Peru

After our trek in Huaraz, Josh and I felt the need for a little culture -pre-incan culture that is! Boy, did we get what we asked for!

First, we took another long night bus to Trujillo. Trujillo is one of the richest cities in Peru so the hotel prices reflected that. We pounded the streets for a while until we found a place that was not TOO grungy and within our price range. Because the night buses arrive so early in the morning, by 10am we were showered and ready to explore. We hopped a local bus to some HUGE near-by ruins called Chan Chan. Chan Chan was a large adobe city that was inhabited by the Chimu people who occupied the northern shores of Peru from about 850-1470 AD. Most of the city now just looks like huge piles of sand but archeologists have worked hard to uncover the palace section of Chan Chan. Because the Chimus lived in a desert close to the ocean, they relied VERY heavily on the sea for life. This is obvious in their artwork. The walls of the palace are decorated with carved reliefs of fish, pelicans and other sea birds, octopi and fishing nets. The was very different from inca ruins that we have seen,
mostly because the incas did not seem to decorate their walls much.

The next day we hopped on another local bus (always an adventure) to the Huaca de la Luna. This is another huge archeological site, but this time from the Moche peoples who lived from about 200 BC-850 AD. The Huaca de la Luna was suspected to be a temple. The Moche worshipped first and foremost a creature called the be-header. To appease their god, they frequently performed ritual be-headings. These were illustrated clearly in their wall paintings and on pottery. Prisoners were tied up and led into the main square of the temple. The priest would cut their throats and a priestess would catch the blood. The priest would then show the blood to the crowd and drink it. All very brutal and grapically depicted in the artwork. I guess their be-headings didn't appease the god enough because they were all eventually wiped out, most likely by an el niño. The temple construction was quite interesting. It was built in an inverted pyramid form and every 80-100 years the people would built a whole new, bigger and better, temple on top of the old one. They would replicate almost the same artwork each time. In some places, the different layers were exposed so you could compare the older temples with the newer ones. On the same site, there was also a huge pyramid called the Huaca del sol as well as a Moche village but we could not look at them closely as they are still being uncoverd. The sand moves in quickly in a desert.

After Trujillo, we headed to Chiclayo. Chiclayo is home to the richest scientific discovery ever made. In another former Moche settlement, they discovered many tombs near a huge pyradmidal structure. Some had been plundered by grave robbers but some remained uncovered. Most contained pottery, gold and silver but the tomb of a King held the motherload. There was so much gold and other riches in his tomb that the weight actually pulverised his bones. He was also burried with three women, his army general, a boy, a dog, two be-headed llamas and two men to act as guardians to the tomb (their feet were amputated so they couldn't run away). The next day, we went to the museum where most of the artifacts found in the tombs are held. The intricate decorations were amazing! My favourite was a necklace made of big, gold and silver peanuts!

Because we still hadn't gotten our fill of old, crumbly ruins, we headed to Chachapoyas -further inland and into the jungle. Here we got to explore a village, high on a hill top that belonged to the Chacha peoples. They were eventually conquered by the Incas but in turn, helped the Spanish fight the Incas later on. The Chachas built their houses of stone and they all had a circular shape. Each house also had a low, hallow stone wall running through it where they raised guinea pigs for dinner.

The next day we hiked to the Gocta waterfall. It is thought to be the third highest waterfall in the world at over 700m. There wasn't much water volume, so that nearly all that reached the bottom was mist.

All three towns were an archaeologists dream! They were pretty cool for two science geeks too...

We've been lugging around most of our trekking gear for the past two months with one destination in mind, the Cordillera Blanca. In an area 150km long and only 20km wide it contains 22 6,000m peaks and 50-something peaks over 5,700m. In comparison only three peaks in North America are over 5,700m--Mt. McKinley (6,194m), Mt. Logan (5,956m), and Mt. Orizaba, Mexico (5700m). The area attracts serious mountaineers (think ice axes and crampons) along with trekkers who spend anywhere from a few days to several weeks in the valleys and up and over passes ranging from 4,600 to 5,000m.

