Off to the jungle

After I left Cusco I thought I was going to spend one, maybe two, days in Huanchaco but it turned into a week and two days. It was a lot longer than I was hoping to stay there, but it was nice to see some friends and relax on the beach. Huanchaco is getting much nicer now that it's spring. Apparently August is the worst month there for weather. Everyday Luis had a new reason we had to wait another day to leave. Once we finally got our bus tickets, I was very excited to leave. We took the cheapest bus we could find, which was quiet nice still. It stopped a lot along the way, but it was nice because we could get out an walk around and one point we had a full hot menu (menu here means a set price for soup and your choice of segundo). We got the seats on the second floor at the front with a panoramic view. 

We hit the mountains around the time the sun was setting and it was probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. As we were near the top of the mountainsides, there was just enough of a light fog or haze everywhere, that the entire valley and mountains in the background turned a dusty pink color that eventually went red. Being on the edge looking down over the mountains and valley that were all different shades of pinks and reds in the sunset was spectacular. No, I didn't manage to get any pictures of it :( It was interesting to see the progression of desert to mountains and the wake up in the rainforest. By the time we arrived around 7am, it had been 21 hours since we left Trujillo. The bus was full of interesting things, the guy behind us had a rooster on his lap the whole way, you could hear guinea pigs squeaking and in the luggage space of the bus was a giant thing of fish wrapped in plastic. 

Luis has a friend in Miami who visits Peru quiet often. She had been collecting clothing from her friends for Luis to give out to the people in the village. Because of that we had a lot of stuff to bring with us. We could barely lift one of the giant bags. When we arrived in Tarapoto we somehow shoved all of our stuff in the back of a mototaxi (tuk-tuk). Lots of string to keep it on the back! We dropped off oh stuff at the cars to go to San Antonio and headed for breakfast in the market and to buy some supplies for the week. 

San Antonio de Cumbaza is the name of the town I'm in. It's about 15 km from Tarapoto, or about half an hour up a bumpy dirt road. Cumbaza is the river that goes through the village. The area is made up of three villages right beside each other. There are mountains around the area covered in luscious green forests. It's not a rainforest like the Amazon because it doesn't have the canopies and same biodiversity and giant trees but it is still really tropical and full of variety. The village we are in is the smallest of the three and technically the poorest, but it does have the river directly beside it unlike the others. There is a total of 4 streets in the village with a few off shoots like the one to our house on the far end of the town on the way up to the agriculture fields up the mountain. 

So far we've just been organizing the house since its been empty for some time. Saturday we played soccer with the kids in the next town over, which is a 5 minute walk. Of course I managed to make a fool of myself and people still talk about the horse. I somehow thought, upon a quick glance, that the horse on the edge of the field where I was with the ball was someone on our team and I ended up passing the ball to it, then before I realized it was a horse I ran into it by accident. Everyone thought it was pretty funny. Sunday we gave out almost all of the clothes we had brought with us. There was more clothes than people, so the rest well give out some other time or people will come get it whenever they want. Everyday we go to the river as our shower. You wear either your clothes or bathing suit and we've generally been going with a group of kids, first swim for a while then soap and swim some more. It's a very different way of bathing, but it works. I went at 7am one morning it was really tranquil and the water was great in the sunshine.