Today, please surprise me. And the heck it did it. Peruvian Chronicles. Day 10.

5 am. I jumped out of bed. I grabbed my backpack and left my luggage in the deposit room. I went down the stairs and sat on the doorstep and waited.

Around 5:30 am the van stopped in the corner and I ran super excited towards it (me running excited before 6 am? actually, me? running excited? Apparently anthing is possible in this World). I was the first one to be picked up and I still don't know who nor how many were the people who I was supposed to spend the next four days with.

While we were driving around Cusco, I started to calm down, but only until the next stop where we picked up Michael, a Danish guy that was too awake to be that early. Another few turns and Sara and Laura joined us, Finnish and German respectively, they have been travelling together from Chile where they met. One last stop and the group got complete with Fernando and Ann, a Peruvian-American couple. What an international group we have. As you can imagine, for everyone's comfort, we all spoke in English (this was a beautiful journey to linguistic bipolarity). We actually had one more stop before leaving Cusco and it was a place where we tried and picked up our boots for the next days.

A short while after leaving Cusco, we stopped for breakfast in Oropesa, a small town where our guide bought the bread for all of the following days. After that, we hit the road, and between talks and the snowed peaks we left behind, we got to Ninamarca. Yes, it's like Denmark in Spanish but with an N. We had a short stop to see the "chullpas" (graves) that belonged to pre-inca people.

There's no need to go further than the entrance.

We had to keep going, so we went back to the van. The good thing of being only 6 people is that we had half of the van free so we could move and change seats when we wanted so we didn't feel so trapped there. We even used the last row to go and sleep.

Next Stop. Paucartambo. This is a colonial town, really picturesque. All the houses are white with blue balconies. It was a Sunday, so the town was pretty quiet, but everything and everyone were getting ready for the celebreations that took place exactly when we would get back. This is what I call a bonus track. Our guides told as that we would see the town in the right moment, when the party is at its best but people still aren't too wasted from the chicha.

We went to the Town Museum where we learnt about native people from that area of Peru, and also about the dances and the characters that are represented in them. I'm sorry, but I have to say that many of those masks qualify as creepy. We had a little walk around town and bought chicha (corn beer) that I still hadn't tried, and there I learnt that when a place has a sort of flower over the door, it is to indicate that you can buy the typical drink there.

Paucartambo's main square. These are statues of the characters represented in the typical dances.

Isn't it beautiful?

One more time to the van, we were getting closer to the rainforest and stopped in the entrance spot to Manu National Park. We had a picnic there and had the first of many many hikes, because from this point we mixed tracts of walking with other ones in the van. We were supposed to have a marvellous view of the rainforest from there, but guess what: altitude (10000-10800 ft) plus humidity equals clouds. In this last tract our guide at the moment left and we met German, our guide for the rest of the trip.

The panoramic view of the rainforest, take 1.

The panoramic view of the rainforest, take 2.

Already led by German, while he showed us a bunch of plants that we encountered on the way, I heard a different sound. I looked up and there they were: the monkeys. I can't even begin to describe my happiness. German told us a fun fact about this kind of monkeys, he said that as we were now a bunch of people they were remaining calm, but if there were only a couple of humans, the would step on a branch and hit their chest, very Tarzan style, inviting humans to leave, and if they didn't, guess what: it's pippi time! Run!

The first one of many, many pictures. I am not sorry at all.

Ok, someone please stop me. No? Anybody?

Some time around sunset we reached or lodge in Pilcopata. This is the one that has electric power and hot water. We were given our rooms and I became roomie with my nordic friends. We were given our supper and dinner (yeah, here, dinner and coffee, tea and cocoa live together apparently) and we stayed there hanging out and chatting as if the prevoius 14 hours hadn't been enough. Now it was us and the diverity of insects, sponsored by the high temperatures and the excesive humidity.

Pilcopata, our home for less than a day.

I went to sleep with the uncertainty of what the following day would bring us and the happiness of the reached goal of seeing monkeys.

*You can read the original version in Spanish of this post here.