It's about an 8 hour drive from Lima in bus, not because the area is actually 8 hours away, but because you have to climb mountains for about five of those hours. Also, there is only one road that leads out from Lima in this direction, and although it is supposedly wide enough for one vehicle to go in one direction and another vehicle in another, it sure doesn't feel like that. With only one road, all sorts of vehicles - busses, cars, motor-taxis, trucks, semis - use the same road. And with only one lane in each direction, the only way to go faster is to pass the cars in your lane by driving in the other, opposite direction lane until you pass them, and then transfer back to your original lane. Now this might seem fairly normal, but in a two-story full size bus, on a road originally created for human and animal traffic, with Peruvian drivers....phew.I was totally egging on our driver. From my perch in the front of the second story, I was telling the driver to take all of the dangerous and probably ill-advised passes, sliding in between open-sided semi trucks filled with fruit, dodging other full-size busses, pushing the bus so that the wheels hadn't yet fallen off the cliff, but just barely. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a NASCAR driver. I've outgrown that ambition (although I could rock the suit better than Danica Patrick), but I still dig the danger and speed aspects.
We arrived in La Merced at five in the morning after a hasty and startling wake-up call that we had one minute to be off the bus before it started driving farther into the jungle. Woah! Here we were, seven foreign females, in some small town in the middle of Perú, before dawn. We grabbed a taxi and headed up to our hotel in San Ramón, about 20 minutes away. The hotel was absolutely amazing - a little jungle paradise with a pool. Our rooms are pictured below in the view from the pathway.
The district of Chanchamayo is located at the beginning of what is called the Selva Central. Basically, it is the last city area before you start getting deep into the Amazon. Because of this, we got to experience a great mix of rural Perú and the jungle.
We spent a lot of time walking through the town of San Ramón. In addition to 15 city blocks, the town also has a large central plaza, which is the site of any town gatherings. Some folks that we met on the first day told us that there was a carnival going on in the plaza that night. What luck! Just like that, we got to go to a carnival in small town Perú. There was traditional music, dancing and food, as well as a game area for a form of air hockey, and an old ferris wheel. My friend Kendra and I braved the rusty base of the ferris wheel for the chance to say we rode a carnival ride in the jungle of Perú.
Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of the carnival, but pictures of San Ramón and La Merced are below.
We took two tours while in San Ramón, one of tourist spots in the district, and one for trekking and hiking. While the first tour was a wonderful opportunity to see more of the district (we probably covered 150km of the region), the second tour was much more satisfying. We were five girls plus a guide on a path through jungle mountains. Amazing.
The area is known for its waterfalls, or cataratas as they are known in the region (cascadas in other areas). Two rivers run from the top of the mountains all the way down to ground level, many districts away. As such, the area is filled with beautiful waterfalls, many of which we climbed through and swam in. Two waterfalls are pictured below.
As part of the trek we climbed through the river, up, around and through waterfalls.
In addition to climbing and hiking, we took a few moment to admire the vistas we encountered. Wow.
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