After a long night bus ride we made it to a town called Chachapoyas (people of the clouds.) I was expecting a lovely town amid the mountains, Chacha wasn't quite that. The point of coming to this town was to see Kuelap, said to be one of the most impressive ruins 2nd only to Macchu Picchu. Obviously this leg of the journey is lead by Joshua, as my interest in rocks and ruins has rapidly depreciated the more I see them. (Incan's are rocking in their graves...I'm sorry, I've tried).
Right after the bus ride and a little breakfast, Josh took off to see some graves. I passed seeing the opportunity for a nap on a bed instead of a bus seat. Fortunately he's very generous in picture taking, so even I never missed a beat. Later that night we got a local dinner and went to bed for an early morning rise to see Kuelap.
Shortly after checking into a less expensive hotel room (the rank smell and clogged sink weren't worth the big bucks) we headed down to where the mini combi buses were supposedly located to get a ride toward the ruins. Either we missed the early combi, or they weren't running that day, after waiting on a corner for some time a guy offered to take us in a taxi. We waited around another 20minutes or so until the taxi was full then headed off to Tingo.
We were dropped off in Tingo, a town consisting of 2 building made of mud bricks. We bought some peanuts from a man vending out of his house and asked directions for the trail toward Kuelap. We were given some confusing instructions that changed according to who you asked. Finally we asked a police officer, he pointed and mumbled something, then mentioned that the guys across the road with the cement truck were headed up to the next town, Maria. The officer walked over to the two young guys running the truck and asked if we could hitch a ride. The guys said that the two of them were up front, and there wasn't room. The officer asked if we could ride on top of the truck or in the back. (Something you would hide from police at home). Sure enough there was room on top of the sacks of cement. The ride took about 3 hours uphill. Shaded by a tarp and atop nice soft bags and a dirty cushion that the boys through down for me, I fell asleep to the chug chugging of the cement truck.
Finally to the town of Maria, after a 3 hour taxi ride and similarly lengthed cement truck commute, we only had a 10km hike uphill to go. All to see rocks with my dear husband, uggh I wanted to scream. The walk was long and as we kept on, we noticed that there weren't too many passing cars. We saw one van crammed full of tourists on their way down, and one equally packed on their way up. We started to think that the prospects of getting home from this tiny town were looking slim. We hadn't seen a car in the town, nothing but a couple scraggly horses. Finally at the top we found a van that Josh begged to take us back when they were leaving. Unfortunately, the van's passengers were heading down from the ruins at about that time. We chose to forgo seeing the ruins of Kuelap that we had traveled all this way to see, in order to secure a ride back.
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