Well I am writing this sitting in the lounge of Caroline Lodging in Huaraz, Peru. Huaraz is the closest village to the Cordillera Blancas range in Peru – with many mountains closeby over 6000m.
We arrived this morning at 7am from Trujillo. When we boarded the bus last night, both Geoffrey and I struggled to contain our joy at the fact that the bus was much far flasher than anything either of us had experienced in Peru or Ecuador previously. Ecuadorian buses were incredibly cheap but were often crammed with locals and the seating lacked a ‘recline’ function. They also didn’t really have the option of night buses. The one night bus we did take to cross the Ecuadorian/Peruvian border was pretty hellish. We were in the front two seats and our legs were kind of jammed up against the front. Not ideal when one is attempting to sleep. So anyway, we embarked the flash bus to find soft blankets on our chairs and a serious recline option. There was even an air-hostess type of chica, let’s call her a bus hostess, who made an announcement when the bus began rolling on out of Trujillo. I think I might have actually squealed when the movie started and it had English subtitles! As anyone who has been to South America will understand, every single bus plays well-known American movies in extremely loud, badly dubbed, Espanol. And it is very rare for them to cater for the one or two gringos on the bus by selecting the Ingles subtitle function. It was a pretty crap movie (Sweet November with Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves) but I was just happy to have a distraction other than playing my ipod over and over again.
So anyway, I was happy as larry staring up at the screen and ignoring Geoffrey’s attempts at conversation and criticisms of the sappiness of the movie. We even got served a snack about half an hour into the journey – a little bun with tuna spread and a melting moment (or yoyo) shortbread thing. Yum! You gotta love free food. Anyway, both of us managed to get a pretty decent amount of sleep and so when we arrived in Huaraz this morning we weren’t feeling as bad as was possible. The only problem was that I woke up at about 5am extremely short of breath. As I have mentioned earlier in the blog, I have been having trouble at altitude. My GP prescribed me an inhaler last winter as I was experiencing similar symptoms in Melbourne. Apparently I was displaying the symptoms of adult asthma. I went to buy some more seretide today actually but Geoffrey talked me into waiting a day to see how I feel as the inhaler was about $40 (not cheap for Peru!). So anyway, woke up in the middle of the night panting, it is a really horrible feeling – feeling like you are not obtaining enough oxygen in each breathe you take. I fell back asleep but had dreams in which I wasn’t able to breathe and I met a man who told me I had to take it easy for a few days and acclimatise (probably quite sound advice even from a dream character!).
We managed to find a taxi easily enough to the hostel after disembarking the bus, he was a really friendly local asking us where we were from and telling us about Quichuan (the indigenous language of the Andes region – both in Ecuador and Peru). We arrived at the hostel to be greeted by Teo and Caroline (father and daughter) who showed us our room. It was pretty dark and dingey but for $12 a night for both of us including a buffet breakfast every morning we weren’t complaining. We fell straight asleep, slept through the alarm and woke up at 11am!
After a shower for me (Geoffrey couldn’t be bothered to my dismay – imagine not showing after a night bus! Eek) we set off to explore Huaraz. Our little expedition did not start out very promising as we realised we had forgotten the Lonely Planet which had all of the information about where we wanted to go. I must admit I did take it out on Geoffrey somewhat, poor thing. I felt a tad cranky after a long journey and rapid ascent to 3100m. We set out for Cial, a bus company, to buy our tickets to Lima for the 25th (we nearly didn’t make it here after our first choice of bus company was completely booked out). We had to check out of our room, jump into a cab from Huanchaco to Trujillo, run into the bus company, buy two of the last 4 or 5 tickets left and then taxi back to Huanchaco. So, in order to avoid that, we decided to spend today chilling out and acclimatising and sorting out administrative tasks like buying our bus ticket and planning the tours we were going to take for the next few days.
It turned out that Cial did not have an afternoon bus so we set out for Movil Tours, the super flash bus company that brought us to Huaraz. After a few teeny arguments regarding directions, we finally stumbled across Movil Tours after following the directions of an uncharacteristically friendly guard. Tickets purchased, we started to walk back to the hostel when it started to rain.
Up until this point, I had been wearing a singlet and long pants but as soon as the rain started it became very cold. We sought shelter under an awning and decided to use the internet while we waited out the shower. The weather here looks like it will be very inconsistent. The town is in somewhat of a valley next to a couple of glacial rivers. It is very pretty, you can see a lot of mountain peaks close by. The town itself is not very pretty however, following the general theme we have discovered so far in Peru regarding construction – houses here are either slum-like shacks or badly built structures with wires and construction materials poking out everywhere. It seems that they build one level at a time but half build the next level. I am sitting on a terrace at the moment and nearly every surrounding building has the beginnings of another level on its roof.
The people here are much like the indigenous people in the Andean regions of Ecuador. The only difference, funnily enough, being in the hats that they wear. They are essentially the same style as the Ecuadorian pork-pie or trilby hats except they have wider brims and higher tops. The women’s hats also have designs on the side whereas in Ecuador it was not uncommon to see a feather. Here, a common design seems to be a bow-tie ribbon that is layered over and over and kind of julienned.
During our breakfast this morning (not at the hostel as we slept through, at a place on the way to bus terminals – mine included what was described as bircher muesli and which was in actual fact fruit salad, yoghurt, chocolate sauce and corn puffs – yuck! That is the last time I am making the mistake of ordering bircher muesli in Peru...) we had a couple of old indigenous ladies come up to us begging for change. Geoffrey is a bit tougher than I am so we kind of sat there in awkward silence with a plate of steaming scrambled eggs in front of us while this poor old lady stood there pleading with us. I felt like a stupid gluttonous rich Westerner actually, it wasn’t very pleasant. Perhaps next time I will just give them a coin or two.
Sorry as usual I am veering off on tangents left, right and centre. So after sheltering in the internet cafe, we set out for Andino Cafe – a cafe I had found on the Lonely Planet’s website that promised a ‘groovy’ hang out spot with home-roasted coffee (something that is EXTREMELY rare in South America) a big book exchange and board games. When we arrived I was stoked, it was an awesome space to hang out in with a really nice third floor terrace overlooking the street. We grabbed Monopoly and ordered half a litre of French-pressed cafe (para Geoffrey) and half a litre of Chai (para me) and a slice of banana bread each. It sounds stupid but you really do appreciate the ‘gringo’ places when you do stumble across them. It is nice to know what you’re getting and to order something that is similar to what you could get at home. So the afternoon passed very pleasantly even if Geoffrey did ‘whoop’ my ass in Monopoly. Which I was a bit annoyed about, after all Monopoly is one of my favourites! He stealthily pursued all of the railroads which meant I had to pay him $200 a pop everytime i landed on one (which happened frequently).
On our way back to the hostel we stopped at another cafe so I could look at their book exchange selection (I am obsessed – I check every book exchange – not being able to buy novels in English here is pretty rough) and we saw a flyer for a cinema that was playing The Hurt Locker that night. Apparently it won 6 Oscars including best film? Shows how long I’ve been out of the loop...
So, at 8pm we headed to the cinema. They bought out popcorn in paper cones (included in the 5 sole price – about $1.50) and we bought (Geoffrey bought) a few beers and we settled in to watch the movie. It wasn’t exactly light-hearted but it was a perfect way to finish an awesome first day in Huaraz. Day two – the Chavin ruins (3000 year old ruins 3.5 hours from Huaraz). More on that later!
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