Trekking to Chavin

     My three day trek to the town and ruins of Chavin began 40 minutes outside of Huaraz in the village of Ollieros. Due to laziness and having not figured out exactly when and how I was going to get from Huaraz to Ollieros, I didn't find myself at the trailhead until sometime around 3 in the afternoon. The suggested campsite was a 5 hour walk away and it looked like rain.

     I toyed with the idea of finding a bed in town and waiting for the next morning, but quickly elimenated it after considering the idea of being kooked up in some crappy room for a day and a night just waiting around. I had spent most of the day figuring out how to get to the trail head and I was ready to hike.

     On my way through the first village at the beggining of the hike, whoever was out working in their yard would stop what they were doing and look up with a wave and a smile. "Chavin?" some of them would say. "Si!" One guy I met near the edge of town was a little bit too friendly for my liking.

     This little man was clearly very drunk. When he asked me where I was going, and I told him, he declared that we were going to be partners and that he was going to go get his horse. He then veered off the path and I blew it off as a simple encounter with the town drunk. Five minutes down the trail leading out of town I heard the clickity clack of holves behind me. I turned around to find that this guy had not been messing around. There he was, on top of a shabby looking, hungry, little white horse. "Partners," he said in spanish, pointing back and forth between the two of us. "Lets go to Chavin!" he yells. " Hop on the horse." Amused by the situation, I politely declined, and told him that I wanted to walk. Out of his drunkness he couldn't grasp the idea that I was walking there for fun. I had no time contraints and didn't have to get there for any reason.

     He followed my for easily two hours telling me at least 30 times to get on his horse, that it was faster and easier. After the 5th time explaining to a wall why I didn't want to get onto his damn horse I was starting to get annoyed. This guy was ruining my hike. Twice he fell off his horse. Both times after he had worn out his welcome, so I enjoyed a couple of nice open laughs.

     The secound time he fell off he played dead and I had to yell at him to get up. I gave him some water and told him for the last time to get lost. As it was begining to rain, he obliged, and took off in the other direction. Not however, without giving me a harsh 10 second stare down from over his shoulder as he rode off, like I was the asshole.

     I sped up my pace as it started to sprinkle more. It stayed at a drizzle for a little over an hour and then came the down pour. Soaking wet, about four hours into my trek, I decided to climb out of the valley i was hiking through to make camp in a flat grassy area on the side of a hill. When you're setting up a tent in the rain, no matter how fast you do it your tent gets wet. My tent got wet. After I got my tarp over it, and my stuff inside, I did my best to clear up what I could with my camp towel. It ended up not too bad. A little bit cold and damp but much better than hikking in the dark, through the rain and cold wind for who knew how much longer to the suggested campsite.

     It rained all night long, but with the morning sun came a blue sky and a whole new begining without an unwanted, and very drunk companion. I suppose if we were both drunk, and I was an expert at slurred spanish it could have been a fun little trip, ridding on the back of a horse for 50km through the beautiful Cordillera Blanca. But that wasn't the case, and I didn't want it to be. The secound day of the Chavin trek was difficult, but also my favorite day of hiking I've ever done so far.

     I woke up with the sunrise and climbed out of my tent to a tremendous veiw of a valley full of cattle. I packed up my soaking wet tent, ate a bar of chocolate, and went on my way. About an hour in, I found myself at what should have been my campsite the day before. Luckily the trek didn't consist of very long days and I had all day to hike the additional 14km to campsite number 2. My hike that day included coming within 15 feet of wild horses, bulls, and llamas, all at seperate times. For most of the hike I had beautiful panoramic veiws of half a dozen different famous, jagged, snowcapped mountains of the Cordillera Blanca.

    The highlight of the whole trek was reaching the top of the mountain pass at the end of the valley. From 4700 meters above sea level I was able to look down at the entire sunlit valley that I had spent the last day and a half hiking through. On the other side of the pass was a veiw of the valley I would be heading into. It was even more beautiful than the one I was leaving. I felt like the lion king up there, looking down at all that was mine.

