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This weekend, since we had four days off due to the Urubamba celebrations, we decided to take the opportunity to go on a trip. We finally decided on Quillabamba, which is the closest Jungle town to us; an overnight bus journey away. We managed to track down where the bus stopped, which was outside a random shop on one of the main roads in Urubamba, and in typically peruvian style waited an hour and a half for the bus to arrive! We finally got on the bus at about 9.30 pm and arrived at Quillabamba at about 3.30 am. We checked into a "relatively luxiourious" (I quote the guide book) hotel near the plaza de armas. It was a comfortable place, but did make us wonder what anything less than luxurious would have entailed!
After apprehensively checking my emails to find out my results from Uni for the year, we celebrated by having a juice in the market, and spent the rest of the day wondering around town and relaxing at the swimming pool (discovering that the book that I brought was missing the first 85 pages!)
The very friendly manager of the hotel arranged an excursion for us on the saturday. A taxi driver drove us around for the day along the most beautiful valley, which involved very dusty roads interjected with numerous river crossings! We visited a stunning waterfall called the siete tinajas which was amidst jungley vegetation. There were butterflies galore, up to the size of my hand. It was truly enchanting.
We also visited a 'zoo'; a number of small cages containing various monkeys, cats and parrots. Colette managed to disconnect a hosepipe causing an impromptu water fountain all over the animals and simultaneously feed her camera case to a monkey in the space of about a minute of arriving!! We also visited a barnful of squeaking little guineapigs, which were soon to become somebodies dinner poor little things!
On the journey back from Quillabamba, we went during the day to witness one of the most spectacular journeys I have ever experienced. We wound our way up the mountains along the river Urubamba along an unpaved road, through the colourful flowers and jungley trees. At every stop women would board the bus selling coca leaves (from the cocaine plants that allegedly cure everything from altitude sickness, to constipation and diarrhea), oranges and jelly.
Just before sunset, the bus suddenly stopped and everybody was forced to get off. The reason was that along this section of the mountain road, a rockfall had completely blocked the way (the road was only a few metres wide before giving way into a cliff edge). The men all set to work clearing the edge of the rockfall, running every so ofter from a new tumble of rocks from above. Just after sunset (the work was now being done by headlights), the bus decided to that the pass was sufficiently wide enough to drive along. In the most 'heart in mouth'moment so far, the driver lurched past the rocks tilting significantly towards the edge of the cliff, and with wheels spinning. With just centimetres to spare from toppling to certain doom, the bus made it past with a celebratory beep, and we all reboarded to drive safely home!
On monday, back in Urubamba, Megan and I walked up one of the mountains overlooking our house. At the top, there is a magical view of the town and neighbouring valley. We walked along a perpendicular mountain, and descended into somebody's garden, dodging pigs, dogs and donkeys. As we walked back along the road, singing at the tops of our voices we got some rather funny looks!
Looking forward to being back at school this week.
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