San Ramón is a town at the entrance into jungle.  Leaflets for sightseeing seemed more in here than in Tarma, though I hadn’t sightseen even Tarma yet.   

San Ramón is a smaller town than Tarma.  But still you can see lots of signs of “INTERNET”, which is amazing.  I used the internet for about 15 minutes and paid less than half s/1.  S/1 is about 16.7 pence.  So I paid less than 8 pence for 15 minutes internet connection.

We left our luggage in a hotel room and went out.  Surprisingly we saw Manolo there.  He gave a lecture at a nearby university and was going back to Lima by the long-distance night bus on the night.  We went to a Chinese restaurant together and enjoyed chatting there.  It cost around £10.00 for 4 of us.

After this, we drove back the same way to the fork into A20A, where we took a left turn to San Ramón.  This road is a major one however, we occasionally found a big stone on the road.  We crossed a brand-new bridge.  We heard that the original bridge was washed away by the heavy downpour in a rainy season.

The direct distance from Tarma to San Ramón is about 10 kilometres.  Tarma is about 3070m (10072f) in elevation and San Ramón is about 800m (2625f).  It means we drove down more than 2000m (6562f).  The green of the trees became more and more greener and  the atmosphere became more and more like jungle.  We saw more and more roadside shops which sold fruits.

We went further up and there we found (Saul found!) Masdevallia uniflora!  It was the flower which I wanted to see most.  I had been told that there were flowers in the nursery in Palca but they were not sure if I could see the flowers in their natural habitats, so I was extremely pleased. 

It was windy there, so the flowers were continuously moving and I could not take a nice photograph, which is a pity.  (At the centre of this photograph was the flower.  Can you see it?)

Masdevallia uniflora is the species that Spanish botanists, Ruiz and Pavón found here in Huasahuasi for the first time 200 years ago.  This fact made me more pleased and thrilled.

The centre of Huasahuasi has a small plaza and there is a modern bank there.  We went into one of the shops there and bought some fruits, drinks and so forth for lunch.  No shops has electric light so dark inside.

It was raining.  We drove further up after this plaza.  The road is very dusty when it dries, and it gets very muddy and slippery when it wets.

Saul stopped the car.  We got out of the car and climbed a little bit of this slope.  We saw several different species of Masdevallias.  Some with flower buds but no flower there.

The mountain road to the village of Huasahuasi was narrow and left-hand side was steep slope and the other side was vertical cliff.   There were a few stones of the size of a fist occasionally on the road.  What would happen if a stone falls in front of us?  There were small chapels where the road curves.  These are where the accidents happened.  Exactly under one of these areas, where I was scared to pass all the time was another narrow road (I saw this when we were driving back from San Ramón) covered with earth and sand, so it was closed to traffic.

This photograph is the valley, right hand side of the road.  The road you can see is the one to San Ramón.  The road to Huasahuasi is much narrower.

Before going to Peru, I checked if the country was safe to visit through the internet.  It said that the Government of Peru had declared a state of emergency in several district/provinces and one of them was Junín, where Tarma, Palca and San Ramón are located.  The Japanese Embassy recommended avoiding these locations.  Moreover, Huasahuasi is quite remote area in the Andes.  There might be a risk to encounter terrorist group????

While net-surfing, I found this article.

About 6 pm on Tuesday, 21 May 1991, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorist group (60 terrorists) entered the village of Huasahuasi and killed 5 people including Sister Irene McCormack, an Australian nun.

I have had a heavy headache since morning again.  To tell the truth, I would like to have a rest in bed all day long.  However, as this trip is partially funded by the RHS, I have to work.  At breakfast, I declared that we should move down to San Ramón  (800m, 2625f) after today’s trip to Huasahuasi (2400m, 7874f), instead of coming back here. 

We left Tarma for Huasahuasi.  It was as if I was tugged by Saul, who was very energetic.             

We drove a little further away from Palca towards northeast on the road A20A, and then took a left turn to Huasahuasi village here.