Saturday, May 07, 2005
The Road to La Unión
The next morning after Silvia and the kids had taken a bus back to Lima, I embarked on my 'expedition' to the ruins of Wanukomarka, or the 'Old Huánuco', above the town of La Unión, on the way to Cordillera Huayhuash. The trip was supposed to take four-and-a-half hours but turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought.
The day was sunny and beautiful. I was seated in the front, sipping on a bottle of 'uvachado' - a local brandy - that had found it's way into my bag from a little stall selling jungle liquours outside the 'Owl Cave' in Tingo María. I think the place was named after another jungle drink, the notorious 'R.C.' or 'Rompecalzón' - the 'pantybreaker'.
Most of these drinks are based on herbal medicines and retain the curing factor but, I guess, the alcohol has been added to make the drinks more attractive to tourists and to the locals that still prefer using them instead of modern medicine. This stall had them all: '7 Roots', '21 Roots', 'Cat´s Claw' 'Sangre de Grado', 'Chuchuwasi', 'Para Para', 'L.P.M' (the last two being cures for impotence, first meaning "Stand up, stand up" and latter is an abbreviation of words that mean "get up dead weenie"), and many more that I can't remember. 'Uvachado' was the only one that was purely alcoholic drink, nothing more.
After two hours of driving, we came upon a group of people walking our way on the road. I saw one of them waiving his finger at us and knew immediately what was going on. Some half-a-kilometer ahead, a landslide had blocked the road completely. There was no bulldozers or roadworkers around so it was clear that the busses will not get through any time soon.
I took my bags, got off the bus and walked to the site of the accident. To mine and everyone's amusement, some people had cleared off some of the landslide and were now trying to pull a small 'Tico' over ('Daewoo Tico' is the car that came to replace the Volkswagen Beatle as the most common and cheapest taxi in the streets of South America.) I stopped for a moment to watch and to my surprise after a tough effort they finally succeeded. One thing was sure: any bigger than that Daewoo would certainly not make it. So I walked on, hoping there's someone on the other side with a transport, smart enough to give up early and turn back. I was lucky and didn't have to wait long.
Half-an-hour from that, I was comfortably tipsy with 'uvachado' and sitting on a bus on the way towards Tantamayo. After some two more hours I jumped off at crossroads and got the last available seat in a small combi, that rode me all the way to La Unión. It was only 2:20 pm and I had made it early enough to still go and visit the ruins of Wanukomarka!
The dirt road from Huánuco to La Unión was, at it's best, bumpy, and often in the rainy season at certain parts impassable. Today was to be one of those days.
