Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Through the detailed travelogue Audre and Dimitri are keeping of their trip to Peru, we experienced their exciting and interesting visit to Arequipa and then joined them on their wonderful time in Lima.  After that we accompanied them on their adventure through Peru's Amazon as well as their trip through parts of Northern Peru. In this final part of the travelogue we will join Audre and Dimitri as they travel to Peru's highlands. If you missed out on the first, second, third or fourth part of their trip, click here for part I , here for part II, here for part III and here for part IV.

Cajamarca

The Panamericana north of Trujillo went through small town after small town but the road was good and we didn’t get stopped at police checkpoints. The secondary road east to Cajamarca had lots of potholes and it was slow-going. It took us 6 hours to get to Cajamarca from Trujillo though it was only 307 km.

We travel the world trying the hot springs in different countries. We really enjoyed staying at Hotel Laguna Seca Baños Termales (Av. Manco Cápac 1098, Baños del Inca, Cajamarca, Perú, (51-76)594-600, web: www.lagunaseca.com.pe). We had trouble finding a room we liked but eventually were given room 42 for US $97 per day, including breakfast, tax and service. We think it was their best room because it was on the end. It had a lovely and private view from the bedroom over the horse paddock. There was a separate room where we could watch TV from a rattan, bench-like sofa. When it was raining in the afternoon, the front desk would load a film for us on their video and we’d watch it on our TV in our sitting room. Our bathroom was large with a sunken, Japanese bath type-shower-area where we could soak in the thermal waters in the privacy of our room.

However, outside our room, but right in front, was a large round pool with some areas around it covered, some not. There was an attractive piece of pottery with the thermal water flowing into the pool from the pottery. We asked for the pool to be made a little hotter and the staff quickly did that through the pottery spout. The hot water gurgled from the pottery into the pool. We were told that most of the guests prefer the pools to be cooler rather than warmer. We like our hot pools to be around 39° C; usually we have to request that temperature. The soaks we took at Laguna Seca were wonderful, even in the rain.

We carry with us fluffy terrycloth robes in case the hotel where we stay doesn’t have them (no wonder we have 11 suitcases with us). At Laguna Seca we used our robes to go to and from our room and to stay warm even in the rain. There was enough covered area around the pool to keep them dry too.

One of the services the hotel provides is free, guided hikes around the area. Euofenia from the hotel took us on a hike to Llacanora and the cascades (13 km from Cajamarca). It was fun but, because of all of the rain, very muddy. We took a colectivo/minivan for the last bit when our shoes started to sink and stick in the mud. We had seen minivans all over Perú but this was the first time we took one. It was surprisingly comfortable and the cost for us and the guide was US$1.

Another day we hired a guide, Eleana, to give us a tour of the El Complejo de Belén: small archeological museum. the church. and the museo de etnografía. We liked Eleana so much we hired her to go with us in our car to the Ventanillas de Otozco and Huanbocancha. It was a lovely tour and we saw the road that goes to the mines where our friends that work for Newmont and Flour work. I think I recall that the tour with Eleana for 3 hours cost S/.30 or around US$10.

We checked out Cajamarca for everyday “livability” too. Our friends Marnie and Dennis who we met in Santiago de Chile were moving there so that Dennis could work at the mine. We think that Cajamarca would be a fun place to live. It has great tourist infrastructure and it’s culturally extremely interesting.

The highlight of all of our tours around Cajamarca was a tour company’s trip to Cumbe Mayo. The tour company used a minivan that was comfortable enough. Unfortunately, we were the first ones on the bus and it took over one hour for all of the people to be picked up from their hotels. Cumbe Mayo is 20 km southeast of Cajamarca and the road there is unpaved and difficult. It’s good we didn’t drive our car. And, the minivan was fine. Discovered in 1937, this complex is surrounded by the beautiful stone forest silhouettes of pious friars called frailones or giant friars. The aqueduct (1000BC) is a unique work of hydraulic engineering and the petroglyphs from that time were fascinating. (Mega Tours S/.50 or US $15.72 for a tour with 10 people in a van that took 4 hours.)

