Adventures in Rural South America

The excursion in the Chachapoyas region was fun. We saw several sites built 1300 years ago by the Chachapoyan people which haven´t even been studied by archaeologists yet, and which are still buried deep in the woods. It seems that the wilderness in Peru could be filled with undiscovered ruins; they say that there is probably a site much bigger and more impressive than Machu Picchu lying buried in the woods somewhere, just waiting to be discovered.

But it was when I left the group in Tingo, Peru that my real adventure began. This was the route: Tingo to Chachapoyas to Pedro Ruiz to Bagua to Jaén (where I spent the night but left again at 6 AM) to San Ignacio to La Balsa (where I crossed the border on foot) to Zumba to Vilcabamba. I left on Wednesday at noon and arrived last night at nine. The road was unpaved for almost the entire way, very bumpy and sometimes extremely slow going--the 11 km from the border to Zumba (in a ranchero or open-sided truck with wooden benches) took an hour and a half! Once we had to stop so the men could dig out from a recent landslide to let the cars pass. However, the scenery, especially yesterday, was spectacular. We wound along cliffsides overlooking valleys of cloud forest, dense with green vegetation. The roads were speckled occasionally with tiny one-dirt-street villages or single houses, built out of mud bricks and large branches lashed together, with tin rooves weighed down with rocks. There is often no electricity in these hills, and at night I would see the houses lit up with candles or fires. On both the trek and this journey, I was offered brief glimpses at rural domestic scenes: little children playing in front of their houses or peering out of doorways, older ones walking to school, men working on their houses, and many many dogs, pigs and chickens running around all over the place. I was also interested in the many political signs painted on the buildings. I had seen these all over Peru (Alan Presidente 2006 being the most popular. Señor Alan seems to have highly active PR people) but in the north I also saw a lot of signs showing how to vote for particular issues or candidates. Each political party chooses a symbol (presumably so people who can´t read can tell who is who) and the people vote for that party by marking that symbol. So you might vote by putting an X through a map of Peru, a shovel, a water faucet, or a chicken.

It was no surprise that for most of the trip I was jammed into tightly-packed vehicles. In one 3-hour minivan ride I scrunched into a seat over the back wheel which gave me about half as much personal space as your typical airline seat, and in one station wagon I shared the front seat with an old man; in the far back my backpack shared space with three crates of peeping chicks (not the first time) and in the backseat were four adults, a 3-year-old boy and a rooster. Sometimes I talked to the people next to me, usually answering the normal stream of questions I have been asked, always in the same order, all over Peru: "Where are you from?" "Is this your first time in Peru?" "How do you like it?" "Are you travelling alone?" "Are you married?" "How old are you?" (You bet I love the order of those two) and then optionally, "How many siblings do you have?" "Where do your parents live?" But I shared one ride with a particularly curious couple of people. Unfortunately, it was Wednesday night, I had been up at 5 that morning for the sunrise at Kuélap ruins, I was exhausted and squished, and I was attempting not to be terrified by the driver´s penchant for driving on the wrong side of the road and passing large trucks on tight curves, otherwise I might have found the conversation charming instead of irritating. I tried to keep my eyes on the road for signs I should assume crash position, but once they learned my name, they were not afraid to use it to get my attention: "Jessica! How many people live in the United States?" "How many countries are there in the world?" "Jessica! It´s cold in the United States, isn´t it?" "Are there mines in the United States?" "Is it morning now in your country?" "Jessica! Are you really 29? I thought you were 16!" "How old are Americans when they get married?" "Do you use donkeys to carry things?" I didn´t know the answer to many of their questions (are there mines in the US?) but gathered that they don´t meet many foreigners--mine was the only white skin I saw in the entire trip--and I hope that I was some little help in satisfying their curiosity.