16/07/2019 - Chachapoyas, Peru

It was pouring with rain so we got a taxi from the bus station to our hostel. We arrived much earlier than check in time, but the room was ready so we were given our towels and a bar of soap and shown to our room. We crashed out in bed to the ipad for a couple of hours before showering and getting up again, a bit zombie-fied after the overnight bus and in need of real food and drink. We are also at an altitude of 2300m, so our heads were a little funny too. The rain had passed thankfully and there were blue skies ahead. We gave some laundry into the hostel host, and then strolled around a bit lost until we stumbled across the tourist information.

Streets of Chachapoyas.

The man there gave us a map and showed us where the ATM was (there are only 2 ATM’s in the whole town.) It is a mountainous colonial town and is very pretty, and had a really nice atmosphere, a bit of local hustle and bustle. I think it is a bank holiday tomorrow so lots of people have come for the saint day. We went to the ATM and happily stumbled across a coffee shop we had read about earlier in the day on trip advisor. We are in the Amazonas province, an area for good coffee, and we both agreed it was the best coffee so far in Peru. We were so hangry so scoffed a quiche and a brownie just to keep us going! We went to the main square and visited a tour company ‘Santa Maria Tours’ that had been recommended to us by the couple from Holland, and booked ourselves on a tour to the Kuelap ruins tomorrow, it is supposedly much less visited due to its awkward location, but equally as interesting as Maccu Piccu so that is quite exciting. We then went to a few different bus companies to try and organise our onwards travel, and ended up in the Chiclayo Transporte terminal, buying tickets for another overnight bus on Wednesday night. It is going to be few long buses over the next couple of weeks! Once that was sorted we went to a trip advisor recommended restaurant ‘El Batan del Tayta’ for some traditional Peruvian food. It was decorated in a Peruvian style, and the menu was fairly exotic (still didn’t brave the guinea pig though!) I had the Sacha aeropuerto – fried rice and noodles with local smoked sausage and dried/smoked pork, it was absolutely delicious! Josh had the spaghetti Huanquina – spaghetti with spicy cheesy sauce with some steak, which he enjoyed too. We walked around the town a bit longer, it was getting busier and there were some fireworks, which I assume is for the saint day tomorrow. We got home and had some research/organising to do for the upcoming couple of weeks, so we used the internet to do that before getting ourselves organised for our tour tomorrow, showering and hopping into bed.