Hooray Huaraz!

For one of the highest mountain ranges in the world, the Cordillera Blanca is surprisingly accessible. In contrast, the Himalayas always seemed far away and unapproachable. From a distance, they looked fake—like a backdrop painted on the sky—and it takes a 14+ day hike just to get the basecamp of the famous peaks (Everest, Annapurna, etc). I much prefer the Cordillera Blanca, where within a few hours of driving and hiking from Huaraz you can be at the base of a 6,000 meter peak. Huaraz is also surprisingly tourist-free for such proximity to mountaineering greatness. My theory is two-fold: first, the town of Huaraz is nothing special to look at, since it has periodically been completely destroyed by earthquakes (the last one was in the 70’s); and second, the 30 hours of cumulative bus time between Huaraz and Cusco position it well outside the tourism radius of a 2-week vacationer.

During our four days in Huaraz, we hiked to three alpine lakes and drove through the canyon connecting the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra. The high alpine lakes are pretty crazy because after hiking the equivalent of a fourteener (the lakes were at about 4,500 meters) there is another layer of mountains looming above you. I thought it might be kind of repetitive spending three days in a row on day hikes to lakes, but each trail and lake and landscape was a little different, and each day was my favorite for some reason or another.

Lake Parón was my favorite for the peaks behind the lake. It is surrounded on all sides by 5,000+ meter peaks, including at least two above 6,000 meters. Though the day was a bit cloudy, we caught some glimpses of the big mountains and enjoyed the musical stylings of the park ranger who was randomly playing a saxophone in the middle of the Andes. 

Lake Patron, 4155 m

The hike itself was a little frustrating, first because it proved impossible to access the trailhead by public transportation (villagers come to the city in the morning, not the other way around, so there were not enough passengers for a van to make the return trip); and then because the distance to the lake kept changing. We got estimates between 9km to 15 km, one hour of hiking to four hours. The high end turned out to be most accurate, with a full four hours and 15 km of hiking from Parón Pueblo to the lake. On the way down, we got lucky and a Peruvain family on a weekend road trip picked us up and spared us the last 6 km of the descent.

Lake Churup was my favorite for the trail leading to the lake. The first section of the trail is about an hour and a half of beautiful hiking through the pastures between the town of Llupa and the “town” of Pitec (does four huts make a town?). When we got off the bus in Llupa, a 77-year old man happened to be starting the commute to his pasture on a donkey, and invited us to walk with him. When we reached his pasture, he passed us off to another 70-year old man walking all the way to Pitec.

Patchwork Pastures

From Pitec, the hike is two hours straight up the ridge, quickly gaining over 600 meters. The last 40 meters or so is a straight vertical wall with a little assistance from some bolted cables (though cold, wet cables are not the most helpful things in the world). I surprised myself by how easily I hopped from rock to rock to ascend/descend the wall—I’m not sure if it was recovering from the year of injuries or just generally growing up a bit, but I trust my body to get itself safely up and down things so much more than I used to. Scrambling is much more fun when you’re not terrified of falling. 

Scrambling down

Lake 69 was my favorite for the lake itself. We went on a day trip to Lake 69 with a tour group out of Huaraz, since during the low season there is not public transport that far. I’m glad we took the organized route after two days solo because it freed up more brain space to just enjoy the surroundings. We stopped at various viewpoints and other alpine lakes on the way to the trailhead and luckily had the best weather of the three days (though still overcast at times). The trip didn’t have a guide, just provided transportation and a detailed map for the hike. Ironically, Lake 69 is the only lake of the three we did listed as a two-day hike in Lonely Planet, but it was the shortest hike for us, taking only 2.5 hours to ascend. The lake is a beautiful turquoise that stands out even more because of the grey crater surrounding it. On the way down, we had some amazing views of Chacaraju (6112m), the peak whose base is at the lake.

Lake 69

Big mountains!

