We have both
been feeling kind of punk for a while.
I have eaten little solid food since dinner last Tuesday and Connie has
been feeling queasy since Thursday.
She says it is equal parts altitude sickness, motion sickness and a head
cold. Hence, no journal entries.
To
recap. As if the minivan ride from
Pillopata to Cusco wasn’t enough, we opted for the 22-hour, 1100 km bus trip
from Cusco to Lima on Friday afternoon. The twisting roads made the trip feel like sailing on stormy
seas in a small boat. We could
have – should have – flown, and the bus trip went nearly as high as a
plane. Somewhere during the mostly
sleepless night we crested a 16,000-foot pass. This we know because we awoke gasping for breath.
We arrived
in Lima around noon and crashed at our old hotel, Torre Blanca. We rallied briefly to observe, not
celebrate, our 16th anniversary at Chilis, a chance for some comfort
food, even if it didn’t sit too well.
We were on the road again early Sunday headed northeast towards
Tarma. On a map it looks like we
could have taken a direct shot from Cusco to Tarma but the roads are either
non-existent or so terrible the Lima detour is not only more comfortable, it’s
faster.
Why
Tarma? A small hummingbird, of
course. The marvelous spatueltail,
we learned from a Discovery Channel episode, reportedly lives in a remote
valley somewhere nearby. And,
depending on your sense of adventure (and direction) Tarma could be on
the road to Pucallpa, our destination for Saturday. Internet reports on the hummingbird were vague. All the sightings were part of very
expensive birding tours last November.
And no one we asked had ever heard of Santos Montenegro, the man who is
running the conservation project to protect the little guy’s habitat. Nevertheless…. No, we didn’t see the bird but we gave
it a go. We added a few new
species to our list and we met lovely Denise at Hacienda La Florida, a nice
place to stay if you ever find yourself in the area, lost no doubt.
The trip
north to Huanuco (not to be confused with Huancayo, 200 km south) first
requires a collectivo taxi, a Toyota Corolla (or similar, as the
car rental companies say) shared among 4 or 5 people, to Cerro de Pasco with a
change to another collectivo for
another two hours to get to Huanuco.
To make matters worse, you don’t really want to be in Huanuco. But enough is enough. Both of our drivers attended the Clyde
Crashcup driving school. Other cars we have hired looked like shrines with
photos of saints and religious sayings like “Jesus es el Senor!” One driver
even genuflected at especially hairy curves. Not these guys.
The first kept a can of brake fluid in his cup holder although he hardly
used the brake on the mostly uphill journey. The second gave no quarter, even on the muddy roads as he
splashed everything and everyone in sight. Today we wished for a little of that old time religion.
