New friends and discotecas

So last we left you we were in Chachapoyas, which is a lovely black and white city, almost a little Tudor-influenced. Chachapoyas is famous for Kuelap, a huge fortress and city set high in the mountains. It's inacessible as it is, involving a 2-3 hour drive into the Andes, but this has been compounded of late by the ridiculous roadworks going on outside Chachapoyas. Okay ridiculous for us because they only open the road from 4am-7am and then again from 4pm-7pm each day, and we happened to arrive a little late - not our fault for those who might immediately assume it was the infamous Meagan Stephenson tardiness. Probably not so ridiculous for the locals who are going to get a massively improved road out of it. But we had to sit for two hours at a roadblock while Carlos, our tour operator and local big man about town, negotiated with (bribed??) the chief engineer. A lovely bonus however, was that we got to know Jenny and Ant (hi!) who were on our tour and near the end of a magnificent trip (over a year on the road, which impressed us no end!) So we had a really great day touring around the ruins and then enjoying dinner and excellent conversation with new friends. They hoofed it off to the jungle after that and we very nearly joined them before deciding that we really wanted to see some more of the Andes in Peru before we went back to the coast. We had planned to go straight to Cajamarca after Chachapoyas but were redirected by the lack of buses to Leymebamba first. And it was there that we met the lovely Rosio, Roger and Carlos and had our first discoteca experience in a very long time. Rosio started chatting to us in the plaza almost straight after we arrived in Leymebamba and invited us to lunch with her and her friends. She's a tour guide and so was great to talk with about our travels thus far. After a yummo lunch and fantastic tropical torrential rain and lightening display (Chachapoyas and Leymebamba are part of the alto selva, the highest parts of the jungle), Rosio invited us out for her birthday celebrations that night - and she's a bit of a disco queen that girl. We had a brilliant time at the local discoteca which seemed to play a mixture of south american music and early 90s clubbing music...think Ace of Base and Snap. Great night though and the next day we went to Yerbabuena to a market day...bulls and horses everywhere and the most enormous amount of pooing. Even a wee boy dropped his pants for a toilet stop in the middle of the market! After sharing a bottle of chicha, a drink made from fermented cane sugar (yum) we said farewell to our new friends and headed back to Chachapoyas to get ready to catch our 4am (!!!) bus to Cajamarca. Oh! And i nearly forgot our visit to the museum...loads of extremely ancient mummies found in graves built into the hills around a beautiful lake in the mountains..very eerie and very interesting! But enough for now!!