Altitude Trial
On Friday night we headed for the hills. I mean mountains. Destination Cajamarca, mode of transportation: a luxury sleeper bus. This bus was more comfortable than first class on Aer Lingus…! It was pitch black on the way over, so all I could tell was that we were going up and up and up.
Half asleep, we arrived at the early hour of 4.30am. It was raining, cold, and dark. Our poor guide Luz from Trujillo was shivering. But in reality, it was more like an average summer day in Ireland. We crashed at a hotel for a couple of hours before the weekend activities.
The first destination on Saturday was Cumbe Mayo – our local guide Luiz described it as the Machu Picchu of Cajamarca. It is an hour’s drive from Cajamarca, up a winding road to the altitude of 3500 meters. The drive provided some stunning views of the city, and finally at around 3300 meters I could feel the altitude. It was not quite a headache, not quite feeling lightheaded, but something in between. Coming and going. Not pleasant. But a good indicator of what to expect at higher altitudes around Lake Titicaca and the Inca trail in the next two weeks.
Our guide promised us a leisurely walk of an hour, hour and a half. Maybe he was talking in Peruvian time, maybe it was us taking hundreds of pictures of everything… But it took us more like three hours. Or maybe it was the shopping we did on the way. Yes, I said shopping. There were a number of local women along the way selling the most beautiful fabrics. A more enterprising lady even sold boiled potatoes and eggs. And she was doing very well out of us, as this was about half way through the walk, and everyone was hungry.
Cumbe Mayo means “thin river”. It is an impressive set of canals and aqueducts bringing water from the mountains to the valleys below. The structure is thought to be one of the oldest in South America, built around 1500 B.C. As water was sacred to the ancient people, this area also contains some stone carvings and sacrificial stones.
The area is beautiful, with rivers flowing towards both oceans. And volcanic rock formations that resemble anything your imagination can come up with. There was definitely a rabbit, a mouse, a policeman and a pair of lovers… But I was not sure about the seahorse.
After Cumbe Mayo, we stopped on the way back to town for some panoramas, and then for lunch at the Plaza de Armas. After lunch it was the dairy farm with cows who know their names. And yes, this is a popular attraction in Cajamarca. An old man calls the cows by name, and they walk from the field to the shed, each one to the correct feeding trough. They have name tags and all, so the visitors can see the cows know where they are going. One poor cow did not know what to do when Hernando and Luiz were standing on her way though…
To finish off the day we visited the Inca Baths. The natural hot springs were already known to and used for leisurely purposes by the Incas. The last Inca, Atahualpa, was around the area when captured by the Spaniards. While nothing historical remains of the “baths” that might have been there back in the 16th century, the Baths remains a hugely popular spot for both locals and tourists.
On Sunday we had a guided tour of the city. We started off by climbing the much smaller hill of Santa Apolonia for some more good views of the city and surrounding mountains. Afterwards we visited a museum with historical artefacts, and the Belen church. The city also includes an old inca structure, really just a room, but a very important site historically nevertheless. There are two theories about the room. One story is that this was the jail cell of Atahualpa. The second theory is that this is the room Atahualpa promised to fill with his ransom if the Spaniards would let him go. Unfortunately for Atahualpa, the Spaniards took the gold and silver, and killed him anyway.
At 1.30pm our bus headed back for Trujillo. And the best was yet to come. It was dark on the way to Cajamarca, so we never saw the views on the way in. But now we did. And once outside of the city, the views were breath-taking, stunning, incredible, fabulous, amazing… If you haven’t seen the Andes, you have seen nothing!
Most of us sat downstairs in the double decker, so there were no picture opportunities. For two seconds I felt jealous of Rajesh and Ashish who had front row seats upstairs. But only for two seconds. For it took us seven hours to get to Cajamarca, and only five to get back to Trujillo… Suicide seats the boys called them…
