Thats what we recognized first. To be honest: Our back discovered this first. The distances between the different sites are much longer than in the countries we have visited before. At least you need more time for travelling. And there are less buses in Peru. Most of the journeys are made by colectivo.
Normally colectivos are normal cars or microbuses, which are loaded with as many peoples as they can get in. And they can get in a lot! They leave when they are full. But if you think, that colectivos are faster or more comfortable than the normal buses you are wrong. Our back has prooven us the opposite.

Furthermore colectivos are not the newest cars - as good old german boy it is hard to learn, that you only need a motor to drive. All the other things are nice to have. Especially good tires are not existant in Peru.
Additionally in most peruvian cities there are hunderts of 'mototaxis', three-wheeled motorrikschas or tuk tuks, which first of all are incredibly noisy. Furthermore every traffic light attracts the drivers to produce a formula 1 start - and there are a lot of lights ...
And if you are sitting in a 'mototaxi' and you are in a highspeed race on the wrong side of the road ... it's not a dream, it's not a movie ... that's just the way it is!
After an endless number of potholes and kilometers we finally reached Chachapoyas. The next day we went on a 3.5 hour trip each way to the ruins of Kuélap. Kuélap is an off-the-track fortress of a preincan period. I was allowed to sit besides the driver, Marion and an american couple were sitting in the back. Our guide was sitting behind them in the trunk. The ruins were worth ever minute we had to sit in the colectivo, but after that trip we had to take a day off.
The next day we went on a two day trip to Yurimaguas, the starting point of our planned ship cruise. We spent the two days mainly in colectivos. Even with the back aching 6 to 8 hours a finally made.
As a consequence, the switch onto the ferry in Yurimaguas was really relaxing. The plan was to go on the rivers Huallaga, Marañon and Amazon to Iquítos. The city is with 400.000 inhabitants the biggest city in the world, which can only be reached by boat or plane. Thats why they loaded so many goods onto the ferry and we had the opportunity to watch these procedures for hours:

Our cabin (2x2x2m) was worth its price. We were able to lock our belongings and we had some space for ourselves, at least in the nights. A bit cheaper and you are in the hammock-class. There are big rooms on the ship, were you have space for at least 150 hammocks. You have to bring your own hammock and can attach it just were you want. Your belongings are placed below the hammocks. Every room has at least 2 TVs and normally the people also bring there own radios. You can imagine whats going on there!
So it was really worth spending 30 Euros per person for 36 hours on the ferry, 2 nights and three meals.
Some hours of smalltalk with 6 elderly women were also included in the price. At least for Marion, since I slept very well in our cabin ;-)
Iquítos is only hot and incredibly noisy. So we did only stay one night and went on to Lima by plane. According to our plannings, we wanted to go to Chiclayo, but since there were no direct flights we went to Lima and changed our plan.