People really are the same wherever you go

Our journey to Cajamarca started at 4am, and neither of us are particularly good at that hour of the morning (except when I´ve been out all night and I´m still dancing of course), so it is little wonder that I left my passport and credit card in the hostal room and had to run back, wake up the lovely man who ran the joint and retrieve the aforementioned necessities from the bedroom. A little spot of early morning panic. Lovely. We had tried for a few days to suss out a night bus to Cajamarca with no success, but when the sun came up at 6am or so and we got to spend several hours driving through the Andes, we realised why a night bus would have been a terrrible shame. I can´t really describe the views, they´re absolutely incredible and the immensity of the ranges was breath-taking - loads of photos were taken and I have just realised how to upload images! (Unfortunately I don´t have the pics to hand right now but I swear there will be lovely pictures to accompany our scintillating text before this trip is done).

We got to Cajamarca just as a torrential rainy season downpour began, and we were too tired to think about hostels so we ducked into the nearest nice looking cafe for a spot of coffee and salad to hole up while the rain poured down. And it was there that we received yet another amazing invitation from the locals. At the cashier we started chatting with a man called Carlos and his sister Rita, both in their 70s, and before we knew it, Carlos had thrust his address into our hands and insisted that we come for breakfast at his house the next morning. We were both very tired and quite dazed so we weren´t entirely sure how this transaction had eventuated or what to make of it. The next morning we trooped off to Carlos and Rita´s house after leaving the address with our hostal and strict instructions to call the police if we weren´t back by lunchtime (just in case!). Of course when we arrived at their house we realised how totally genuine and lovely they were. Carlos had made some amazing tea from fresh herbs and set the table with a lovely spread of breads and tiny, delicious avocados (paltitas). After breakfast we had a tour of the house and a long discussion about life and politics (directed mainly by Sue since my Spanish is restricted to ´how many brothers and sisters do you have´and ´could you pass the salt?´. Turns out Carlos and Rita are just a bit lonely (and of course our company is totally amazing) so it took a couple of hours to extricate ourselves and we agreed to come back for coffee later that evening. We also left with a gift of a large number of avocados and lemons, several of which squished themselves into unimaginable corners of our food bag. When we popped back later for coffee, we gave Carlos and Rita a copy of the photo we´d taken together earlier in the day and some yummy cakes to say thank you. We had a lovely time, but to avoid yet another invitation to breakfast, lunch and dinner, we told our new friends that we were leaving on a bus for Trujillo that night, which was nearly true but not quite. The next day we popped off to the thermal baths, Baños del Inca, for a bit of a soak and had just stepped back out of the baths when we heard a voice calling us ¨Maria! Maria!¨(That´s me by the way) and saw Carlos waving at us from the other side of the baths! By this stage we had gotten a little bit over the whole thing so we said a quick hello and then really did dash off to the bus station to hit the road for Trujillo. Most of the time you can rock up to the bus stations and there are no shortage of buses, but this time we had misjudged the departure times and spent an hour trudging around different companies in the stinking heat, before realising that there was no way we were leaving for Trujillo until the evening. As often happens, what looks like a big pain in the bum turns out to lead to a lovely experience, and in this case, we spent a delicious afternoon in a beautiful little plaza, lying under a tree eating icecreams and discovering the delights of a local bakery, which also sold the best olives we had eaten since forever. So we headed off to Trujillo new and refreshed women!