(Sorry this post is so late in coming -- I have been so busy with school these past few weeks!)
In Peru, Easter (or Pascua in Spanish) is a HUGE deal. The whole week leading up to Easter is called Semana Santa, and there are many events such as processions all throughout that week. As Thursday and Friday were holidays, me and 2 other girls from my house, Clémence and Katrin, decided to take the opportunity to travel.
As all the usual tourist destinations during Semana Santa are packed and crazy-expensive, we opted for a smaller, less well-known town called Huancaya. It is about 8-12 hours by bus from Lima, depending on traffic and the road conditions.
We began our day at 5:15 am when we called a secure taxi to take us to the bus station. We couldn't take any of the usual tourist buses because Huancaya is not a big destination - only a couple small bus companies go there. We were the ONLY gringos in the entire bus so we got a fair bit of stares.
In typical Peruvian style, we left an hour late. The drive was very beautiful. We passed along the coast in the desert, and then turned up into the Andes, driving along beautiful river valleys and through Peruvian wine country. The problems started once we turned off the paved highway and onto an extremely narrow one-lane dirt road which the bus was CLEARLY way too wide and tall for. On one side was a rick wall, and on the other, a cliff that at times was hundreds of feet high.
We passed several terrifying hours like this, and then it started raining and the dirt road became even more terrifying than before. Then came this moment when the bus got stuck and there were several cars trying to come down the road from the opposite direction. Everyone on our bus decided at that point to get out and walk because we were so scared of the bus sliding or falling off the edge. Also, all the people in the cars informed us that there were no more hostels with space in Huancaya...which was bad news for us as we didn't have a reservation. We took pictures of the chaos:
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| our bus stuck and cars trying to come the other way. |
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| mass confusion |
We got out of the bus and walked for about 15 minutes before it got unstuck and came to pick us up. The road was very beautiful:
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| road to Huancaya |
We spent several more nerve-racking hours on the bus before we finally arrived to Huancaya. By this time, it was freezing outside (probably in the 30's) and there were no hostels. So we walked around to different family restaurants and up to random locals asking if we could sleep on their floor for the night.
I should note that Huancaya is extremely small and very poor and that most of the inhabitants are indigenous. The town itself remains very typical and old, with houses made of mud bricks and with dirt floors.
We eventually found an old man and who said we could sleep on the floor of his basement for the night, and that he would give us blankets and a mattress to sleep on so we wouldn't have to sleep on the dirt floor. It was so cold so we wore all our clothes and jackets we could and slept huddled together under the blankets for the night. Here is a picture of the room - the big white bags were full of salt.
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| our "noche de mierda" as Clémence called it |
Here is our "bathroom"...aka the bushes:
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| our luxury "bathroom" |
In the morning we got up and took some pictures of the area because, as bad as I might make it sound, the town was very beautiful:
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| this is the door to the basement where we stayed. |
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| the house in which we stayed |
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| Huancaya |
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| Huancaya |
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| Huancaya |
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| Huancaya |
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| Huancaya |
Then we went to thank and pay the owners of the house for their generosity and to try and find a real hostel to stay.
