunch was way above our price expectations, so Julez and I sneaked of to eat for half of what a menu would have cost at the other place. Together. Plus we could watch the first half an hour of Chelsea vs. Barcelona, an intense and interesting match – unfortunately we left only minutes before Didier Drogba would score the decisive goal…

Another excavation site had to be visited. Not as big, not as thrilling as the first one. And hence maybe a bit redundant, as the eyelids and legs got heavier and the head was just too pumped with information to process any more. After some 20 minutes or so the tour was over, and we had a bumpy ride back home coming up – including a beautiful sunset.

After those hammock-nights for the last two weeks, Julez and I opted for a two-star hotel this night. Including Wi-Fi. Internet diet was over. LAN party was on. *g*

Kuélap: They call it the second Macchu Picchu…

There is no bus heading straight to Chachapoyas, so we stopped in Tarapoto. No bus from there to Chachapoyas either, not after 4pm. But at least we could still make it to Pedro Ruiz, a little village placed in a stunning setting, surrounded by green mountains. Even at 1am we still found an open hostel, slept a few hours and booked two seats in the colectivo to Chachapoyas. Finally, there we were.

As the organized tours to Kuélap had already left, we had to pay for a private cab to bring us to the ruins. It wasn’t that much more expensive than an organized tour, the transportation would cost us 140 S. A tour would have been 50 S per person. Not too bad.

Unfortunately, no one had told us to take our student cards with us; they would have saved us some 7 S on the entrance fee to Kuélap. But well, a normal adult pays 15 S, plus 20 S for a guide. At least we had our rain coats with us; we would need them later on.

Kuélap is advertised to be the second Macchu Picchu, but not as well in shape as its big brother. The walls are still intact and pretty fascinating with their height of up to 21m.

The ruins are to be found next to the village Maria, at an altitude of 3.000 m, and the overall space taken is supposed to be bigger than Macchu Picchu. They were built once upon a time by the Mochi, a tribe ruling the North-Western coastal region of Peru for some 700 years between 100 and 800 past Christ, before they were defeated by the Chimús. Those again were beaten by the Incas in the 15^th century. (Btw.: Did you know that the Incas only ruled for around 100 years? Not really much time, but obviously enough to build up an impressive empire…)

Today, there is not much left of the fortress. But our guide knew to interpret the remaining stones pretty well: Three different levels could be explored within the surrounding walls. The more important you were the higher up you lived. The Mochi lived in round houses, the foundation stones of which could still be seen. Some of the houses have been partly, one has been even fully restored.

The Inca would later on add their quadratic buildings to the remaining Mochi constructions.

The three entrances into the fortress were pretty wide, but narrowed down to a meter the higher you got up the stairs. Attackers could easily run up the first steps, but would squeeze together after a while, making it easy to holding them back. Somehow, the Chimú still took the place over.

Two thirds into the tour we met one of the organized tours, some 20 tourists following one single guide. Guess who was amongst those tourists? Sarina! She had decided not to travel with us through the Amazon basin as she had a flight from Lima to catch on the 23^rd of April, and thought our jungle adventure would take longer by far. Well, she was wrong. But anyhow, it was an exciting pleasure seeing her again. If one does always meet twice in life, this would have been the second time. But sometimes, I guess, paths cross more often. :)

We learned a little more about Mochi gods, their habits and their way of life. But after an hour and a half fully packed with information, it just becomes more and more difficult to listen and save all that information. And one gets tired of listening. The llamas standing around were a welcome distraction. ^^

Our cab driver Marco was expecting us down at the ticket office, and the ride home wasn’t any less spectacular than what we had just seen.

Back in Chachapoyas, we didn’t waste any time to organize a bus ticket for that same night. We’re in travel mode at the moment, loads of sightseeing has to be accomplished.

A really delicious dinner at a local polleria (roasted chicken restaurant) was digested in our bus towards Chiclayo…

Yurimaguas and the Ayahuasca experience

Yurimaguas is a pretty, little city. Smaller, greener and less noisy than Iquitos. And cheaper.

