Huaraz - some very beautiful scenery
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2009
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14
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Trip End
Feb 26, 2010
Huaraz, Peru
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The town (city?) isn´t hugely big but bigger than some other places we´ve been in, and had a LOT of chinese "chifa" restaurants...
The views were amazing - all around you could see huge snowy mountain peaks, green hills, dry sandy hills...and we really lucked out with the weather - not a drop of rain in our 6 days there, just sunshine in the day and clear skies at night, although at night it did get ridiculously cold (i mean, we´re talking freezing temperatures...we both had to wear pretty much all of our clothes, i started wearing my winter wooly hat (which i thought i would only need in bolivia if at all) and cat even slept in her sleeping bag+liner+hostel blankets!
The town is at about 3,200 meters - so walking up hills and stairs would leave us out of breath quite quickly. But it´s a mountain area and it would be a shame not to make the most of it - so we signed up to do a trek with the hostel up to Laguna 69, one of the 300+ turquoise mountain lakes in the area of the Parque Nacional Huascaran.
The day before the trek we went on an "acclimatisation" walk up into the hills surrounding the town...we ended up on this dirt road, hugging the mountainside where chickens and pigs were running around freely and women were washing their clothes in the river. It was nice to see the rural side of Peru and yet we were so close to the city! The walk was fine, I donñ´t think we went up very high in altitude but we walked for aobut 3 or 4 hours and felt like we´d covered some distance. I omnyl had my converse as walking shoes, and after our afternoon walk my feet were a bit sore, so i decided to invest in some more robust walking type shoes which will also be useful when we´re doing the inka trek. Managed to pick some up for 50 soles, roughly $16
