Los Llanos is what the locals call the high plateau that the road crosses before dropping into the Chirinos valley — an open, rolling expanse of grassland at over 2,000 metres where the air is cool and the horizons are wide. One writer, struck by the green hills and damp cloud cover, described it as Little Ireland, and on the right day that's not entirely wrong. It is a very different Peru from the dusty coastal desert or the humid jungle farther east.
There are few houses on the plateau, which gives it a quality of genuine remoteness that is hard to manufacture. If you want to stop here — and it's worth stopping — horse hire is theoretically possible from the scattered farms, though you'll need to knock on doors and ask. The plateau is good walking country in its own right, and the point where the road begins its long descent into the cloud forest is marked by a sudden and dramatic shift in vegetation that's worth watching for.