Huaraz

I gave up on Lima after a couple of days and got on an overnight coach to Huaraz, the "basecamp for the second biggest mountain range in the world". This area of Peru truly is stunning. So much has happened in the last week here but I will mention some highlights.

I´ve been staying, together with an Israeli couple (Ofri & Eyal Wagner-Lebel), at a place called Nelly´s house in Huaraz. It´s what it sounds like. It´s a house with a lovely lady in it called Nelly. It really feels like home - sometimes we eat together, she helps me hang out my clothes, and one evening we even danced together. This morning she told me off for not getting up for desayuno (brekkie).



Yesterday, myself, Ofri and Eyal completed a beautiful 4 day trek (known as Santa Cruz) through Peru´s Cordillera Blanca. This long walk afforded us stunning views and some real altitude, the highest pass being at 4760m. Ofri got quite ill walking up here but was fine once we got down low again. I had spectacular views of several mountains above 6000m. 6000m! We all had a great time, despite the three of us being packed into a small 2-man tent built for Peruvians (it was about 10cm short of my height and only wide enough for two), which persistently leaked water.





The journey back from this trek stands out in my mind as something rather astonishing too. It basically involved piling into the back of a truck with 2 other Brits, 2 Dutch, a Japanese bloke and a native Peruvian and holding on for dear life as this truck navigated what must be one of the highest road passes in the world (4700m). This road was not paved, and the excitement was only exacerbated when we saw a bunch of crosses sitting on one of the many tight hairpin bends. It was one of the most fantastic journeys in my life.




I´m hoping to spend another while here in Huaraz, hopefully doing some walking down in the equally spectacular but less oft visited Cordillera Huayhuash. Ofri and Eyal don´t want to do this, they enjoyed our Santa Cruz trek but they aren´t used to the rain! It is somewhere in between the dry and wet season here, but the rain isn´t British. It just isn´t hard enough. Perhaps I will take them for some walking in the Scottish rainy season sometime ( the rainy season that started back in the dark ages).

I´ll blog again when I have some more cool stuff to talk about. I hope you´re all well, I miss you all.

I´m a traveller

I´m typing this from a internet cafe in Lima which charges all of half a dollar per hour. This whole concept of travelling is amazing. I keep getting hit by it.

My journey started at 6am British time yesterday morning, and I eventually found Lima and crawled into bed at 1am local time this morning (7am British time). Saying goodbye to people yesterday was very hard and for much of the flight to Miami I was wondering what the heck I was doing. I just wanted to crawl up and not come out of my shell. But since then I´ve mainly been feeling content and happy, though the thought of what I might do over the next 10 months is pretty mind blowing.

The presidente of Peru died yesterday so everyone´s having a national holiday. I think Lima is going to be quite busy over the next couple of days, but I´m going to see the sights anyway. I´m off to find a hostel now, then I´m going to explore a little. I´ll probably head to Huaraz in a couple of days.

still in england

I finally have an excuse to set up a blog. How exciting! At the moment I'm sitting at home and it's eight days until I leave. I'm finding that trying to fit in visiting friends and relatives, whilst also applying for PhDs and learning Spanish is a non trivial exercise in time management.

Expect more exciting posts when I'm actually travelling.