The tour continues and we follow our guide across the complex, where buildings more than four thousand years old are preserved. We enter the famous Temple of the Crossed Hands, where two sculptures of crossed hands were found, one with the right hand on top and the other with the left hand on top, which according to archaeologists is in concordance with the idea of duality prevailing amongst the peoples of the Andes. The image currently at the site is an almost exact replica of the only original kept at the Archaeological Museum, in Lima.

We leave the temple and go and visit a small botanic garden where one can admire some of the plants characteristic of the area. Our taxi driver has been chatting with some friends guarding the complex for a while now, patiently waiting for us to finish our questioning.

We went back to the car after shooting a good number of pictures. We are quite tired so we decide to eat something in the way and then get back to the house to rest for a while. It is already dark when we wake up and the sky is a glittering black mantle, with millions of stars that grow fainter when a huge moon appears from behind the clouds.

Tonight is party night for us, so we go downtown to a discotheque we have heard about. The place is totally packed though nonetheless we manage to move along and dance amid the tide of people moving to the rhythm of tropical music.

Drinks come and go and we meet the owner of the place who introduces us to more friends, and they all have and endless list of places we must visit. The DJ proposes a toast for the children of Huánuco who have come back to their land, for the tourists visiting us, for the night, for life, and for love. Any reason is a good excuse to keep on celebrating while one is partying. Our day ends pretty late and we know it is going to be hard to get up in the morning.

Our dreams do not last long, several knocks at the door wake us up for breakfast and we eventually get up with our eyes still shut. We enjoy a delicious breakfast with a coffee recently percolated and finally we are ready for a new day full of adventures.

Happiness' Home

We take a taxi that drives us to one of the old haciendas in the surroundings where they distil some liquor out of sugarcane. We can see big old houses on our way and the taxi driver tells us that some of them are from the colonial period, when this was a land of wealthy landowners.

We stop at one of them where a brewer currently operates, and an old man agrees to show us the old distilling area where we can see wooden barrels and stills so huge and so old that they belong in a museum.

The sugarcane plantations surrounding us sway caressed by the wind, dancing at its path with soft movements and creating a quite peculiar sound. The main house is a two-storey building made of carved wood, which denotes a certain antiquity though pretty well kept on the maintenance aspect. We go to the store and a kind young lady introduces us into the world of liquors.

We sit comfortably and begin with the unparalleled pleasure of sampling. Shot after shot happiness is seizing the place; there are liquors aromatised with herbs, with honey, and some others are good for curing respiratory affections. By the time we are finished our heads are spinning around, we pick some bottles to resume our party later though without being sure what we are picking.