Ayacucho, the city in the Andes

Sunday, December 16, 2018

We are back in the capital! The last few days were quite eventful and we don't want to keep these experiences from you.

Experiences is the keyword, whether they were positive or not :)!

Since Gianna and I have been flying so much in the last few days, we decided to take a bus trip. For a measly 60 Swiss francs per person, the bus was supposed to take us 11 hours from Lima to Ayacucho and back. Very interesting price wise and also the comfort was initially good. The bus was very new and the seats comparable to the business class in an airplane! Excellent 👍

Happy and refreshed, we boarded the bus in Lima at 22:15 and made ourselves comfortable. So far so good. There was just one little thing we hadn't considered! The bus trip took us from Lima (20 m above sea level) over a mountain pass road (4700 m above sea level) to Ayacucho (2760 m above sea level). And such a mountain pass journey is a treat for the stomach....

Giana didn't notice much with her sleeping pill, but for Mara (Gianna's mother) and me, the last few hours were quite stomach-churning. For me, every curve in the last 3 hours was a struggle not to embellish the front seat with all the contents of my stomach!

Well, we survived and fortunately arrived safely. We were unloaded in some backyard and luckily could walk to our hotel on foot.😂

To acclimate better to the altitude, we drank coca tea all day long. Yes, exactly, coca tea. Cocaine is made from the coca leaves, and this is also the coca tea. But they don't have much in common except that you're not allowed to import either into Switzerland! 

Peru was temporarily the world's largest producer of cocaine, but has since handed over the first place to Colombia. But the tea tastes really good and will promptly go down in history as Gianna's and Fabian's favorite tea.

The city of Ayacucho has about 150,000 inhabitants and is located amidst beautiful hills. Although these hills are all over 3000 meters above sea level, you quickly forget because there are still trees growing everywhere. In the 80s, the Sendero Luminoso, a Marxist party and guerrilla organization, was active here. Due to the many terrorist attacks in the past, tourism here was not able to unfold or develop as much as in other places. 

So we were mostly the only Western people! I like it that way because we got a much better insight into the lives of the people here.😊 Not to mention the cheap prices compared to Peru's capital! The many little school children who spoke English with us and then hugged us were also very sweet 😅! 

Ayacucho is a picturesque little town and the weather was perfect. Many Peruvians crowded the market and the large Placa de Major. While we explored the city a bit on the first day, the next day we were already on the bus again! We visited ruins of the Wari culture. Actually, we only know the Incas, but there were many other cultures before the Incas.

The guided tour of the ruins was very exciting and we learned a lot about these cultures who invented the calendar and created water mirrors to better observe the stars. 

We tasted the fruits of the cacti and learned that there are sacred trees in Peru! These sacred trees were found to contain traces of heroin, mescaline, amphetamines, and other mind-altering substances. I could talk to the gods too! After such exhausting visits, a typical local meal was a must. In simple alleyway kitchens, we could choose between guinea pigs, soups, chicken, corn, and cheese.

The two women shared a whole (!!) cob of maize. You can guess what the men ordered. Guinea pigs! Tastes like chicken but is juicier and doesn't really have much meat on it.

In the afternoon, we visited the village of Quinua with its many clay figures and a large monument of a battle. This is where the South Americans finally defeated the Spaniards.

Quinua

Back at the hotel, the question slowly arose as to how to get back to Lima. None of us really felt like spending another 12 hours on the bus. The big fear was that the many curves would come right from the beginning and spoil our stomachs from the start! So we booked a flight to Lima at short notice! 

The wonderfully short flight (38 minutes) was then really the lesser evil :).

The trip to Ayacucho was very interesting and a considerable contrast to the million-strong city of Lima. Nevertheless, we were glad to be back home in Lima ;-)!

There are several reasons why it took so long for this blog to reach you! More about that in the last blog ;-)!

We wish you all happy holidays!