Peru July 22

We took the 5:00 am bus to Cabanaconde. It was very bumpy and very packed (ppl filling the aisles standing). We arrived around 11:30 and went to see Pablo (his real name), who Pablo (Edwin) told us to see. He pointed us in the right direction and also advised we get a mule at Choco. We began by hiking down passed gorgeous terraces and mountains. We passed a couple locals, one being a cute young lady with a bull. We saw here before we saw the bull and she told us to watch out for it because it’s dangerous. So Vaughn freaked out like a little girl and ran off the path while the lady went and got her bull out of the way for us. So courteous. And of course, since I didn’t understand a word the lady said, I freaked out because Vaughn did. And that’s the ONLY reason why!! We kept hiking and ended up running into more bulls which we freaked out about too. This time the bulls had no owners nearby. An old man walked by, right passed the bulls, while we stood frozen in shear terror. We decided to try walking past them, but ended up having the bulls run in our direction. This caused Vaughn to shutter in fear and hop a stone wall, with his heavy pack on, into someone’s terrace. And of course, since I didn’t want Vaughn to feel as if he were in this all by himself, I had to hop the wall as well, and act like I was scared (which of course I wasn’t). We ended up climbing up terraces behind the stone walls to get around the bulls. We then asked some locals where the path was we were on our way again, 30 minutes after the beginning of the whole bull encounter. We ended up following a skinny, rocky road all the way down to the Rio Colca river, passing breathtaking views, interesting grass patterns, a stray mule and a broken down, torn apart truck from at least a couple years ago. Our destination was a bridge on the river. After about 4 ½ hours we began to realize why there is an “ex” in front of the high school athletes. Our feet and muscles started hurting. I got 2 blisters, one which popped before we even got there, and the other just hurt like shit. We finally turned a corner and saw the ridge. It was the beautiful thing I have ever seen (ugly bridge but it meant we could get off our feet). When we reached the bridge, some guy who is the head of a couple ppl working on the bridge, came and said we can camp on the bridge or in a cave on the side of the mountain over the river, if we wanted. We are men, so we chose the cave. So we set up camp in our 6’ by 8’ cave on the side of a cliff over a river. This guy who told us we could camp there came out like 6 times and would whistle at us from the bridge to come talk to him. It was a very creepy situation and Vaughn and I were sure we were gonna get robbed or killed in our sleep. We had spaghetti and sauce for dinner, which was quite good, and then went to sleep, not knowing if we were gonna wake up ever again.