Happy Mother´s Day from Chachapoyas

We are in Chachapoyas now and have been away from the internet for a while. This is just a quick update to let our mom´s know we are not captive in the Peruvian jungle somewhere.

We arrived in Chachapoyas Wednesday night and took a short cab ride to a hostel that was in our guide book. We had only planned on staying for a day or two and trying to find our way out to Kuelap. The guy that runs our hostel also runs a tour guide service and we signed up to do a couple hikes this week.

At 5:30 am the day after we arrived via a 23 hour bus ride, we set out for Catarata Gocta. This is the third tallest waterfall in the world. It was "discovered" some time in 2006, but the people that live in this area had known about it for a long time. The locals just didn´t have the means of telling the rest of the world to come here and spend money to see it. It was a pretty impressive sight after a few hours of walking along the side of a mountain and through the jungle. (Pictures will probably have to wait until we get back to Lima because the Internet connection is pretty slow here.) There were only six people in our group including the guide and we saw no other people on the whole trek. We did see a snake and a lizard in the jungle, but no monkeys or bears. We got back to San Pablo, the town we started at, and ate lunch. We finished lunch at 2:30 and were ready to head back to Chachapoyas. Unfortunately, the road between San Pablo and Chachapoyas is closed from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm while construction is done. We misunderstood and thought that the road was closed at night. This makes more sense to someone from the states, but I guess it is easier and cheaper for them to work on the somewhat remote road during the day than to have to get all the equipment necessary to light up the work area at night. So we slept for a couple of hours in the taxi while we waited for the road to open.

Our next hike was supposed to be a four day hike through the Chachapoyas area that would end at Kuelap and take us through several other significant archeological sites on the way. Unfortunately Stefani started feeling pretty sick and only made it about halfway through the first day. We had a driver that took our group to the starting point of the trek and he took Stef and I back after getting the others to their destination. Again, the road was closed until the evening and poor Stef had to wait quite a while to get to some medicine and a warm bed. We eventually got back and she is feeling better now, but still too weak to hike over mountains and through jungles. Tomorrow, I will rejoin the group we set off with and finish with them at Kuelap. Hopefully after another day of rest, Stef will be able to meet us all to see Kuelap, which is supposed to be quite spectacular.

To our moms and grandmothers we would like to say Happy Mother´s Day! We probably won´t be able to talk to you until Monday or maybe even Wednesday when we get back to Lima because of our lack of Internet access here, but we did not forget. So, have a great day and we will be in touch soon.