Ventanillas de Otuzco (Windows of Otuzco). This is one of the many ancient necropolis that are scattered throughout this area. These holes carved into the volcanic stone were used to house the remains of hundreds of the dead in Ancient Cajamarca. The trip out here was definitely worth it and they reminded me of Cappadocia in Turkey but today was one of those days where I wish there was a reset button as nothing seemed to go according to plan.
Last night there was a big street fiesta going on which was the start of the month long Carnaval de Cajamarca, the biggest Fiesta of the year in the area. The Fiesta was taking place just outside our Hotel in the plaza, but by the time I had got my shit together to go down and check it out reception was closed and we were locked INSIDE the hotel! So instead of checking out the fiesta we had to listen to it going on outside until about 4am and hope that there wasn’t a fire in the hotel in the meantime.
I was determined to get an early start to the day, but because of the Fiesta we didn’t make it to a cafe for breakfast until after 10am. Over an hour at the Cafe went by and we were still waiting on some food, by the time it came and we finished it it was close to 11.30. Then over to the Info centre to figure out how to get to the two ruins we wanted to see, but we had another 30 minute wait here. We got the info, found our collectivo (transport van that is piled to the roof with people) and finally arrived at the ruins about 4 hours later than I had intended to (and I also fell into an old womans lap in the collectivo).
As I said the ruins were great, but these ruins are apparently the most touristy, smallest and least well preserved out of the others around the area. The intention had been to visit this one first Ventanillas to for the information, and then explore some more about an hour away which require hiking and climbing to reach. The info dude had told us that we could catch a collectivo outside these ruins which would take us to the next ones, but after waiting a frustrating hour+ for our ghost collectivo I finally asked someone and discovered that the info dude was mistaken and we had to head back into town. So by this time it was too late to make it out to the second, better ruins.
Anyway, at this point a reset button would have been nice as we had missed out on a huge fiesta, wasted most of a day piss farting around, hadn’t made it to the better ruins and were exhausted from lack of sleep. Oh well, better luck tomorrow hopefully!
