2015-November-11 Peru, San Ramon: Some Insights From Peru

To be fair, we should say these insights are from our time in the mountain villages at the ‘eyebrow’ of the jungle – a local phrase.

Water:

Splashing At Tirol Waterfall

Looking Up At Bayoz Waterfalls 

The rivers and waterfalls in the area are spectacular.  Close to our village are three lovely waterfalls, two of which (Tirol and Encantada) are only 10 – 20 minutes tuk tuk ride. The last one – Bayoz – is an hour and a half away but well worth it.  It is by far the biggest and most visually impressive.  Easy to swim under and a great massage for the neck and back.   

Everywhere we go we are driving along one river or another – wide and fairly fast flowing.

People Playing At Main Bayoz Waterfall

View of Bayoz From Anthony's Climb To The Top

Anthony chose to go exploring to the top of Bayoz.  Jean left him to it as a fair bit of scrambling was involved.   It was a steep incline and narrow path in many places but thankfully there was always a vine or well-placed rock (toe hold) for balance.  Coming down was interesting - you just have to accept the path surface will often move a little beneath your feet as you put your weight down.

Fruit and ice cream:

Fruit Stalls At Town Market

Pineapple is the primary crop of the area but they also have a lot of granadillas (like passionfruit), papaya, mango, tamarind, bananas, coconut, a few citrus options and then some local stuff like Lucuma, Quito Quito and Guanabana. We’ve enjoyed having a mixed fruit bowl for breakfast every morning.

Street Vendor Selling Juice in Plastic Take-away Bags

The locals also drink a huge amount of juice and enjoy a type of sorbet drink called “Cremolada” using the local fruits.  They are also very interested in the temperature of drinks and will rarely give a child a cold drink. They think it can make them sick.

Fo Enjoying Chiramoya and Maracuya Flavoured Icecream

There are also a heap of bicycle street vendors selling a Peruvian brand of ice-cream. Bright yellow equipment and uniforms means you can’t miss them and the short main street of San Ramon must have at least three ice cream shops.

People:

We really stick out here with our lighter hair and skin and the fact that we tower over everyone.  The Peruvians are generally vertically challenged and, in the main, petite people.

The main impression we’ve had is that everyone is so nice and accommodating.  We’ve had some great experiences such as:

1.    Our taxi driver in Lima (Martin) who drove us all around Lima translating for us as we sought to find the right bus to San Ramon

2.   Our B&B hosts in Lima (Lynik hotel) who made us a lovely Pisco Sour at 11 pm at night and then googled pictures of all the local foods to show us what we should try

3.   The staff at the Banco de la Nacion in San Ramon where we were instructed to pay for our Machu Picchu permits.  Not being a tourist area, they had no idea what to do and our Spanish was too limited to help, but they got through to their head office and finally sorted things out

4.   The tuk tuk driver who realised he dropped us at the wrong place and came straight back to correct his mistake

Apart from that, the people we’ve meet in the café or seen on the streets have been very friendly. I suspect most customers in a café in Sydney would get frustrated with staff that spoke as little English as we do Spanish but they all get involved and help us serve them.

Most folk you pass make eye contact and greet you with a Buenos Dias.

They do take a lot of people on their scooters.  We have seen families of 3 and even an additional canine passenger.   The cutest example we saw was a little girl dressed as snow white for Halloween.  Her mum put her on the back of the scooter and tied her jacket arms around the mum’s waist.

Noise:

Peru is surprisingly noisy!  Well at least our deduction is that, based on how noisy our sleepy little village is, then the rest of Peru must be equally so or worse.  From the church bells ringing several times a day to the fireworks going off for any reason, the ad hoc drinking parties (not restricted to weekends), early morning workers waking up and having wrestling matches while getting ready for work, crowd control by the cops and militia (there were some protests the other day).  Then there is the truck that comes around 4 times a week for garbage collection – it has a megaphone blaring music to let people know to put their garbage out.  Street vendors and political promotions on tuk tuks use the same approach to sell their wares and get their message out.

We head off from our mountain village tomorrow for Cusco & Machu Picchu and then South Africa via a quick stop in London. 

Until then adios amigos!