Ayacucho - Lima, Peru
Lima, Peru
Ayacucho
We debated whether to get the 1 hour flight from Lima or the 11 hour overnight bus journey. Eventually the bus won, partly because of cost ( a quarter of the airfare ) but also because the flights leave at 7.00 am meaning a 5.00 am departure for the airport. So off we set from Our Barranco apartment to get the 10.00 pm bus. Fortunately the Metropolitano line leaves not far far from the apartment and takes us straight to the Cruz del Sur bus station in San Isidro.
We are booked into the "cruzeiro suite" service, big seats that convert to virtually lie flat beds and are looking forward to a relatively relaxed trip. Unfortunately, our hopes of that are soon laid to rest as, as is almost inevitable on this trip, a family with a young child take up the seats behind us. The peace is soon shattered with the kid playing Angry Birds at full volume on an iPad. This is soon replaced by constant whining as mum takes it away after 30 mins.
The scenery on this route is supposed to be quite spectacular but, being night time of course, we don't get to see it! We do however feel it in the form of being thrown around from side to side over some pretty rough roads as we wind our way back up into the amazing Andes. We arrive totally exhausted through lack of sleep. Hope Ayacucho is worth it!
Hostals are busy in the town and we have a place to stay for the following night but our first job is to find a place for tonight. We wander around the streets surrounding the main square and find a decent enough place and manage to negotiate a 25% discount on the rate. We get to the room and just crash out exhausted on the bed but are unable to sleep so set off to explore the town.
Not too many foreign visitors get to Ayacucho which is a shame because it is quite a pretty place with a lot going on in terms of scenery, restaurants, culture, artesania etc. few people speak English but everybody is really friendly and welcoming.
The wet season in the mountains is rapidly approaching and the streets around the centre of town have all been dug up an now consist mainly trenches of 3 metres wide and deep along many of the streets surrounding the main plaza which is in similar disarray. It seems that they are installing new drainage and sewage systems. Hope they get finished before the rains start in earnest!
Late afternoon and we hit the streets in search of a travel agent who can arrange a trip out to the Pampa de Ayacucho and the Wari ruins about 35 kms out of the town. It is possible by public buses but involves numerous changes of collectivo to get to the places we want to visit so we take the easy option. First stop is Willy Tours. The guy isn't there but some ageing Peruvian hippie guy is hanging around the office and engages us in a conversation covering everything from the power of the church, the army, "what a terrible state the country is in" to which churches we should visit. He calls the owner and we wait around for him to turn up during which time he tells us he is a musician and will be playing that night in the Negro Magica ( Black Magic) Club and would we like to come along, fortunately the tour guy then turns up and we don't have to make a decision. We tell the tour operator where we want to go and he quotes a price of 200 soles per person. Having found out from the local tourism office that the going rate is 35 soles pp, we make our excuses and leave...
We check out one more tour operator who sells us a tour for the said 35 soles for the next morning and we return to our hostal, Via Via Cafe for a drink in the balcony bar overlooking the square. We sit down order our drinks and then the said rains arrive and boy, does it rain! For a couple of hours we watch the heaviest rain and hail we have seen for a while. Seems like the wet season has arrived. What a day to book a tour!
The next morning arrives and it is still looking a bit grey but we head off to the tour office to get the minibus and join the rest of passenger, a family group of Peruvians from Trujillo ranging in age from 70-90 all very chatty and friendly and, during the rest of the day we will find out a lot about them. They are delighted that we have spent some time in their home town and question us on where we went, what we did and what we thought of the place. They are really great company and such a refreshing change from the miserable young French backpackers we shared our last organised tour with in Bolivia!
Half an hour outside of Ayacucho on our way into the mountains we meet our first set of roadworks. Told by the lady holding the stop sign that we will be here for 40 minutes we all decide to get out an walk through the road works rather than sit in the bus.
Along the way our new Peruvian friends are chatting away and point out various plants and fruits along the roadside, explain what each is used for. One of the fruits we ask about is the "Tuna" a fruit of a cactus. Having expressed an interest and saying that we had not tried one, they all set off up the hillside in search of a good specimen. When they return, the peel it for us to try ( very nice!) and a heated discussion then ensues as to which variety is best. We explain to them that we were a little bemuse when we saw signs in the juice stalls for "tuna juice" explain that in English this would be a fish juice which they found hilarious.
Our first stop is at the ruins of the Wari city. A civilisation who inhabited the area a few hundred years before the Incas. The ruins are quite interesting but have been and are being restored pretty badly. We spend an hour or so here wandering the ruins and, even though the guide speaks only Spanish, she is very good. We wander around the ruins and the museums before heading on up to our next stop of Quinua and Pampas de Ayacucho.
Pampas de Ayacucho was the site of the final battle with the Spanish colonial forces which saw the end of colonial rule in Peru when the Spanish were finally defeated in 1824. The site is marked by a 40m high white obelisk and a few souvenir and food stalls. Much as we love store food, one look at these stalls and we decided to forego lunch...
Another opportunity we passed on was the horse riding, partly because my last experience of riding a horse in Bolivia did not do a lot for my riding credibility but mostly because these poor creatures looked half starved.
On the way back we stop in the village of Quinua which is famous for the ceramic models which are place on the roofs of houses for good luck. These range in size from a few inches to several feet and the subject matter is wide and varied covering everything to elaborate castles and happy pigs to condors eating bulls and graphic representations of babies being delivered by Caesarian section!!
Our Peruvian friend love all these and buy several each. How many houses do they have.
Time to return to Ayacucho and, as we reach the roadworks we walked through on the way up, we encounter the biggest traffic jam we have seen in almost a year of travelling in South America. We get stuck in traffic for around two hours and, I guess around 15 kms. Worse still this road is effectively a dirt track winding along the side of a mountain valley with crumbling rock on one side and sheer drops on the other. To add to our concern, we see a number of rockslides that have happened since we made our way up!!
The somewhat precarious state of the road only seems to add to the excitement for all the drivers partaking in Peru's national sport - getting in front of the next guy in a line of traffic at any cost! In any other country this road would barely qualify as a two way road. Here, drivers are three, sometimes four abreast each trying to gain a few inches on their competitors. Some, mostly owners of new 4WD cars have fearful expressions on their faces, but most are caught up in some sort of euphoria. Our own driver is laughing maniacally as he weaves between the other cars and occasionally takes us within inches of a drop of several hundred feet to the valley floor below! Our normally quiet, shy guide changes personality instantly and shouts encouragement to our driver. We watch as drivers deliberately force others closed to with the rock face or the cliff edge. A somewhat worrying insight into the national psyche!!!
Eventually we make it back to Ayacucho sort of glad that we are getting the night bus back along similar roads and that at least if we do go over the edge of a cliff, being night time we will probably know very little about it...
We have a few hour to kill before getting on the night bus back to Lima some of which we spend at El Niños a nice restaurant we have found in the town. Given the large size of portions here we opt for two of our favourite starters, anticuchos ( grilled beef heart kebabs) and beef short ribs and salad. All are delicious and amongst the best food we have had in Peru to date.
The bus journey back is uneventful but we arrive back in Lima exhausted. Two overnight bus journeys in four days, coupled with a return to altitude means that we have had very little sleep. Our original thoughts were to spend a little more time in this region visiting some of the other towns nearby. But our visit coincided with the beginnings of the rainy season and, given the state of the roads we feel we made the right call.