Peru

Re-read part of the previous entry and was appauled with my writing style (especially the bits that didn´t really make much sense) but alas, that is the result of doing a science and commerce degree.

The next place I visited after Casma was Huaraz (about 8 hours north of the capital by bus)

Had a couple of spanish lessons and went on a 3 hours walk to a small ruin called Wilcawain followed by a dip in yet another set of hot baths.

The town of huaraz itself is a dump but the stuff around it was stunning.

Stayed at a hostel with a relatively friendly but stupid family who kind of got to me after a while.

The hostel was packed and it was the first hostely environment i had experienced in the north of peru which was pleasant. This is where i met finualla (still can't pronounce this name so I just call her fin) who unlunck yong im doesn't care that much that i can't pronounce her name. She is from Northern Ireland and we have now been together for 10 days or so (and married for 7 if you ask a hostel owner in Caraz).

I knew that she was going to be a solid partner for trekking when the first morning we did the long walk up from the hostel to the centre of Huaraz and she paced it out like it was the start of a race walk.

After starting the day thinking she was going back Lima that night she finished the day planning a trek with me and changing her bus ticket to Lima.

We decided to go for 5 days on the santa cruz trek and hopped in one very cramped collectivo to Caraz to stay the night. The hostel owners in Huaraz made jokes about the fact that we were going off together without a guide or any donkeys. First it was our honey moon and second we didn't need a donkey as Fin was going to do all the labouring. I ran with the first one and told the woman in the hostel in Caraz that we were on our honey moon which had Fin hurrying to change the finger her one ring was on and also receiving a spontaneous hug from the random owner.

After a night in a shared double bed we were ready to share a tent together for 5 days. Two egg and two avocado sanwiches were all we could find in the way of warm food before the start of our trek and although we would have liked more, (considering we didn't take a gas cooker) it sufficed.

For 5 days we hiked around snowed covered mountains, lush green valleys and bluey green lakes (some over as high as 4700 metres). We did two mountain passes one at about 4700 metres and the other a spontaneous one at about 5000 metres.

Some of the highlights were lake arhuyecocha near the alpamayo base camp, the punta union cross and Laguna 69 (still not sure if the peruvians names it like that on purpose or whether they aren't aware of the significance), walking past tour group after tour group and telling them that yes we were doing it alone and yes we were carrying our packs ourselves...(oh and also telling them that they were doing the trek the harder way) and eating bread and crackers with peanut butter and chocolate consdensed milk for 5 days.

Some of the low lights were the tiny little bit of rain we got packing up out tent on the 3rd morning, deciding to take a short cut on our last afternoon to realise that the dry river bed led to a dry cliff drop that meant we had to return the 45 minutes back to the real trail, camping at 4500 metres (just too cold to be comfortable), walking 9.5 hard hours on the last day thinking it was going to be 6 (we tacked and extra little bit onto our trek and it was much harder than we thought it was going to be) and eating bread and crackers with peanut butter and chocolate consdensed milk for 5 days.

The scenery was genuinely spectacular however there were times that we were so tired that we forgot to look. Fin was amusing and also made corny jokes that lightened my mood...ie eye spy with my little eye something beginning with n d (no donkey to carry our stuff etc).

She is great craic and so we had a lot to talk about most of the time....although there were a couple of afternoons when we didn't have anything to say to each other for about 3 hours and then as soon as we would lie down to go to sleep she couldn't shut up.

All part of the charm really. She was a trouper with the climbing, really very impressive and had no problems at all (carried the tent for almost the whole time). All in all it was 5 days of mountain climbing bliss (except for the knee aching 900 metres of descent on the last afternoon).

Ended with us getting to a place where I seriously doubted the existence of a timely lift for us back to civilisation because of how late we were. But luckily a private car of Italian expats came round the corner to where we were looked at us and continued to drive around the corner at which point they were blocked by a massive truck and had to reverse right next to a pouting Fin using her very broken spanish to ask them if they were going to Yungay. In the end they dropped us to within 15 minutes of the major town and the pain of the "detour" was forgotten.

Some fantastic cherry wangs were taken and Fin was genuinely great hiking company. The trail was quite well populated but we were going in the other directions to all the tour groups so we just picked other places to camp and only saw one other independent group with us at the time.

I couldn't decide what to do on the last day (the regular trek only took 3 and a bit days so we caught a bus to another area to do a day trek) and so got abused by Fin for changing my mind 50 times (slightly less politely than the other irish woman who abused me) but in the end everything worked out well and we are still together so she can't hate me too much.

LOVED the santa cruz trek

The following day to make sure we did something worthwhile we went on a tour to Chavin de Huantar and so with aching muscles and a bruised hip (i fell over in the shower) we trotted through a labarynth of underground tunnels which were used by the shamans of this culture. Bascially they used to use mirrors to shine lights through these tunnels and then gave the participants hallucinogens and proceeded to convert them/preech to them (i can't imagine it was too difficult to freak the fear of some god into them quite quickly).