Huaraz will definitely go down as a highlight of the trip for me. After the bummer of our Choquequirau non-starter, I loved just having a few days to enjoy the mountains far far away from the parade of gringos that is Cusco. Both Cole and I had an off day (different days) we had to push through, and I think surviving those made the lakes and peaks even more satisfying.

Travel Planning Failures

After Puno, we headed to Cusco to see the Inca ruins. Very quickly I learned where travel planning breaks down: (1) If your Lonely Planet is two years old; (2) If there are natural disasters that don’t hit the papers for 5 days; and (3) If the weather is just plain foul for several days on end.

Cusco didn’t appeal to me much at all, so the same day we arrived, we headed off to Ollantaytambo and caught the train for Aguas Calientes to see Machu Picchu the next day. We woke up early and were in line for the bus to Machu Picchu at 5:20, arriving at the sight just before 6 am. Our plan was to head quickly up to Wayna Picchu, a steep mountain next to the ruins, since our trusty guide book informed us that only 400 people are let in per day—200 at 7 am and 200 at 10 am. Planning Fail: As of January 2012, you have to buy Wayna Picchu entrance tickets in advance, at the same time you buy your Machu Picchu entrance ticket. The next task in our plan was to head over to Cerro Picchu, a hike to a viewpoint on the other side of the sight that did not require waiting in line. Planning Fail: As of January 2012, you also have to buy entrance tickets for Cerro Picchu in advance.

Being the careful planner I am, I was hit pretty hard by my botches in planning for the most iconic destination in Peru. The day was looking pretty gloomy, but then, a surprise advantage of arriving at Machu Picchu before all the day trippers presented itself: THE LLAMAS!!!! There are a number of llamas roaming around Machu Picchu in part to amuse tourists and in part to mow the lawn. Most of the day, they hang out in this one part of the ruins where tourists can’t get too close to them, but before the chaos, they roam freely around on the footpaths and in and out of structures. For about 45 minutes, Cole put up with me following the llamas around, which of course cheered me right up.

Our Machu Picchu guide

From there we decided to make the best of it and started the ruins over to see things in order so we could read about them (and eavesdrop on tour groups) as we went along. Then, we went up to the top near the entrance to try to get one of the postcard shots of the whole Machu Picchu site. Planning Fail: This only works when there is some semblance of sunlight—we had heavy cloud cover. But instead of getting down about this one (because really, what can you do about the weather?), I made a game of it and we asked a ton of people at all slightly different spots to take pictures for us until we got one where you can kind of sort of see the ruins.

Machu Picchu!

Despite the ups and downs of the day, I’ll look back at Machu Picchu fondly. Like the Great Wall of China, it’s one of those sites that you see tons of pictures of before you arrive, but when you get there it’s still really impressive. We went to the Machu Picchu museum afterwards, which I think really helped me appreciate the site. My favorite things about Machu Picchu were:

• The structural engineering prowess of the Incas. I was particularly amazed by the way they built around existing boulders and by the religious buildings made from large carved blocks instead of the typical smallish stones.

• The agricultural terraces, which I’m used to seeing around now, but in the museum we learned that the Incas were different because instead of cutting the terraces into the hills, the Incas built the terraces up on top of the hill foundation!

• The cool astronomical things, like the instrument the Incas had designed to help track the movements of the sun and plan around solstices. I think it’s pretty amazing that modern astronomers still can’t figure out exactly how it works.

• The llamas, obviously, especially the baby one.

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After Machu Picchu, our plan was to head to a much less frequented Inca ruin, Choquequirau. The ruins are a four to five day hike from a town about three hours from Cusco, and it is a little difficult to plan for before you arrive in Cachora, but in my mind anything that gets rave reviews from William Loopesko is worth trying. We checked with the tourism office in Aguas Callientes to make sure there were no new 2012 permits required, and headed off to Cachora. Planning fail: News travels slowly in rural Peru, and when we arrived in Cachora that night, we learned there had been a huge landslide two days ago that took out a key section of the trail. (The landslide eventually hit the papers, but not until five days after the fact.)

