Tarapoto

The trip further inland from Chachapoyas required a bit of patience... First of all it required a collectivo (shared car) ride to Pedro Ruiz - about 1 and a half hours away over mainly dirt roads. Mind you it was nice valleys and mountain scenery if you can ignore the dust, and arent too squished to see out by the entire family squished in around you. Then a 5 hour wait for the first bus going in the right direction, spent mainly sitting overlooking the main street, watching the world go by literally while eating wierd but nice fruit (kind of like dragon fruit), and bread. And then a ¨5 hour¨bus ride that took 7... so I arrived in tropical tarapoto at about 10 pm, and was zoomed into town by a moto-taxi (tuk tuk).

Tarapoto turned out to be a pleasant if somewhat sleepy place on the surface (and especially in the heat of the day when most shops are all shut), so I took the chance to chill a bit, catch up on washing and adjust to the heat... definitely back to shorts and t-shirts and always sweating! Other than that my main impressions of the chaotic streets filled with moto-taxis, a nice quite central plaza, the total lack of other tourists, and friendly locals and good cheap fresh food.

The highway between Tarapoto and Yurmiaguas was being worked on, so it was shut completely during the day, forcing all buses and collectivos (how I went) to travel in the dark after 6:30pm. Ended up having a rally like ride (felt a bit ill!) up the mountains as our driver appeared hell bent on being first...followed by a torrential downpour, and being stuck next to a born again Christian!