That was great (loved chavin de huantar and the museum although should have stayed there a night cause 6 hours on a bus the day after a long walk was painful).

To make it even more painful we got a night bus to lima that night which had a group of noisy school teenagers on it who didn't want to sleep.

Hated Huaraz
Loved the mountains
Love Fin
Hated Hostel Carolina

Ok so

I arrived in chachapoyas to the difficult task of selecting a guide.

Everyone knows someone who knows the area really well and was there just last week.

I was doing something which not a lot of tourists do, hiking around the various jungle ruins of the Chachapoyan culture rather than just visiting the main monument Kuelap.

Chachapoyas is about 12 hours inland from the coast of peru and when I first asked the information people in chiclayo which bus company was best to get there the woman told me that there had been a landslide and that they could take you to within 4 hours walk of chachapoyas but you would have to hire a donkey and walk the rest of the way.

After a bit of consideration I thought yeah I can do that why not.

When I returned to the independent information centre again the next day the woman told me this wasn´t the case and that the road opened for 2x2 hour periods and that the bus timed it so the wait was minimal.

Movil tours is the nicest bus company i have ever been on. I don't think locals really fly here and so there are some really nice bus companies, heaps of room and they gave you food and coffee (for a 12 hour bus ride).

Cha cha (as the locals call it) was a little bigger than I expected but I had no plans for a hostal and after wandering aimlessly around the plaza trying to decide followed a random person to his hostal and decided there was a good as any. they offered me the guide that works with their hotel. And after giving me the spiel and the price he seemed pretty reasonable. Compared him to the other tour agencies and decided to go with him (mainly cause he offered me a free day around chachapoyas hence I could test him out).

After my free day around the area I fired him. He was a recovering alcoholic christian who because he had church couldn´t leave until 12:30 and had to return by 7 30 pm which I thought would be fine....expect we needed more time than that for the walk. Especially when he got lost. We walked for an hour in the dark and still had to catch a taxi back to the town. I got quite pscyhed up about firing him because the wage he was going to make was quite a lot for the week compared to normal for him, we had already bought food to share for the week and I thought he would try and kick up a stink....I was really ready to have a good argument with him and think I was kind of excited about the idea of firing my first person...unfortunately he didn´t kick up a stink he sought of said that is fine I asked him if he understood me and he said yeah its fine.

In his defence he did find the ruin that we went to see which was about 1000 years old and had a cool vibe to the location which a massive frieze of an eye that was supposed to the symbolic of a lookout (he may have been making this up the other guide seemed to think differently).

For the fact that he didn´t kick up and stink (oh and the fact he was a bad guide who really didn´t know the area) HATED HIM.

Went to a different company and hired their guide for something similar that would start one day later.

Armado hardly looked like a hiking guide (he was a big guy). He knew heaps about the chachapoyan culture which was cool but really didn´t know the trails and we ended up hiring another guide on the 2nd and 3rd days and couldn´t complete the walking that we were supposed to on the 3rd day.

But he was great on the first day. After about an hour of walking we went off the trail and into the jungle to look at the ruins of houses at pilcapampa. This was amazing. It was effectively bush bashing behind a machete weilding local for about 2 hours. Down and around quite large ruins of houses and also fotresses that he said were from about 250 years after christ (this may have been an exaggeration).

We had dinner, breakfast got a room each for 20 soles (about 7 dollars) which was great and headed off (this time with my mochilla on a horse= for a gruelling day.

after 6 hours we reached the town near the next ruins hire another local guide and after 90 minutes of uphill through a muddy track we reached the ruins of paxamarca. These were a mix of rectangular and circular buildings which was a mix of chachapoyan and incan influence (the incas conquered the cha chas about 30 years before the spanish arrived).

We did some more bush bashing around funky houses hypothesising about which were temples. Armado took more photos and also took video....this is never a good sign for a guide.

He really didn´t know anything about this site and the reason why was cause he´d only been there one time before. After another hour of decent (about 9 hours walking around in total) I had a cold outdoor shower (which was basically just off the main road of the town behind a brick wall)...that was fun.

The next day had another early start and this time the promise of coca chewing (a leaf that the locals chew). Basically in these leaves there is a minute amount of cocaine and they then put calcium in their mouths to speed up the release of the cocaine. The idea is that you aren´t supposed to be thirsty or tired while you do the absurdly difficult and long walks between towns....lets just say I was both tired and thirsty after 7 and a half hours of uphill walking and when I was told we had another 5 to go I jumped at the suggestion of hiring a car.

Found the cutest puppy and a comfy place for the night. Hired a car for the whole next day when we visited Kuelap and a museum at Leymebamba.