This discovery put us in a bit of a pickle, because we had already bought airline tickets for the next leg of our journey based on a five-day trek. After a night’s rest, some rapid brainstorming, a quick Elena breakdown, and some planner pinch hitting by Cole, we settled on what would turn out to be an awesome backup plan: one day of horseback riding in Cachora (in the rain, still, but a nice chance of pace), up to a spot where you could see the landslide (and the ruins when there is sun), then off to Huaraz to hike in the Andes until our flight.

The landslide that blocked our way

My mule named mula (left) and Cole's horse named caballo (right)

Lake Titicaca

The consequence of traveling at the pace we are is that down time (ie blogging time) has become sparse and my blogs are crazy delayed. That said, I think they’re still worth doing, in part because it helps me process what I’ve seen and in part because I want friends and family to know what Cole and I  are up to and that I am still safe and happy!

After canyon country, we headed to Puno to visit the Lake Titicaca islands. Lake Titicaca has tourism down pat. From Puno, there are three islands popular to visit, Uros (the floating islands), Amantaní, and Taquile. Though there are many tour agencies willing to take you around the islands, the ferries are also set up for tourism and you can do the exact same route without a guide for less money and more confidence that the money is going to the communities. There are three common trips: (1) a day trip just to Uros; (2) a day trip to Uros and Taquile; and (3) a trip to Uros, an overnight at Amantaní and home via Taquile. Cole and I opted for the third option, without a guide.

The islands could be a tourism destination all on their own. Once you get out of the cove around Puno, the water is just gorgeous and the low clouds layered on top of Bolivia’s peaks on top of glistening blue water is hard to take your eyes off. 

Lake Titicaca in the morning

But rather than rely on their beauty alone, the Titicaca islands have positioned their traditional culture and isolation from globalization as their top selling point. Uros, in particular, is a really cool glimpse into a unique culture. Originally, the islands were built to try to isolate the community from the aggressive Incas and though the island gets some snuff for no longer being “authentic,” if you just look at it like a Frontier Days kind of culture show, I still think it’s pretty neat. The floating islands are built from the totora reeds growing in the shallow part of the lake. During the wet season, the roots float to the top of the water and the villagers boat out and cut the roots (which are quite cork like) into blocks, which they then tie together and anchor in place where they want to live. The island we visited (there are about 60 small community islands) was made of a couple dozen blocks of various sizes, and even had a net lined hole to store fish in! The roots are then covered in reeds and houses/benches/boats are made out of the reeds as well. 

Uros, the Floating Islands

A demonstration of how the islands are built

After Uros, we went over to Amantaní for the night. Amantaní has no hotels or restaurants; everything is done via a community tourism system with home stays. When the boat arrives, the families who are next in line are waiting on the dock and every group is assigned to a family for the night. Since they’ve been doing it so long, it’s pretty mechanized and most houses have built on additions for tourists (our room was the nicest we’ve stayed in since leaving San Bartolo). Other than tourism, the only income on the island is agriculture. We did the two hikes on the island to the two highest points from which you can see the terracing all the way down to the lake. (There was also, apparently, a cultural show at night, which we missed because when we asked our family about it they didn’t think it was happening that night.)

Amantani Island, with Taquile in the background

The next morning was disgustingly cold, but we diligently got up bright and early to catch the boat to Taquile. To my surprise, Taquile felt even more touristy than the floating islands. Like Amantaní, the main industries are tourism and agriculture but it is also famous for handicrafts and the villagers sell their woven products in a big cooperative store in the town square. We had about 3 hours to walk around the island—first up the 20-minute staircase and to the town square with all the other hundreds of tourists, and then we proceeded to get lost on the island trying to escape the tourist crowds. Luckily a nice old man pointed us up a hill and we wandered through pastures and up rock faces until we found the trail back to the docks. 

Brrrrrrrr!!

All in all, I’m glad we went to see Lake Titicaca, and I did enjoy the scenery and Uros, but having seen some other things since then, I don’t think Puno will go down in the books as a highlight of the trip.