Our Pentax camera died (the on/off button stopped working just as the repairman in Lima had predicted). Unfortunately we didn’t have a camera on this trip. But, fortunately, Steve Sayre and Victor Avila from San Francisco were on the tour and they took photos of us with their camera and e-mailed them to us. There is a photo of us at Cumbe Mayo that they took in the first installment of our 2007 Perú Travelogue in the LivinginPeru Newsletter dated 1 August, 2007. Steve and Victor were on a one-year trip around South America when we met them. Later Steve e-mailed the following to us:

“It took Vic and me about 3 months to fall into a rhythm where we weren't driving each other crazy and had enough independence so as not to feel trapped. By the end of our year of travel, we felt we had figured out how to travel together long-term. It's a very delicate balance that isn't easy to reach, I realize now, nor is it for everybody. I'm sure you consider yourselves to be very lucky to be with someone with whom you can travel like this!”

And indeed we do. We know that for most couples being together 24/7 would be too much. And to do that for years on end wouldn’t be pleasant for them. It works for us and we have thrived on it, growing together and melding. So we continue.

We ate several meals at the Laguna Seca hotel dining room. The food was good; there were several regional dishes on the menu that we tried and liked (cuy/guinea pig, for instance). We even had dinner with Enrique, who was living at Laguna Seca and working at the mines (there were a group of miners living there, actually). It was fun. He is Chilean and his wife decided to stay in Chile rather than coming to Perú with him. Later we received an e-mail that Marnie and Dennis had Enrique to their house for dinner. They too had a delightful evening with him!

There weren’t too many good restaurants in Cajamarca. One that we did like was Paskana Restaurant, Av. Atahualpa 947, km2, Villa Universitaria, Cajamarca, fono 344 217, cel 9487796 #516012, e-mail: lapaskana@hotmail.com or informes@paskana.com , web: www.paskana.com. Our total bill was S/.101.50 including service.

One night we ate at the Libertador Hotel on the Plaza de Armas. It was good but not worth the ride into town from Baños del Inca.

We loved the people-scape in Cajamarca. The men and women wear distinctive tall hats and colorful clothes and have Inca-looking, mocha-colored faces. In the morning some streets are clogged with local markets. It’s a bonanza for tourists! Before our camera died, we got some great people-photos. It gets cold in Cajamarca. The women wear short (usually black) skirts with lots of petticoats to make them flare. Under the skirts they wear thick wool pantyhose-like things, also usually black. The color in their outfits comes from the shirts and ponchos they wear.

We were unhappy without a camera but we didn’t want to spend a lot of money to replace our Pentax. We will be going back to the States for a short trip and we’ll be able to buy a new one there, without paying duty and value-added taxes. Dimitri had seen an ad in El Comercio while we were in Lima for a camera for about US$100 at Saga Fallabella. There is a new shopping center in Cajamarca, El Quinde Shopping Plaza, with a Saga Fallabella in it. Because the camera we wanted had not come in yet, we had to order it but it actually arrived before we left Cajamarca! We bought a Samsung A403 digital camera for S/.399 or US $125.47.

Then we started south again in Perú; Cajamarca being our most northern town. We were looking forward to biking in Huarez, farther south, but also in the foothills of the Andes. It was too rainy and muddy in Cajamarca while we were there for biking to be pleasant. The later it is in the year, the drier it is supposed to become. So there was hope for our mountain biking.



Huarez

To get to Huarez from Cajamarca we had to retrace our steps back to Trujillo. Again it was a 6 hour ride, with 4 hours of it, the potholed secondary road. The Hotel El Gran Marques had our suite ready for us at the same price we had previously paid. We had dinner at Le Valentino, Orbegoso 224, Trujillo, fono: 295-339. The owner was delightful and made us their own rendition of zabaglione as a special treat.

The next morning we left Trujillo at 10 a.m. and arrived in Huarez at 5:15 p.m. The portion from the Panamericana to Huarez was potholed and slow: that took 2 hours. We had to acclimatize to the altitude there!

There is only one top-end hotel in Huarez--Andino Club Hotel (Jr. Pedro Cochachin 357, fono: 43-421-662 e-mail: andino@hotelandino.com , web: www.hotelandino.com). I stayed in the car on a nearby street to guard our stuff while Dimitri went to reconnoiter. The streets around the hotel were all cut up badly because of some project. Getting to the hotel was through dirt mounds and a construction zone.