We arrived in Huaraz on the night bus from Lima and spent two days acclimatizing in town drinking french press fair-trade, organic coffee by the litre, and eating apple pie and reading magazines at the lovely Cafe Andino. The third day we headed up to The Way Inn at 3700m to further acclimatize and do a couple day treks before heading out for the 4-day, 50-km Santa Cruz trek. After catching the local minibus (combi) to the closest town, we walked for about 2-hrs to the lodge and set up our tent. With some daylight hours still remaining, we made a dash up to Laguna Churup--a 5 hr return trip and most popular day hike from Huaraz. Unfortunately we weren't fully acclimatized and got headaches on the way up to the lake at 4450m. After returning to the lodge Eden vomited and started shivering and we took a taxi back down to Huaraz.

Altitude sickness is a serious danger in the mountains so we spent two more days deliberating whether we wanted to do the Santa Cruz trek while acclimatizing at our favourite cafe.

Deciding to do the trek, we set out early in the morning catching a combi to Caraz, 90 minutes away. From there we got a shared taxi to the trailhead at Cashabamba and were on the trail by 10AM. The first day of the trek was relatively unimpressive. The trail was quite degraded from organized trekking parties and their donkey trains (we counted 15 donkeys and 1 horse for one group of 8 trekkers. I don't know why people would need so much equipment and are so lazy that most don't even carry a day pack.) Because of the steep valley walls, only brown/black dry mountains were visible until we arrived at the first campsite, Llamacorral, at 2PM. This is where the trekking agency groups camp and was full of donkey poop so we decided to go onto the next camp an hour away.

The second day we woke up reasonably early but didn't leave camp until 9:30. It was an easy hour and a half to a river junction where we had some snacks before climbing up the steep switchbacks on the way to the Alpamayo base camp. The views from here were stunning. We then turned around and cut across a traverse to the second campsite at Taulipampa. This site was beautiful. Surrounded by glaciated peaks. Again, however, there was lots of mess from the organized trekking groups.

The third day we climbed up to the Punta Union pass at 4760m with relative ease. It wasn't nearly as difficult for me as our 5000m passes on the Ausangate trek and I was carrying far more for this trek. We then continued down the trail for 5 hours to the campsite at Huaripampa.

The following morning we woke up early, walked for 3.5 hours to Vaqueria and caught one of the minibuses back to Yungay.

It's nice to be back in Peru. As chaotic as it is, it is still more chilled than Bolivia.

From La Paz, Bolivia, Josh and I headed to Puno, Peru. Puno is right on the shore of Lake Titicaca. One of the main attractions there, besides the lake itself, are the floating Uros Islands of the Uro people. This indigenous group many years ago were in constant threat of Incan attacks, not to mention the Spanish later on. They had always used tortora reeds for making boats but they decided, to be safe, they would make huge floating reed islands, far from the shores of Lake Titicaca, and live on them. They have lived that way since then even though there are no "pure" Uros left. Every year they pile new reeds on top of their islands as the ones on the bottom rot away.

The Islands were so interesting to visit. Walking on them was soft and springy. The children there will probably never experience a scraped knee! Many Islands contained just one extended family and they rely heavily on tourist dollars now for survival. Many inhabitants sell handicrafts and rides in their reed boats and the children sing songs for tips and candy.

After Puno, we headed to Arequipa for a second time. It is a nice city where you can buy a huge plate of Chinese food for just over a dollar! That wasn't our main reason for returning, however. We wanted to hike in the Colca Canyon -2nd deepest canyon in the world and more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States! Our trek was only three days in total. The first day we hiked deep into the canyon and slept in a small village. The villagers grow lots of fruit that cannot be grown outside of the canyon because of the altitude and colder climate. The second day we hiked to the bottom of the canyon to a glorious oasis! We swam and relaxed in the sun -but only until about 3:30pm-afterwhich the sun disappeared behind the canyon walls! That night, we left the oasis at about 3am to start the long hike UP and OUT of the canyon! We got to the top in time to watch the sunrise. After that, we took a bus to a part of the canyon (Cruz del Condor) where we watched the huge condors playing in the up-drafts from the canyon. It was amazing how close the condors came to us while soaring by.

