Equipo Williams

Our trip so far has been great. I know you probably have heard about our trip up to the Nazca Lines, but after that we’ve also had some interesting experiences. These past few days we’ve been driving like crazy and have driven more than six hundred miles since Cusco. We went to Nazca and stayed there for about three days, then drove up to Lima. We only stayed in Lima one night because there wasn’t really anything we wanted to see there and we were just passing through. Then we drove to Cajamarca, where the last True Inca King Atahualpa was captured and executed by the Spaniards in 1533. There are hot springs here that are called the Inca Baths and we went for a dip here. It was fun because you got to fill up the bath yourself with water at your preferred temperature. 

After Cajamarca we drove on a really windy mountain pass that puts the Stelvio pass to shame because this one is only one lane, and a lot of the drivers on it are Peruvian. This road was also basically hanging on a cliff and was super curvy. It must have descended and ascended at least ten thousand feet. It took us almost seven hours to go this two hundred kilometers and we were relieved once we were finally done.

We came into Leymebamba (the town we’re currently in) at around three pm. We went to the Leymebamba museum which is full of about thirty mummies and had several mummified animals that the Chachapoya culture used as bags and hats, quite fashionable. There were some really gruesome things there including a bird skull in which you could still see its brain. There was a bag made out of puma legs and claws, which was horrifying to say the least. There was also a hat made out of a dog head that looked like a demon straight out of a horror movie. I’m not going to go into further detail because it was truly disgusting, but I will say that the museum had a very nice native garden we got to walk around. We are in the Amazonas state in Peru, so it’s quite humid and lush here. It’s very beautiful and I love looking out the window of our hotel room to see the misty morning mountains. Even though we are technically in the Amazon, it’s the high Amazon, so there are fewer trees and dense-ness than the Amazon in Brazil. 

After the museum we went to our hotel and chilled for an hour. I got to talk to Rory and that was so nice, since our lives and levels of busy-ness keep us from talking very often. After that we went to have dinner and then went to bed because we were all really tired. All in all, the past week has been tiring and a LOT of driving, but I’m glad we’re doing this because driving a lot now means that we will have more time to do fun things in places like Costa Rica and Colombia.