Desert Dry to Mountains High
Trip Start
Dec 01, 2009
1
21
29
Trip End
Aug 01, 2010
Huanchaco, Peru
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The buses in Peru are really organised, and quite luxurious - they're mostly double decker affairs, with great big windows and aircon so it feels like you're watching a big screen movie through the huge windows... from this vantage point, we watched the contrast of alternately soft-hued beautiful desertscapes and ugly-as-sin towns passing by... The block houses of mud brick or cement block, most unfinished, most unpainted, raw and exposed, a million wires tangled above them like guts spilling out of the sky. In some places you could swear you were in the middle east (or what I would imagine the middle east to be like) - really weird!
pengs: We headed to a small village by the coast that had a decent surfing scene, Huanchaco.
We tried to surf the one day but the water was freezing, I was convinced that there were crocodiles in the sea with me (terrifying!!!), the rental boards were rubbish and the waves were a bit more hectic than the central american scene, so overall it was a bit disappointing. The Irish caught up with us the next day and we played around on the beach taking photos with the traditional reed boats that they still use for fishing in the breakers. We were approached by some locals wanting to take a picture, we thought initially of them, but as it turned out they wanted a picture of us! We were obliging (considering how many pics we have taken of the locals, it was only fair) and within a few minutes quite a crowd had assembled as people queued to have their children in a shot with us. We could only giggle as one child after another was dragged by their parents to have their moment captured with the gringos. I really got a sense of how Father Christmas must feel...!
We then stopped off at the ruins of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America. We were astonished to see this enormous mud brick site that supported an estimated 30,000 people in the midst of such a harsh environment. Using irrigiation they kept this city going for over 600 years until eventually the Incans defeated them. We hopped back into the car with the Irish and stayed the night in one of the worst towns we have ever visited in Latin America: Chimbote. It was ugly, boring and stank so badly of fish that it made your stomach turn. Another shitty Peruvian city...
nadya: From the desert, we headed slowly back up into the mountains again, the landscape gradually becoming less harsh, with irrigated farmlands in the valleys, and dry, scrubby bush on the slopes... we passed some small villages, a noisy festival in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed the higher we rose and the more remote we got, the more people wore traditional dress.
We were travelling backroads of dirt, and once again found ourselves in the predicament of not being able to continue our journey for the day because the road was closed - they were busy with roadworks, and no matter how much Desmond tried to plead, convince and coerce his way through, it was not to be, so we found ourselves stuck in the middle of nowhere for the night. We stayed at a teeny village nearby and were again the centre of attention, as the locals watched us drinking beer and talking shit for hours on end (in the town's only shop), by far the only gringos for miles around...!
The next day, bright and early, we headed higher still, winding our way further up into the mountains, the slopes becoming gradually greener and more cultivated, past little villages dotted on the hillsides, and past people with increasingly more indigenous dress and very interesting hats! As we climbed even higher into the Andes, it turned chillier, the air got thinner, the peaks steeper, and the slopes became more grassy with an occasional glimpse of young shepherds looking after their llamas and sheep. Finally the road seemed to crest the mountain range (at around 4700m), providing a spectacular view of the snow-capped peaks on the other side: the string of mountains which form the Cordillera Blanca. This is part of the larger Andes, and is the 2nd highest mountain range in the world, after the Himalayas. It includes sixteen peaks over 6000m, and another seventeen over 5500m. So naturally we wanted to do a walk there!
pengs: We decided we had enough time and energy to do a short walk, and with the park officials confirmation of 3 hours tops there and back, we set out for Lago 69. It turned out to be closer to 5.5 hours of tough, high-altitude walking (with many stops to catch our breaths), but was one of the most spectular walks I have ever done! We felt like a scene out of Heidi with towering snowy peaks, gushing waterfalls, grazing cows and aqua-marine lakes. Really breath-taking and a major highlight!!
