Viajar

Traveling!

This is the sun coming up in Loja after our first night bus.

So, after our 24 hours of bussing we found ourselves in our first Peruvian city. But, we weren´t crazy about Piura and literally spent the night, checked out a busy mercado then hopped on a bus a couple hours out to a coastal town called Mancora and just took a relaxative for two days. It was a really interesting beach town, muy tranquilo, absolutely amazing waves, lots of people kite surfing and got to meet quite a few interesting travelers... I am worried about our American veterans...

Night bus from Mancora to Truijullo. We were next to another beautiful stretch of beach, this time we didn´t get in the water, instead we bussed out to a couple different ruins. There was a disappointing amount of educational information about them, all the signs seemed to say the same thing, this was a very important ceremonial or religious gathering spot etc etc... but, what was great fun were all the young female Peruvian students on some school field trip to the ruins and were FAR more fascinated with us...gringos. We are an international group, with a very tall blond german and dutch and every single school class we passed screamed with excitement and begged for pictures with Valentin and Klaartche. At one point they even wanted photos with me, which I was like, ladies, I´m short with brown hair too, but I still got a huge kick out of posing for picture after picture after picture with these silly girls. We felt kinda special, even though we were really just distracting these students from their educational experience at the ruins. At the bus station in Trujillo, we traded in one of our German boys for a six foot tall blond Swedish girl (they would have loved her at the ruins). Everyone always asks what country we are from and are always impressed with our diversity of nations.

Another night bus, and now we are in Huaraz. Really took our elevation up another notch, to 11 for sure (Spinal tap). I think we´re at about 3050 feet here. It is COLD. Whoa. I hadn´t been cold since forever it feels, since last spring in Seattle. Quito is so breezy and the week I was at the farm we had outstanding weather, so I´ve been getting my brrrrr on.

(this is the view from the rooftop deck of our hostal, radddd, you can see the city below there, and the gorgeous Andes.)
But as if Huaraz at 3050 meters wasn´t cold enough we decided to go camp up in the Andes and really feel the cold. Instead of hiring a tour or a guide, my lil traveling pod decided to try and organize it ourselves...which was really probably the wrong call, because it was complicated as hell getting all necessary gear and transportation, but it was still absolutely amazing to be up there and beautiful and nice to be totally alone. Plus this way we enjoyed some interesting rides up and down the mountain. At one point I thought I was on a roller coaster that was coming out of it´s tracks, the guy was FLYING down the bumpiest road and my stomach just dropped out, just a couple times... We camped next to a laguna of the most beautiful deep green nestled in between these massive 100 meter rock cliffs. The german said it looked a lot like Bavaria, but to me it was seeing nature again for the first time, the color of the rocks and water and vegetation were so different from what I am used to of the Northwest and it totally rocked my world. I could just sit and stare forever. The hike we took in the morning was totally fogged in, we were up and out by 8 in the morning, but as the clouds lifted we could finally see all the little individual water falls cascading down the majestic rocks to feed the chain of lagunas that were blessing our eyes. One fun thing we incorporated into our mountain trek was ear piercing! There was a huge mercado a block away from our hostal, (the best and biggest I have experienced yet, indoor and out with everything, every every every everything you could ever think you wanted to purchase, and enough meat carcasses to fill up Safeco field) and we found surgical needles, pure alcohol and really cheap silver earrings and now I have a second hole on my left ear which I´d been desiring. Great activity for a lunch break on an alpine hill with a gorgeous view to distract you from the brief pain.

 

okay, that is all for now, I´ve got a bus in an hour to begin my return to Ecuador, enough of this traveling around business for me... for the moment.