Armado was very knowledgable about Kuelap (yeah so what all of the guides are it is the major attraction in the area). I later found out he had probably visited the fotress over 1800 times. Some people say that kuelap is better than macchu picchu cause there are less tourists there (stay tuned for macchu picchu vs kuelap). We were alone for the whole 2 hours and it was great.

The fotress is huge and has two different levels (the first was the original fortress then the second when the population had grown). At some points the wall is 19 metres high. There are some cool masoleums and a little bit of carvings on the wall but the impressive thing is just the sheer size of it. It is at 3000 metres mas o menos and was frankly astounding.

I loved it and was enthralled by the visit.

We then visited a cool museum about the culture which had artefacts from one of the moseleums that this culture built on ledges halfway up cliffs.

This one is a tough call. the area around Chachapoyas was so cool. Beautiful sceneries and valleys. Great ruins which were that little bit more interesting cause they were still covered in jungle so there wasn´t that touristy feel.
So the area around chacha is great.

The guide armado - slow at walking (not as bad as chin fringe) didn´t really know a whole heap about the other sites and when he did try and hypothesise about it with me his ideas seemed pretty stupid and he really didn´t know the area that well.

In the end the thing that tipped the scales was the fact that he woudn´t camp any of the nights...he needed his big meal and his bed....also i think sometimes when he didn´t know the answer to a question he just made things up (not that I know this for a fact)...so HATED HIM.

Cha cha is a tiny town (although it is the capital of the region) and to be perfectly honest I am starting to hate it but I am here for a couple more night cause they ahve the cheapest spanish lessons I have been able to find in peru.

At the moment if you asked me to pick between the ecuadoreans and the peruvians I would pick the ecuadoreans in a heartbeat...but we´ll give the peruvians a few more weeks before we pass judgement.

Hola all,

I´ve been puting off writing this entry as Erica is the first person of my travel buddies who I´m pretty sure will actually read the entry about herself...(hugo if you're still reading sorry about calling you eurotrash i meant it in a good way I promise).

To recap : Erica is an Irish woman that I met in Cuenca and did the (thankfully) uneventful boarder crossing with. She made bad things bearable and good things more enjoyable.

Once we finally arrived in Chiclayo after almost 24 hours we found a hotel and secretly /guilily (or not secretly now) indulged in a small amount of television (grey´s anatomy to be exact when dr burke was still around).

We shared many eventful things in a rather strange way....basically we didn´t know each other from a bar of soap and then spent 4 or 5 days straight with each other (every waking hour). And in four days she didn't annoy me once...she hurt my feelings a few times but that was only when she did what she does best....telling it like it is. I'm sure some of you know that this is a quality I admire in people.

She told me that I was tragic when I said I thougt about staying in Cuenca for an extra night so that I could watch grey´s anatomy on monday night cable tv.

Abused me for speaking spanish in my sleep.

She let me speak the spanish all the time (restaurants, tour operators etc) just cause she knew I liked to practice/show off.

I'm sure some of you have realised I have a habit about being overly polite after I've made a decision about something that I'm doing with a group. I tend to ask again and again "are you sure you want to do this".

Doing this infruriated Erica and after 2 days we were going to try and find this market to look at (walking in the wrong direction but that is circumstantial). I asked her again are you sure you want to go to this market.

She said something to the effect of

"Haven´t we already had this conversation. You always do this and I can´t figure out whether you just don't want to do the thing we are about to do or whether you are just being overly polite". I said (a little taken aback) " just overly polite".

She implied that I should stop it and on we went to the market.

One doesn't often find someone who is a) prepared to tell you to stop an annoying habit when they have just met you and b) able to do it in a polite way (well she was almost polite)....she proceeded to verbally slap me on the wrist when I did it again.

We visited a couple of great museums in Chiclayo together and also some tombs from almost 2000 years ago. The cultures were very interesting and after a day with a great guide (in english) some amazing artefacts (some recovered from grave robbers) and some not so amazing archeological sites (the pyramids looked like they were hills of dirt made by really big ants) it was time for Erica to leave chiclayo and me to go to Chachapoyas.

I really enjoyed spending time with erica and we shared a lot especially about her cuban fling (her favourite topic). With other people I think this might have worn a bit but with me I lapped up all the gossip like a super absorbant mop.

Needless to say as a man and a woman travelling together (both with pale skin) we were mistaken for everything from partners to siblings.

Chiclayo was great LOVED IT.

Erica was pretty good too but one thing she didn't like was the way I denied myself things: ie I had just started my no alcohol kick and was about a week through it which annoyed her. I also loved to look at the thousand and one heladerias (ice cream shops) but not buy anything (it really is a fun game but I'm no sure anyone gets it but kate).

She told me that it was no fun drinking or eating ice cream alone and that I ruined those things for her while I travelled with her.

Despite this LOVED HER.