We weren’t enthralled and the price was steep. In any event we took Suite 401. It had 1 bedroom, living/dining area, kitchenette, a sauna and Jacuzzi. The deal we made was US $160 for suite including breakfast and dinner (no extras for tax or for service) or S/.508 at an exchange rate of US $3.18 to the nuevo sol. If the sun ever came out we would also have an expansive view of the famous mountains that people come to Huarez to climb.

Mario, the Swiss owner was nice and accommodating. Unfortunately his manager smokes. The lobby area and sometimes the dining room stunk of cigarette smoke. The manager was oblivious to our requests to smoke outside.

We took one guided mountain bike ride during our stay with a guide who we hired through Mountain Bike Adventures. It was only 27 km but most of the time was on grueling, uphill. The views were nice but not spectacular, probably because it wasn’t clear enough. We biked to Wilcahuaín, past the Lazy Dog Hotel situated in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range at the base of the Quebrada Llaca through forests of alder and eucalyptus. We like to bike for 4 or 5 hours up and down, with lovely views. This was predominately uphill with a narrow and dangerous descent. Not one of our best rides.

In Huarez we found Cafe Andino for lunch and it was great. (Lucar y Toree 530, 3rd floor). The owners are delightful. It turned out to be the preferred hang out for young travelers (and for us). It amused us that they had laptops in their backpacks, which they treated without respect. There was a hotspot at Café Andino with lounge chairs and couches where they hung out for hours. Café Andino also had tons of magazines. We too spent hours there (except on Mondays when it's closed).

One day we drove to Caraz and hiked up Cerro San Juan. We talked to Alberto at Pony Expeditions about a guided bike ride. We decided against it. The mountains around there are just too steep to be fun.

But all of the discussions about biking with guides provided us with our next fun mountain bike ride. Early one morning we drove to Yungay (2 hours round trip from Huarez—120 km) with our bikes on top of our car and all dressed for biking. We parked our car and found a station wagon taxi to take us and our bikes to Llanganuco, 26 km uphill from Yungay (cost: S/.30). We biked 37 km (first 10 up and down around Laguna Chinancocha (woman) at 3850masl and Laguna Orconcocha (man) at 3863masl (meters above sea level) to Yurac Corral then the descent to Yungay. The Lagunas are spectacularly located inside the Huascaran National Park in a glacial valley embedded by the steep walls of the highest mountains of Perú--the Huascaran and the Huandoy. It was lovely but we had three flat tires. We only had 2 inner tubes so after the last one we were close enough to Yungay to take a mototaxi ride (with the 2 bikes strapped to the back of it with the bungee cords we carry) to a bike shop on Avenida Arias Graciani where for S/.15 they fixed the flats and cleaned and oiled the gears.

Near where we parked our car in Yungay there was a small building with a wedding procession entering it. The bride, dressed in the local garb--but it was white--didn't want to be photographed. Five hours later when we returned to the car on the bikes, the street outside the small building had been turned into a dance floor. The bride and everyone else were dancing and having a great time. We got a photo of the dancing--too bad the bride's outfit is not visible.

On Sunday we walked to José Otaya for street food but we were too early. All along the streets were makeshift stalls with whole pigs being roasted for lunch with that fabulous crispy skin. We’ve had that kind of pig and it’s great but too belt-busting and cholesterol-laden so we passed it up for a more healthy alternative.

We were having a nice time in Huarez and had planned to stay a week. But the hotel was too expensive for what it offered and the disgusting smell of the manager’s smoke in the lobby and dining room was really annoying us. Plus we felt we had probably experienced the best of Huarez, considering the weather and our mountain biking preferences. Last but certainly not least, our friend Berry from Santa Monica was scheduled to arrive in Lima the next day, Monday, for a group tour of Perú with www.oattravel.com called Real Affordable Peru (which it turned out was great and exceeded her expectations, by the way).

We left Huarez at 11:40 a.m. the next morning but didn’t arrive in Lima until 7:15 p.m. We were stopped and hassled by the police 3 times and it took longer to convince them we couldn’t be “shaken down” each successive time. (The last time you may recall that I mentioned earlier in this Travelogue that they took my driver’s license and threatened not to return it until I paid US$100.)

