QueenPuya

Well, we were all prepared to leave for Cajamarca after a brief stay in Trujillo, but the newspaper headlines told of massive landslides all along the highway to Cajamarca and major flooding at other places along the way. There are unseasonably major rainfalls happening nearly every day up there and the ground is saturated and slipping down. And these canyons are the exact places I should be going and thus we have decided not to go at all. We collected yesterday just around Trujillo, which was fine, and decided to call it quits. But ´´we¨´ is me and Mercedes. Where was Bryan? Well, we didn´t know for a long time. He left right after we got to Trujillo on a bus north, but the landslides had already happened and they were not selling bus tickets to that location. But he didn´t come back to the hotel. I had to squash my motherly instincts and not worry about him. Two days later we found him in the plaza with quite a tale to tell. He did head north, but not on the main highway...instead, a small, even sketchier road in a very sketchy local bus. They spent hours inching along the road, moving boulders and very giant tree that had fallen down in the dark of night, as they listened to the river raging in the canyon below. Exactly the sort of scenario I am doing everything possible to avoid, but exactly the sort of thing he loves. He became beloved by the bus people for all his hard work and sounds like had some fun wading about in the mud helping people out. He did find his plants and is heading north again to wait until they clear out the road to Cajamarca. And he´ll even collect for me! So, truly, I think we can say I did everything possible within sanity and safety to get those plants...and so there was nothing left to do but hit the beach!
And what a day it was...quite possibly one of the happiest beach days of my life. We took a little collectivo bus for 40 cents to Huanchaco, a few miles west on the coast. We passed fields of corn and giant adobe ruins of the pre Incan Chan Chan civilization, that we promise to visit tomorrow if we can pry our butts off the sand. We spent a lovely day starting the long process of tanning, eating a whole pineapple, several passion fruits and a whole lot of Ceviche and buying way too much cute jewelry. It was the loveliest little fishing village where people still use the skinny reed boats they´ve used for centuries to catch seafood. The sand turns the water a lovely coffee color and the sun turns my skin a lovely rosey color. We are certainly going back tomorrow before we take the night bus back to Lima. This is the kind of place where you could spend several months and not even know what happened. Heavenly. Back to reality, as it is, soon... time to sleep off this Pisco Sour. Peru rocks!