From Arequipa, we headed to Ica and then the near-by oasis of Huacachina. It is a relatively small oasis completely surrounded by HUGE sand dunes. We spent a couple of lazy days there hanging out by the pool and walking on the dunes. It was such a nice change from the cold weather we were used to. After a couple of days, we headed back to Ica and took a boat tour around the Ballesta Islands. There we saw tons of birds, including Humboldt penguins and pellicans, and lots of sea lions relaxing in the sun. It was a great tour of what is also referred to as the "poor man's Galapagos".

Needing to keep on keeping on, we headed for Lima. Winter in Lima means coastal fog! Even though it is only about 9 degrees from the equator, it was a cool 15-18 degrees during the day and foggy foggy foggy! It was strange to be in a desert that was so muggy! We enjoyed our time there and basically just pigged out the whole time. Because we hadn't had North American food for a while and figuring we wont be in a big, international city like that for another long while, we justified our binge. We ate at Pizza Hut, had massive sandwiches at TGI Friday's, ribs at Tony Roma's and Cinnabons for lunch! We left with our arteries a little more clogged and a few pounds heavier but happily satiated by American food

After reading about the Ausangate trek and seeing pictures, I was interested. Then, after seeing that besthike.com had rated it number 4 in the world, I HAD to go. The trek is difficult, high, and cold. Three solid reasons not to do it, but this also means that not so many tourists visit (and also because the trail does not lead to Machupicchu). Along the route you encounter thousands of alpacas, llamas, vicunas (the wild camelids that only live above 4000m), viscachas (rabbit-like animals), and the people who live around Ausangate usually only speak Quechua (with bits of Spanish, less than us!). Another interesting factoid, the first ascent of Ausangate was by a German party including Heinrich Harrer, author of 7 years in Tibet.

We tried to call the small town of Tinqui to arrange an arriero (horse driver), but didn´t have much luck with the one phone in town, so decided to go with an agency in Cusco (Apus Explorers on Suecia). They were a bargain at $130 per person but what was left out was a stove and gas, horses, a cooking tent, and a tent for our guides! These were arranged by our guides Luis and Alejandro in Tinqui, but cost us some time and we ended up spending the first night camping in Tinqui.

The following day we set off, but Eden had gotten a bit sick from the boiled water and wasn´t feeling well. Lonely Planet Trekking in the Central Andes describes the trek as 6 days, but now we were going to doing it in 4 with horses. The first day we climbed steadily through brown puna grassland, past grazing sheep, cows, llamas and alpacas. We made camp at 4750m below one of the satellite peaks of Ausangate. The view was stunning, but when the sun went down it became very cold and our water in the wash basin froze at 6:30pm even though there was still some light out. While the guides were cooking I climbed two of the orange hills, first by running and then gasping my way to the top.

The next day we woke early to cross the first of the three passes for the day! The first wasn´t difficult because we already had the altitude, and then we descended into a valley. On our left a huge glacier was hanging above two large lakes. The second pass was quite a bit harder at 4850m (4861m on GPS), but we were going to have lunch and a 1 hour break after. From the top of this pass, our guide/arriero Alejandro pointed out the third pass. I couldn´t believe it. 300m higher than where we were standing, but we also had to descend 250-300m to the valley below. Doh!

The guides ran ahead to start lunch while we went down slowly. After lunch we started the slow climb up to Palomani Pass with me stopping every 5 steps to catch my breath above 4800m. So while Eden (still ill) was ahead, I was struggling every step. We reached the top, which registered 5123m on the GPS (5165m according to Lonely Planet). From there the view was stunning. Glaciated mountains to the left, a green valley below, and orange desert to the right. We then walked for several more hours to our camp on the Rio Jampamayo. When we arrived we were cold and exhausted.

