Cajamarca to Tarapoto

Cajamarca had some interesting sites, one of them was the Ventanillas de Otuzco. The town center was nice with many colonial buildings and a pretty town square.

We chose the route via Leymebamba, as that was the shortest when looking at routes in Google maps. We had no idea what the roads were going to be like, as the owner of the hotel in Cajamarca said it was going to be toll roads involved and they are usually ok. The first stop was an easy drive, arriving in Celendin on good enough roads. We needed to get some cash so we had a coffee break before moving on. The hat is an important special piece of head wear for the Incas. Both women and men wear them, but we saw mostly women. Our taxi driver told us that those hats, made from rice, are very expensive, and that the most valuable ones can cost up to 10,000 soles (divide by 3.7 to get US$). He also told us that a person could sell a bull to get money to buy a hat. Celendin had a hat on the square.

When we left Celendin we read a road side sign that the road was narrow and to drive carefully. We couldn't have imagined the jaw dropping views we were to encounter passing above the Marañón Canyon, reaching 3,600 meters above sea level before coming down to about 2,200 meters in Leymebamba. It was a long drive, the road was narrow and generally had no rails at the edge, and Karin was scared. The last part of the road was in an awful condition with lots of holes and bumps, and the average speed was around 15km/hour.

Arriving close to dark, there was no accommodation in Leymebamba with a parking spot for the car. We carried on to the next village, Palmira, and managed to get roof over our heads with a local guy who had a house he sometimes let people stay in. He had a good garage, a bed and a kitchen where we could organise our own food. All good!

The next morning we started off again. This section of the drive took us along the river Cajamarca, with few changes up and down mountains, and lovely views of lower level lands. The locals of Palmira told us the road would be better than the previous route, and indeed it was. The driving is much slower than anticipated but it is really nice to experience the changing landscapes. We made it to Nueva Cajamarca, which turned out to be a bigger mess than the "old" version where we had stayed before. We spent the night there, and set out on the last leg to Tarapoto the next morning.

We were now in Amazonas, the real Peruvian Amazonas! So beautiful with the vegetation and the vapor raising over the hills from the trees. It was raining quite hard when we passed the highest point of the mountain, and it is very powerful to see the heavy downpours. Arriving in Tarapoto, we found a small hotel in the outskirts where we stayed a couple of nights to rest before taking on the drive to Lima.

We certainly got three routes with completely different experiences and views each day. The guy in Palmira told us that he didn't want to go the road we had taken over the canyon, or maybe once as an experience. Just as well we didn't know in advance!