Peruvian Cities

Peru 🇵🇪

We came into Peru at 8 in the night, arriving in Jaén.

We were hoping to catch a connecting bus to Chachapoyas, but the last one left at 7.

We grabbed a room in a “hostal” across from the bus station for $45 sols.

I found the conversion, $3.60 USD per 10 sols - so divide anything by 3.60 to see the exchange.

The money code for sols is PEN however.

And then hit the town.

Jaén reminded me of being back in the north of Vietnam, it was a fairly big city that was fully alive at on a Tuesday night. No gringos, only locals and we had some strange looks.

But we were hungry, so we headed down the road. This spot had the most street food out we’d seen so we grabbed some skewered chicken and walked through the town!

They had loads of coffee shops open, no bars, and it was jammed back with families on the town. We had to withdraw some cash out of an ATM and successfully pulled out 400 sols and headed back to the hostal.

Finally, we found peanut butter in a store!

Chachapoyas

alarm goes off

it’s dark outside

The city was alive and noisy until 2am.

It went quite as they went to sleep.

At 4:30am the next wave of city life woke up, and you could hear it coming alive.

We decided to catch the 5am bus to Chachapoyas the following day.

(no coffee to start…)

It was a mini bus, like a big van and we were jam packed in for the next 4 hours on bumpy roads.

Chachapoyas was a cool colonial mountain city, laid back and very tranquillo.

It’s in the Noth East of Peru in the Amazonia region. A bit off the typical backpackers trail.

That being said we stuck out pretty well. Some people loved us, others not so much.

Chachapoyas in known for the 15th largest waterfall in the world (2nd when it was discovered in 2002) Gocta Falls.

They’re also known for an assortment of ancient ruins older than Machu Picchu inhabited by Cloud Warriors.

During our time in Chachapoyas they were celebrating “Las Fiesta Patrias” which is their independence day, and they had flags up everywhere, out of town Peruvians on vacation there, and the city was fully alive at night. A very cool time to be there and be able to see it!

Original Surf Hub

a 17 hour bus ride.

Over night.

On the bumpiest MF’n road ever, it was quite a long night.

We didn’t get much sleep, but it was nice to cover some ground.

We arrived in Huanchaco, where it’s said surf originated from fishermen here 2,500 years ago and claims to be the first place in the world where surfing became a sport.

(don’t tell Polynesia)

We’re posted up here for a little, as we have. few projects we need to knock out while we have wifi and a stable place.

I’d prefer beach towns for this, because I can go surf for a little between work, and not be focused on all the big excursions.

That being said, I had to make this one short because I’m pretty swamped on deadlines for Monday.

Cheers,

Eliot