The nicest little town in Peru (Leymebamba, day 16)

We arrived in Leymebamba around 8:30 pm on Sunday. Leymebamba is a tiny town of approximately 5,000.



There is very little tourist infrastructure in Leymebamba, but we found a decent room at La Casona de Leymebamba, one of the nicer hotels in the town. The hotel has large rooms, cool concrete floors, and a very open modern feel. The owners are very pleasant, as was just about everyone in this sleepy town.


Because we arrived so late in the day (and it was Sunday) we had some trouble finding a place to get dinner. After skipping lunch on the 9-hour bus ride (see previous post) we were pretty hungry. We decided to ask the woman at the general store on the Plaza de Armas, and she generously suggested a few places. We ended up at Restaurant La Tushpa, where they invited us into the kitchen to choose which meals we'd like out of the things they had left. The carne guisada (beef stew) was surprisingly tasty.

On Monday we took it easy, and had a snack of cornbreads from the local bakery. In the afternoon, we walked up to the Museo Leymebamba, which has an excellent collection of artifacts and over 200(!) mummies recovered from the nearby ruins at the Laguna de los Condores. The walk up to the museum takes about 30 minutes via the (steep) footpath, and slightly longer via the road. A local boy walked us up there (did I mention how nice everyone in this town is?) and was surprised at how out of breath we gringos were climbing the hill.

On the path to the museum:

We had a nice dinner of lomo saltado and pollo milanesa at a local restaurant (Celis) that was also very popular with the surprisingly large number of other gringos in the town. Although there are not a lot of tour companies in town, the archaeological sites in the area are closer to Leymebamba than the larger city of Chachapoyas.

That night, we arranged an early morning car to the Chachapoyan fortress of Kuelap. Most transportation out of town occurs in the early morning (combis to Chachapoyas leave at 3, 4, and 5 am) and is pre-arranged the night before in the Plaza de Armas. Finding public transportation to Chacha or the town of Tingo is not too hard, but getting to Kuelap from Leymebamba was a daunting task, and we decided that the extra money for a taxi was worth it.