After the hiking and general clean living of Huaraz I was once again read to tackle back to back night busses. Huaraz - Trujillo one night and then at 3pm Trujillo - Chachapoyas, capital of the Amazonas district and gateway to Kuelap - a famous pre-inca fortress.
The journey from Trujillo was lovely for the first 4 hours - straight roads, lovely sunset view and a Peruvian girl beside me who started chatting me up. Once the darkness decended though the journey became tortous to say the least. The road became less paved, started ascending, and had more hairpins than your granny in the hairdresser. Oh, and the Peruvian fell asleep, leaving me alone to contemplate the draw of travelling. Eventually I nodded off only to be woken at 5am by the conductress saying we had arrived. I found my way to the central square and to a hostal where the night watchman was quite chirpy to see me.
After a couple more hours sleep I had a look round Chacha, which turns out to be a lovely, clean and very friendly wee town. Quite obviously not on the main Lima-Cusco backpacker route, the people still have time for a chat and are very corteous.
The next morning it was up to Kuelap, which was hyped my many guidebooks as the alternative Macchu Picchu. Now I wasn't a huge fan of M.P. due to the inordinate amount of tourists, but Kuelap really ain't a competitor. It is set in a lovely location, on the top of a hill overlooking many others, but then again so is M.P. It was certainly impressive and the lack of tourists was refreshing but it reminded me of Copan in Honduras. "Oh yeah, another ruin".
I know I'm a Phillistine, or a Palestine or a Filipino or something...
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