Convents, Corpses, Condors and Canyons

The first stop on our whirlwind Peruivan adventure was Arequipa and canyon country. On Monday night, we took a night bus the 16 hours from Lima to Arequipa, and boy does Peru do bus travel well. Some buses are nicer than others, we went with a middle of the road comfort level and the seats reclined nearly horizontal (and were wide enough for me to curl up in), we were served two meals, and the bus had wi-fi capacity!

I really liked what we saw of Arequipa, though we only spent one day there. If we weren’t trying to do so much in so little time, I wouldn’t have minded an extra day to explore. The town is a nice mix of new and old: it’s definitely been modernized yet the buildings and the roads all still look historical. Most buildings are made from this pretty white volcanic rock and on a clear day, the cathedral in the center of town is flanked by two volcanoes (El Misti and Chachani).

Plaza del Armas (how cool are those birds?!)

The two sights we checked out were the Monasterio de Santa Catalina and the Museo Santury. The Santa Catalina Monastery is a huge 20,000-sq meter convent which at times feels a little like a rat maze. The monastery used to be home to 450 nuns, and 30 are still living in a tourist free section of the complex. The first part of the convent is the novice cloister, where would-be nuns took a four year vow of silence to work and pray, and then at the end of four years they decided whether to join the monastery. My favorite part of this section was the murals of each bible section you are supposed to study every session, one for each bead on the rosary.

Past this point, no talking for 4 years!

Bible verses cheat sheet

The next area is the orange cloister, around which many nuns’ cells are located along with the mortuary. Streets connect the other parts of the monastery, including many more cells, chapels, a laundry area and a communal kitchen. Though I don’t love exploring churches all day long, the monastery was cool to see and some parts had a similar spiritual feel to the Buddhist monasteries I saw in Tibet, but the clear income disparities within the convent rubbed me the wrong way: Some nuns had really nice multi-room cells, including quarters for servants, and other had very simple one room (plus a small kitchen) cells—it all depended on what size cell the nun’s family could buy. To me, religious service is about removing material goods from consideration and living a life completely centered on spirituality; having different luxury levels for different nuns seemed to fly contrary to that.

A luxury cell

The Sanctuary Museum (no pictures inside) was what I was most looking forward to in Arequipa and it did not disappoint. The museum is housed within a university and curated around the discovery and study of the perfectly frozen body of an Inca girl sacrificed on the summit of a volcano more than 500 years ago. It’s a pretty amazing story: a teenage girl, Juanita, was sacrificed at the top of the volcano and her body froze nearly immediately, then toppled off the summit, and was protected by snow and ice until 1995 when a volcano melted the ice and revealed the girl. Just 15 days later, the sight was discovered by an archeologist who pushed a rock from the summit to see where the body would have rolled, and the girl was recovered and preserved before any additional deterioration occurred. Talk about amazing timing! Juanita is not in the museum this time of year, because they are busy studying her, but they have found 4 other frozen bodies in similar (slightly less pristine) condition, one of which was on display for us to see. The museum has no signs and every visitor must be accompanied by a guide. I loved that the museum was so integrated with the scientific work, and it was amazing to learn how much they can determine about an extinct culture from archeological digs. My two favorite new fun facts about the Incas: (1) Some children were raised to be sacrificed! They were removed from their families at a young age, indoctrinated about the great service they will do for their communities, then they take part in many religious rituals until they reach sacrificial age. (2) Contrary to the Moches in the north, who thought that when you die you continue with the same responsibilities you have in life, the Incas thought that you are reborn as a baby in the afterlife, so all the girls were buried with baby sized things, like little shoes!

From Arequipa, we headed off to explore the Colca Canyon for a few days…

When I hear the world canyon, I think of Utah’s canyonlands—dry, barren, and hot. So it caught me a bit off guard when we arrived on edge of Colca Canyon on a foggy, rainy afternoon. I couldn’t see any of the canyon because the fog was so dense I couldn’t see the side of the road from the bus window. Luckily, we woke up in Cabanaconde to a beautiful mostly clear day—and a lush, green, inviting canyon surrounded by snow capped peaks.