We were happy that the third day had only one pass, even though it was the second highest of the trek at 5080m. Along the way we passed a few other trekking parties. The largest was a group of Israelis with 19 horses!! We knew that Israelis like to travel in large groups, but this made us wonder how many there were. Along the scree on the side of the trail we encountered rabbit-like viscachas. The trail then steadily climbed, and the pass itself was very broad (we were over 5000m for over an hour). The nearby peaks of Pico Tres and Collapa Ananta (both over 6000m) were stunning. We then descended into the valley where there were lakes with varying shades of blue. Stopped for lunch at a small tarn (didn´t think it was the cleanest water source for soup and tea), where two 8-year-old girls came to see what we were up to. Gave them some candy, crackers, and lunch and they gathered our horses afterwards.

After lunch we continued down valley, past more alpacas, stone fences and houses to the village of Pacchanta. Here there were hot springs and electricity, but we used neither since the tub was packed with Israeli trekkers and we decided not to stay in one of the small hostels.

Next morning we headed back to Tinqui, stopping for last looks at the mountains, then unloaded the horses and let them graze, tipped the guides, and caught the bus back to Cusco. At the first stop in Ocongate, our guide Luis got out with three other guys and downed a litre of chicha (not very tasty but cheap (20 cents) corn beer) and confirmed our suspicions that his yellow corneas are from liver problems.

Our arriero Alejandro was very good, is from Upis, and we recommend him to anyone considering the Ausangate trek. Even for experienced trekkers, the altitude makes things much more difficult and having an arriero makes things safer as there have been reports at South American Explorers of robberies along the trek. However, for trekkers going solo the trail is not difficult to follow with the description in Lonely Planet Trekking in the Central Andes. Other agencies in Cusco charge between $180 and $800 for this trek with two people ($800 with SAS). If you call Alejandro two days ahead of time (only Spanish spoken), he will arrange everything for updated $120 (old price $80) per person for a 5-day trek. This includes horses, stove, gas, tents, cooking tent, food, and of course him. The only things he doesn´t provide are sleeping bags and mattresses, but you can rent these in Cusco. You may be required to get to Tinqui on your own, but this isn´t difficult. Two busses leave daily at 11am behind Coliseo Cerrado in Cusco. The better bus is Huayna Ausangate. Alejandro Gonzo Huaman can be reached on his cell phone at updated 984 382333 (old number was 984230664), or if you can´t get through you can try his brother at 984391965 and tell him you´re looking for Alejandro. He can also be reached via email alejandro.gonsalo(at)hotmail.com but the phone is probably better.

This past week, Cusco has been humming! June 23rd was Cusco Day and the 24th was the Inti Raymi festival. Even the week+ leading up to these holidays has been a flurry of activity. There have been parades and traditional dance competitions almost everyday. The parade on Cusco Day lasted from 10am until about midnight.

Inti Raymi is the second biggest festival in Latin America -second only to Carnival in Rio de Janiero. It is an old Quechuan (Inca) celebration of the equinox. Hundreds of thousands of tourists descend on Cusco from all over Peru and the world. The ceremonies start at the sun temple in Cusco which also has a cathedral perched on top by the Spanish colonials. The prosession them moves to the Plaza de Armas (main square) in Cusco which is where Josh and I waited a few hours so we could have a good view. Many dancers, male and female, dressed in traditional costumes, danced and sang around the square. Some were carrying offerings of corn, potatoes and coca leaves, some incan deities and others carried mummies of former incas. Eventually the man acting as the king (the inca) was carried into the square on a large throne. He was preceded by men sweeping the way with bundles of hay and women dropping flower petals. The Inca made a speech in the Quechua language and then eventually the whole procession left and headed towards Sacsayhuaman (pronounced sexy woman) which are incan ruins up on a hill in Cusco. The crowd followed. Thousands and thousands of people (including Josh and I) then watched another ceremony for their sun god. It was very interesting but not easy to follow since it was in Quechua and because of the huge crowds. They also had a mock llama sacrifice. Apparently, they used to kill the llama in a very slow and brutal way, so they don't do it for real anymore.

The whole week has been very interesting and we have culture pouring out of our ears! Tomorrow we head out on a 5 day hike around the highest mountain in southern Peru, Ausangate, so it will be a nice change.

Photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53235&l=1411f&id=553935978
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=52920&l=8fddb&id=553935978
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54567&l=6f37f&id=553935978

for those not on facebook.