Chanchamayo trip - a retrospective

So this weekend was spent in the area east of Lima known as Chancamayo. It is one of the hungle regions of Peru that produced amazing weather and great scenery. It was certainly very nice to finally get out of Lima not only because I took a full 2 day weekend but also because there was beautiful weather and I could walk around all day in shorts. I went with this polish friend named Martin who is staying at the same house as me. A self proclaimed "trekkker," he is the epitomy of the neo liberal off beat traveler. Dont get me wrong, he is a very nice person and a trusty travel partner but he wont let slip by an opportunity to either drop the name of some location hes been or drop knowledge about "trekking gear" that he owns.

So I headed out with Martin on Friday night from Lima on a Bus-Cama or basically a pretty comfortable bus. The bus ride was about 9 hours and was really great. The bus was very comfortable and the scenery was amazing. Imagine a 9 hour bus ride where you start 5 minutes from the coast, drive about an hour out of Lima seeing progressively sparse housing and the ascend through the mountains for the next 3-4 hours to about 13000 feet or so (it was snowing pretty heavily at about 3am) and then ascending into a 100% humidity rainforest region. The bus ride was worth the trip in itself.

The trip around the region saw us going to a waterfall, a botanical garden, and also seeing a native tribe (this was not nearly as cool as it sounds). All in all we spent the day saturday being driven around by our panson guide Arturo whose car looked like it had been hit in a drive by. Definitely the higlight of the day was swimming in this waterfall though no doubt at great risk of getting strongyloides. At night it was quickly determined that there is nothing to do in La Merced except go to the discoteca (this was pointed out to me on 5 seperate occasions, the first was the lady in Lima before we left, then Arturo, then the girl who gave us the tour of the coffee plantation, then the lady who runs the hotel where we stayed, and finally a group of germans who I met and ended up heading out to the discoteca with).

So the 3 germans Philip, Tine, and Till were relaly nice and we just spent the night having conversation at the discoteca. If you happen to read german you can check out their web blog at till.info . Anyways, the most interesting part of the whole encounter was all the stories that Philip would tell me about the brazilian national team. It turns out he works at the hotel where the brazilian team stayed during the world cup and told me all sorts of stories about how he would drive ronaldo and ronaldinho out to the club and how ronaldo would be drinking whiskey at 10 in the morning and also how they really are very nice dudes. It was fun to talk to him about that and other soccer stuff (He was a big Dortmund fan).

Oh, and another note, the next few weeks I will be eating alot of pineapple and banana. See, Chanchamayo is a region known for producing the vast majority of Peru and South America´s fruit. So basically in the region there was tons of coffee, bananas, pineapples, oranges, Tangelos, and many other fruits. This obviously means very cheap prices. I ended up buying a box of 12 pineapples for 3 soles and I bought an entire bushel of bananas (40 or so still attached to the trunk) for about 5 soles. Needless to say the cheapest fruit I will ever by. As soon as I can find a solid internet connection. Also, please write me with movie os TV series recommendations. Warmest of regards to all.