6 am; Cabanaconde, Peru

Colca Canyon

Bright and early we hopped on a bus to go see the Cruz del Cóndor lookout a bit outside town. This is a tourist hot spot, and many organized tours drive from Arequipa to see the condors in the morning, but taking the bus from Cabanaconde we got to see all the local women bringing their crafts and goods to the lookout to sell—much more fun than a bus full of tourists. For the first hour, there was little activity, just admiring the canyon and stretching in the sunlight. Then, at 8:30, boom, all the condors woke up!! We saw about five leave the nest for the day, including two that came ridiculous close to where we were standing. One was within ten feet of our heads—I got scared and ducked, but I bet it was pretty cool to see. The condors are so fun to watch—they are huge but barely have to flap, just using the thermals to gain elevation and their tails as rudders to steer.

Condor (with no zoom!) right before it almost hit us

After the condor sighting, we headed back to Cabanaconde to hike down into the canyon. From Cabanaconde to the Sangalle oasis is 5 km, and descends straight down the canyon wall. At its deepest Colca Canyon is 3,191 meters deep, more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. We were told the hike should take 2 hours down and 3-4 back up, so I was very happy that we did it in 1hr 50min down and 2hr 10min up—despite the 5 weeks living at sea level without exercising, I may still be a Colorado baby. The hike was beautiful because you could see all the different landscapes in canyon country, from the snowcapped peaks all the way down to the red rock surrounding the water, and the excursion was the perfect mix of challenging, miserable bits and awesome parts. (We did get rained on a bit, and I learned that a 10 year old rain jacket may not be as water repellant as it once was.) The oasis at the bottom was kind of weird, because after this long hike surrounded by amazing natural beauty, you end up at an artificial pool. Ha.

Sangalle oasis

Peruvian Eats and Treats

Among my college friends (or girlfriends of my college friends), there are four food bloggers. On one hand, I think it’s pretty cool how the internet allows me to keep an eye on my friends’ hobbies and the life events they’re cooking for, and I do love the long list of recipes to try when I have a kitchen again. On the other hand, the combination of the amount of time I spend reading food blogs and my history of extremely picky eating has positioned food as my top homesickness trigger this year. Luckily, Peru has been easier in this regard than Nepal. Here, I have silverware, foods I recognize (plus a few new delicious ones), and a garbage disposal of a boyfriend to eat the excess portions.

I suspect that our eating patterns are about to undergo a complete overhaul when we leave San Bartolo (more cheap street food, less fresh fish), so I figured it was time for my travel contribution to the food blogging world, starting with the day-to-day eats and moving on to Peruvian treats…

Breakfast always included cereal (which all pretty much tasted the same—basic rice puffs—regardless of the shape, size, and color), bread with butter and jam, and fresh juice, sometimes plus an egg or cheese. On special days (some Sundays), we instead had a sandwich of chicken tamale and sweet potato (yum!). For me, the highlight of breakfast was always the juice. Fresh juice has been a weakness of mine since a family trip to Costa Rica during which my brother and I drank our body weight in pineapple juice. Here, fresh tropical juice is an everyday item instead of a luxury and even on slow juice days, you can count on pear juice.

Lunch and Dinner are pretty similar meals, though eaten later than I’m used to, with lunch around 2 or 3 and dinner around 8:30. Typically the meal is three-course: soup or salad, a main course, and a fruit desert. Peru’s a pretty meat and potato heavy place, though since we’re right on the water the meat is mostly fish. I’m starting to get a bit sick of fried fish actually, but if I’m going to eat it twice a day every day, at least it is as fresh as can be: There’s a fisherman who comes straight from his boat to the door and sells Cecilia fish still bleeding in a grocery bag for what seems to me to be a ridiculously low price (about 8 dollars for a big bag of fish). Sometimes we mix things up with chicken, hamburger, a meatloaf-like meat, or ram. The potatoes come in many different varieties (27 different types are grown in Peru, according to my Lonely Planet) and my favorites are the sweet potatoes, some of which are purple! Rice is also a big staple, along with super-sized corn on the cob. The food is a bit bland for Cole’s taste, which means it’s perfect for me. And though the portion sizes are predictably too big, as Cole explained to Cecilia on the first day, meals are a team activity—I eat as much as I want and pick the best fruit for desert (sneakily, of course), Cole eats everything else. 