We found a double room for 8$ per night, left our luggage and headed out to explore the village. Again, Plaza de Armas was probably the main attraction…

…until we discovered the riverside. And a cozy, little eco-guesthouse, where its friendly owner offered us a unique Ayahuasca experience. We accepted.

Ayahuasca is a plant, traditionally used by indigenous shaman people to cure various ill- and sicknesses. Our Lonely Planet states, that it can also cause hallucinations of about three to four hours. Sounded like an interesting thing. We agreed.

We returned to our hostel, packed a little bag full of essentials and paid a tuk-tuk-driver to bring us out to the shaman’s farm.

Upon arrival we found a beautiful property of about 25 acres, which was actually inhabited by more dogs (18, five pure-bred German shepherds amongst them) than human beings at that point of time. The shaman told us, at times they cure up to 33 guests simultaneously with their natural herbs and essences, but currently there were only around six other guests, mainly of Russian derivation.

We sat around the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the ritual to begin. We hadn’t expected to wait that long, so all we found to entertain us were some pieces of paper and a pen. Enough to play “Käsekästchen”. ;)

After the sun had set, we were finally called in for what we hoped to be a massage, some therapeutic body treatment to later on allow the positive energies to flow easier through all of your body, as we were told. The “massage” turned out to be pretty painful, as Julez and I obviously both have a lot of negative energy floating through our bodies. Could be a result of (excessive) red meat consumption, as the shaman explained.

Somehow we survived the treatment, to then sit down on a table with three other patients to begin the ceremony: We all had a bucket standing on the ground in front of us, where our reliefs from the interior should go in. We all had a bowl of hot water on the table in front of us, as drinking as much as possible is absolutely essential to prevent that really painful “dry-vomiting”. And we all had nothing else to do on a mild Sunday night, than sit in a round together and vomit our guts out.

The first two began to throw up right after having drunk the first portion of Ayahuasca. It tasted disgusting. I was tempted to throw up right away as well. But I resisted.

Around 20 minutes later, Julez was the next one to start filling up his bucket. A Russian guy and I hold on to it for another 10 minutes, in which I desperately wished I would start emptying my stomach out – the pain and the feeling were way worse than the actual relief of getting everything out.

We hadn’t eaten dinner that night. Julez and I had had lunch, as that was before we decided to opt for the Ayahuasca trip. It is recommended to not eat anything all day long, as food only further contaminates your body – and the original sense of Ayahuasca was/is to clean your body from any negative energy by simply emptying it totally out and therefore not leaving any negative stains behind. In fact, leaving nothing behind. Not inside your body. That’s what it felt like.

The shaman explained that human beings should throw up every now and then anyway, as cats for example eat their own fur to then vomit it out once a month or so. I guess, the cleverness of evolution had a deeper insight into the matter before stopping human beings of throwing up naturally every once in a while. It’s no fun. But we couldn’t go back.

Julez and I were the only One-Night-Stands, everyone else was around for between two weeks and three months, some of them came repeatedly. We were told that Ayahuasca had already cured prostate cancer and made a disabled guy walk again. I am not too sure, how much we should believe the tales of those people, but on the other hand, the shaman made a really professional impression on us, so I guess trying to cure an illness modern medicine can’t handle is always worth a try.

So, there we sat. Six persons around a table, small-talking about heritage, purpose of the cure and anything else that came into our minds, approximately every half an hour breaking the conversation for some ten minutes to lustfully throw up into our buckets. The shaman kept the conversation going and encouraged the excessive consumption of water, which I found to be at least a little helpful to lower the pain.

Julez lay down after having eaten backwards the first time; a Russian guy ordered a second and a third Ayahuasca treat. After the second throw-up, I felt as weak as rarely before, but forced myself to stay seated, keep drinking and making up topics which to discuss.

The ceremony lasted about three hours. We did not hallucinate, but after having thrown up four (!!!) times I barely found the power to make my way to the toilet, where I emptied out my almost overflowing bucket, before heading to bed. I was incredibly happy to finally lie down and let the sleep overcome the pain I felt in my stomach. My bed was out on the veranda, but neither mosquitos nor pouring tropical rains nor screaming cocks the next morning could disturb my sleep…

It was still raining when we finally awoke the next morning. The breakfast was not my favorite, but supposed to be healthy, and after feeling turned inside out I would have eaten almost anything to just restore a little energy.