I didn’t have the telephone number of the San Augustin Exclusiv Hotel where Berry was staying and because of all of our delays, I didn’t reach her before she left for dinner. We did connect later in the evening and had a nice rendez-vous before she left early the next morning for her Amazon Jungle experience. We love to meet our friends in foreign locations. It is so much fun. And we were able to come up with a plan to meet again in Lima after her return from the Amazon and before she left for her segment in Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Puno and Lake Titicaca.

Lima Again and The Visa for us and our Car

We came back to Lima early and our reservation at Sol de Oro wasn’t for the day we actually returned. We had to move rooms because we didn’t like the first one they gave us—the only one available of the kind we wanted. We ended up paying more but we got a much larger one-bedroom apartment that had a balcony with a private, enclosed Jacuzzi.

On our first day in Lima we went to the governmental office for visas to get a three- month extension. We got our visas extended for three months without any problems by paying US$100. Then we went to try to get the three-month permission for our car extended.

We were sent from one place to another and finally told that we had to go to the Aduana/Customs office near the airport. The following day Dimitri drove out to that office and spent hours trying to find the correct person. He did and was told that the law does not permit an extension to allow a car registered in a foreign country (in our case, Chile) to stay longer in Perú.

That night we were invited to the gorgeous home of a Limeño couple who we had met at Laguna Seca in Cajamarca. They got us in contact with a lawyer who specializes in immigration matters who couldn’t help. The following day Dimitri contacted another lawyer who gave him the name of the head of correct section of the Aduana. Dimitri was able to confirm that the information he had been given originally was correct. There is no provision in the law to permit a foreign-registered car to remain in Perú longer than three months. We had to get out of Perú before May 6th when the permission for our car expired.

So we had been in Perú three months and seen a great deal of the country but not the most famous sites of Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Puno and Lake Titicaca, or the Colca Canyon for that matter. Boy were we disappointed. Dimitri, in his inimitable style, looked on the positive side of this. He suggested that since we were going south anyway, why not spend the Southern Hemisphere winter skiing in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina? Of course, I wanted to get to Chile and then turn around and come back to Perú with a new three-month permission for the car.

We stayed in Lima long enough to see our friend Berry again and spend a day with her, have an interview with Mily Leiva from El Comercio, have dinner with our friends from Living in Peru and have lots of delicious food at T’anta, Fusión, Astrid & Gastón and La Mar. (See Appendix I with all of our Lima restaurant reviews.) And, we went to the Peru Prom (IPERU) office to tell them about the law which was requiring us to cut short our tourist exploration of Perú. Have a look at the letter the Peru Prom people sent to the Aduana. It is attached as Appendix III. Not surprisingly, the response from the Aduana was less than satisfying.

Then we started what turned out to be a three-day drive to get back to Chile. This is travel at a pace we really don’t like. But we decided to get back to Chile and deal directly with the one-year visa extension that was waiting for us to pick up in Chile.
 
Lima to the Chilean Border

We left Lima at 9:30 a.m. and drove to Nazca to check out a hotel there we thought it might be nice to stay for the night. We arrived in Nazca at 3:30 p.m. (It was 450 km. and we made good time because we weren’t hassled by police stops on this portion.) We went to Hotel Cantayo Spa & Resort, Nazca, Perú (fono: (51 56)522 264 e-mail: info@hotelcantayo.com , web: www.hotelcantayo.com ) It was out of town on a large estate. I stayed in the car while Dimitri checked it out. Dimitri said it was beautiful—a real class act, he called it. But it was full. They have something like space for 52 and they had 52 confirmed reservations.

So we left Nazca at 4:00 p.m. for our old favorite - Puerto Inka - where we arrived at 6p.m. (a total of 610 km). This time Puerto Inka Resort (Panamericana Sur KM 610, Chala, Arequipa (51-54-551-055) e-mal: puertoinca@puertoinka.com.pe , web: www.puertoinka.com.pe ) gave us a big room with the same beautiful view. We had dinner and then watched a DVD movie on our computer in our room sitting on the deck chairs.

On our second night on the road we stayed in Tacna at the Tacna Gran Hotel (Av Bolognesi 300, Tacna (052)72 4193 www.derrama.org.pe) Our room was S/.279 and dinner at the hotel cost S/.73. We wanted to get out early the next morning to be at the border controls early (to avoid the bus traffic). The next morning we left Tacna at 8:45 a.m. and passed through the Peruvian border controls quickly. On we went to the Chilean side early enough to avoid the buses, we thought.