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Emoliente

We’ve really left the gringo trail now. From Cajamarca we took a 10 sole ($3.33) 6 hour bus ride toward Chachapoyas to Celendin on unpaved roads. Even though the roads were unpaved, the trip was quite a bit more comfortable than the one from Trujillo to Cajamarca. They’re also widening the roads all the way to Celendin and I believe they’re going to pave them too. Celendin was much more modern than I expected after going so long without seeing any major civilization. It’s actually a fairly pretty little town that I’m sure will start attracting more tourists with the completion of the highway.

We checked into a hostal and got a small dinner. A rather common occurence at restaurants is to pick something off the menu and then be told they don’t have it. I think we tried to choose 2 or 3 different things from the menu at Hostal Celendin that weren’t available. In general the service is terrible too. After the food comes you have to hunt your waiter or waitress down to get anything additional including the check. I guess that’s why there’s no tipping in Peru.

6AM was wakeup time to get to Llanguat and some hotsprings. We considered walking the 21km to get there, but decided against it as it began to rain. Instead as far as the guide book indicates there’s only a 7AM combi to Llanguat. Little did we know combi meant people and livestock carrier. We shared a 2 hours trip down an insane number of switchbacks with a loaded combi full of people, sheep and chickens. Kim had to keep pushing a lamb back to keep him from stepping on the other animals.

We passed through Llanguat, which looks like about 15 houses and a church, and the combi dropped us off at the hotsprings. Unfortunately we couldn’t try the mud baths since the river was too high and uncrossable. We went in the pool, which could easily be mistaken for the mudbaths. After an unsuccessful attempt to find a river crossing, we relaxed for a bit in the inside hot pools like there were in Cajamarca, only the water wasn’t as hot. The owner of the place was very friendly and was very interested in learning how to better develop a tourist industry. It sounds like more than a few people in the Celendin area feel this way.

Getting back proved to be a bit of an ordeal. We walked in the rain for close to 2 hours back up the switchback road before a combi finally came by. We hopped on and got 2 of the most umcomfortable seats. My butt still hurts. I don’t know if the 2 hours of hiking uphill in the rain or the remaining hour in the combi made me more tired, but once we got back to Celendin we ate dinner and went to bed, which means that we didn’t have time to visit the local village of Jose Galvez where the women are supposedly the most beautiful in Peru.