The tuk-tuk-driver answered our call, but ignored our pledge to pick us up from the farm. We finally flagged down a colectivo (shared taxi) to get back to Yurimaguas. The trip had, indeed, been unforgettable. But by far not the way we had imagined it to be…

Rolling down the river: Iquitos to Yurimaguas

Iquitos was not our city. After we had walked over to the Plaza de Armas (that’s what basically every main plaza in any Peruvian town is called) we felt like we had seen it all. The rest of our backpacker friends left for a hostel, we went to the harbor to buy an onward ticket down to Yurimaguas.

The only problem in Iquitos is: There ain’t “the harbor”, there are about seven of them. And of course no one has a clue where the boat to Yurimaguas might leave today from. The second problem is: Everyone pretends to know it. We’d figure that out in detail tomorrow. Today we were told at the second harbor that the boat was already booked out. It only took around half an hour to elaborate that. We got dropped off at the hostel. Reunion with the cargo boat crew.

Iquitos is dirty and noisy. Somehow run-down, I know it has seen better days: Around the 1920s, when the world economy was till booming and did not fear the massive breakdown it would face in 1929, Iquitos was a buzzing city, where the newest fashion was worn. Today it is the biggest city (around 400.000 inhabitants) without road connection to the outer world, but is still crowded with cars and mainly tuk-tuks. We didn’t find anything appealing about the city.

It is meant to be a great starting point for jungle trips and Amazon basin excursions, but as we had just spent a couple of days in jungle, imagined the trips to be cheaper in Bolivia and were warned by Lonely Planet that there are obviously a lot of black sheep operating amongst the herd of travel agents in town, we refrained from taking a tour.

We spent the afternoon eating, watching kids playing soccer and volleyball in the park and planning our escape, which would successfully follow the next day: After driving around in a tuk-tuk for harmless 1,5 hours and checking basically every harbor that Iquitos features, we finally found the cargo boat supposed to leave for Yurimaguas. We were on. (When we left, I somehow thought of a great musical we had played once upon a time back in high-school: Rags. A story about immigrants fleeing to America. Their goodbyes must have looked a little similar to what we saw from our first deck…)

This time, it was more the local way of travelling: Instead of 7 backpackers there were around 170 people aboard, Julez and me being the only non-Peruvian travelers. The price was local-friendly, we paid 40 S per head for a four-day-trip, including three meals a day – which would turn out not to be as disgusting as I had presumed. But the activities stayed the same: Chill out, talk to your hammock neighbors, eat, read, play card and dice games. My personal favorite: Lie in the hammock, marvel at the unique landscape pass by and let my thoughts escape into space…

While floating on Rio Marañon for the first two kilometers or so, we were still in Iquitos. Houses along and in the river, bars, shops and even a floating discotheque passed by! As well as many, many motorized canoes…

Once we got out of town, the landscape became greener. Palm trees, bushes, jungle. Stunning.

Everyone now and then, around three times per day, we would stop at an indigenous village to deliver goods, drop off some people, take new people on board etc. pp. While doing so, approximately 20 inhabitants would run around the boat selling any kind of goods, from dead fish, half-alive chickens to lively parrots, fruits, veggies, pre-cooked meals, sweets, plants and whatever else they had in store. It always felt like a 10-minute-market that ended as suddenly as it had begun. I had the impression it was these guys’ highlight of the week. And, pretty sure, it in fact was. What else could they do out here all day long?

We didn’t have too much to do either. Besides above-mentioned activities, we had our daily highlights as well, may that have been a spectacular sunset…

A crystal-clear, starlit sky (hard to take a picture of, though) or a colorful rainbow (or even two) after having watched heavy raindrops fill up the river.

It was not the most eventful adventure we ever had, but it was a fantastic experience that I can recommend to everyone who ever sets foot on South American soil!