The Road To Orcopampa

On the Thursday, my boss informed me that we would be travelling to a town about four hours away to see about seeing up a project. I was told to have my bag packed early as we would be leaving at 3pm.

At 7:30 there was an impatient beeping outside of the house as Jose rolled up in a pick-up truck driven by one of the guys from the village and his wife in the passenger seat. This meant that me, Jose, and Jose’s son, Davis were forced to pile into the back seat. Both of the chairs in the front were pushed back so there was next to no leg room. Davis had kindly let me sit in the middle and even before we set off I knew this was going to be a rough ride.

Initially we followed the main highway which was pretty packed with slow moving busses and HGVs that seemed to struggle up any incline. Fortunately after about two hours we turned off the main road. Unfortunately this was onto a single lane dirt track which ran through the Andes and was no less full of HGVs than the road we had just left.

It wasn’t long before I realised that Jose’s prediction of the journey had probably been taken from somewhere beyond the top of his head. I often struggle to sleep in transport, even airplanes, and so on a bumpy dirt track I wasn’t going to be in for much luck. Davis and Jose seemed to have little trouble. For much of the journey Jose’s head lolled forward and kept resting on my shoulder. This didn’t make me feel any more comfortable so I made sure that every time we went over a bump in the road I jolted my shoulder forward in order to discourage him.

At about 2am (six and a half hours into our four hour journey) The drive pulled over to the side of the road to take a nap. Pushing his chair back to feel recline, and meaning I had to squeeze my knees between the two front seat, he caught some shut eye for thirty minutes or so.

We arrived in Orcopampa at about 5:30, an hour or so after dawn. We were taken to a hostel where finally there was a bad to collapse into.