Photo Blog: Lima to Oxapampa

Night buses are the most common way to travel in Peru, and it makes a lot of sense because they come with the option of big comfortable seats that recline 180 degrees into a bed, so you can just sleep during the night and wake up at your destination. And they really are super comfortable and have their own tv screen and headphones so you can watch movies or listen to music of your choice. While I often take the night bus, I prefer the day bus because of the scenery.

Peru is blessed with amazingly beautiful landscapes throughout the country, and on the journey between Oxapampa and Lima, you get the pleasure of  seeing each of the three types of regions that make up Peru: Selva (jungle), Sierra (Highlands), and Costa (Coastal desert).

The journey takes you from the coastal desert of Lima, to the highlands, to to the jungle, and then to up to the high jungle, or eyebrow of the jungle (ceja de la selva) which is between jungle and highlands.

While photos do not do it justice, I would like to share a few to give you a glimpse. Starting in Lima, which is coastal desert, you make your way to barren desert hills that get taller and taller until they turn into mountains of the highlands.

You enjoy the beauty of the highlands for hours, for the majority of the trip but you never get bored (or at least, I never get bored) because no mountain is the same.

You have the grey desert mountains, the beautiful highland lakes, the black, snow-capped mountains and the turquoise lakes beneath them, the screaming red mountains, the mountains with patches of green and brown highland grasses, mountains reforested with eucalyptus or pine, brown and orange mountains (being carved up by mining operations).

Maybe I am biased because I just love mountains, but I never get bored of the scenery. It always leaves me breathless (and not just because of the altitude, which reaches 4,818m or 15,807 ft) and awestruck by its beauty.

Then, as you start to lose elevation, the mountains turn green as you begin to enter the jungle.

The vegetation takes over and the vibrant and wild greenness of the jungle refreshes you with a new vista.

The streams, rivers, and waterfalls are something out of a travel magazine (sorry I don’t have great pictures of these, but they exist!).

And as you gain elevation again, going from low jungle to high jungle, climbing those green mountains, looking down on the verdant valley, and passing right through the middle of that mountainous jungle, you feel like you are Indiana Jones on the way to a hidden city in the middle of the jungle.

Obviously, the reverse journey is just as amazing, going down from the high jungle, winding through the verdant mountains, getting closer and closer to the river below in the valley between the mountains. And then rising again and entering the sierra (the highlands) in all its grandeur…until it begins to turn into smaller and smaller, greyer and greyer mountains…that eventually get more and more sparse as you enter the desert coast of Lima.

So, if you can’t come visit me in Oxapampa (like Julia, Toni, and Ilka have done!) here’s a glimpse of the beautiful journey.