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Twice, we had the awesome experience of helping Cecilia cook some Peruvian specialties. The first was Pachamanca, a traditional dish cooked for religious ceremonies to pay homage to the earth. The dish is heavily marinated meat (in this case ram), cooked with potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, corn husks, lima beans and a boatload of herbs. It’s traditionally cooked in an earthen oven of hot rocks for several hours, since according to tradition, by using the earth to cook the food it pays respects to the land. (We cooked it in a Dutch oven on the stove top instead.) Along with the Pachamanca, we made four different kinds of salsa and sweet tamales from scratch for desert. The meal was absolutely delicious, though the Panchamanca and my stomach did not get along in the end.

Prepping the Panchamanca

Grinding the corn for the tamales

Wrapping the tamales

Salsas

Pachamanca ready to eat

Our second culinary adventure was preparing Cerviche. The preparation of this dish is really easy: mix fish, lime, chili, and onions, wait three minutes, eat. Cerviche was described to me as raw fish in lime juice, but that’s not technically correct, because the lime juice oxidizes the fish the same way cooking it would. The result is much tastier than I thought “raw fish” would be, though I couldn’t bring myself to drink the “tiger’s milk”—the leftover fish-flavored lime juice.

Cerviche

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Since the summer I had Door to Door Organics delivery, I have loved trying new fruits and vegetables and finding new favorites. The tropical fruits here make for an ideal testing ground. Every time we’re at the market, I pick a fruit I don’t recognize, bring it home and ask what it is and how to eat it. Here are some of my favorite finds (I don’t have individual pictures of them, so the Wikipedia articles are linked):

Fruit, fruit, fruit!

• Lúcuma is a popular ice cream flavor in Peru, like strawberry in the US. The fruit itself has a yellow or green skin and orang-ish insides that taste kind of like maple syrup. I don’t really care for lúcuma the fruit, but when it’s mixed with milk and sugar and frozen into popsicles, it is delicious.
• There are these little red fruits that we commonly have for desert—Cecilia and her friends call them cirula, though apparently they’re also called camu camu. When I first saw them, I thought they were cherry tomatoes, but actually they are a delicious acidic food (maybe a cross of a lime and a cherry?) that's good for cleansing your guts.
• Tuna in Spanish is not the fish but prickly pear, the fruit that grows on cacti! You cut the ends off, then slice down the middle, then eat the insides. It doesn’t have much flavor but definitely has a bunch of water and really thick cactus-like skin.
• Granadilla was my first random fruit purchase, and when we brought it home, one of Cecilia’s friends cut it half and showed us how to eat it with a spoon, like a kiwi. Now I see it all the time at the preschool, and those kids just hit it on the table until the shell breaks open, peal it just a bit, then hold it by the stem and slurp all the insides out. It’s a funny sight, a kid with his whole face inside a fruit. Granadilla’s kind of like a pomegranate, the shell is light orange and very tough and the guts are hard black seeds inside this weird clear slippery goop. I’m not sure how to describe the taste because the textures are so overwhelmingly strange.
• Cherimoya is another pretty strange fruit. It’s bright green and has little indents, like a big golf ball. The skin is soft, so you just kind of rip it open and then eat out the guts. The meat is really sweet with a sherbet-like texture and I made a huge mess trying to eat one walking down the boardwalk. I probably looked just as silly as the kids do when eating granadilla.

I hope this game will continue as we travel around the country! Though I’m sad to be losing my in-house Peruvian fruit experts, it’s really fun to try all these new fruits and it’s a nice daily reminder of how far I’ve come since forcing my mother to eat every meal in Paris at a hippo-themed American restaurant.