    I climed down into the new valley and walked a couple more hours before making camp just before the afternoon rain rolled in. On the third day when I woke up and continued walking, I noticed that this valley had more people living in it. Not a lot of people by any means, but every half mile or so you would see a little settlement on the side of a hile. A couple of stone walls and a thatch roof hut was all that was included on the properties of these mountain people that had been doing things the same way for a long long time.

     After crossing a river and entering the main valley things seemed to reluctantly become more populated. I found the mountain road leading to Chavin and took it through many villages on a two hour walk into town. I was able to look down at Chavin and the Incan ruins for about a half hour on my way down, and I must say it's a great way to learn the layout of a city before you get there. I finally reached town, where I quickly found a big plate of food and a beer in a riverside restuarant. The ruins were impressive but for me didn't compare to the trek itself. Most of it consisted of stone tunnels and rooms that were dug down under some giant grassy hills. It was quite a huge network and took my an hour to explore all of it with a flashlight. Like all other ruins I've ever seen, it was very hard to imagine what the building process must have been like. The underground ceilings and walls consisted of giant car sized boulders stacked artistically on top of one another.

      I found a cheap ride back to Huaraz in what is without a doubt the worst car I've ever seen in my life. The tires were beyond bald, the back window was out, and the door pannels along with most of the dashboard had been gutted and replaced with plywood. I decided in all of my smartness that it was an excellent and safe option for getting myself through the three hours of winding mountain roads leading back to Huaraz. It was a nice little adventure to cap off nice medium sized adventure.

    Back in Huaraz I made the decision to pack up and head to the coast for a few reasons. Firstly, I learned that rainy season is no joke. It rained everyday on my trek from mid afternoon to early morning and this had a big effect of the trails. When every I found my self on an uphill trail I also found myself walking up a downhill stream, and vise versa on my way down into the other valley. My other reason is simple, I want to go to the beach! I've been excited to start surfing for a while and I want to give myself time to do as much as I want. I very well may head back to Huaraz in early March for another trek or two. As I said before, some of the best walks in the world are in that area and I would hate to say I only did one. March is still the rainy season, but its the end rather then smack dab in the middle so we will see....

Sorry there are no pictures in recent blogs. I'm trying to work out some technical issues with my computer/camera.

Lima and Huaraz

Since leaving Ica and the sand dunes, I've been to Lima, Huaraz, and now I'm in Huanchaco Beach on my way up the coast. I made life really easy on myself in Lima and had a good time with it. I believe I was there for four nights, which is not what I had been planning on. I was only there because I had to go through the capital in order to catch a bus to Huaraz.
I headed to a very relaxed hostel in Boranco with a lot of character. Joe and I had checked it out when we had been in Lima in early October and had decided we'd eventually come back and stay. The rooftop patio was an excellect place to hang out, with beautiful veiws of the ocean which was just a five minute walk down the hill.
I stuck around for a few days and relaxed. One day I went surfing, another day I wandered around the whole district and found some street musicians, and on one of the evenings I treated myself to a seaside buffet. I stuffed myself stupid while watching the sun set over the water. I was so full, that once I managed to slowly walk back up to the hostel I climbed into bed and passed out until the next day.
Among other things, I read a book about the Italian coutryside, and had a wrestling match with some little French kids. They didn't speak english but they made it clear they wanted trouble when one day I entered the living room and was greeted with a playful growl, a pillow to the face, and a kick to the shins. The two boys were probably around 5 and 7 years old and they were a lot of fun. They were traveling with their father, their very pregnant mother, and an aunt, all just hanging out at a hippy hostel in Peru, making big meals every night in the kitchen. It was my first encounter with children travelers on my trip.
When I was done being lazy I finally hopped onto a bus and made the 7 hour ride to Huaraz, the hiking center of Peru, and the starting point to some of the best hikes in the Andes Mountains. While there I did a couple of day hikes, and a three day trek. One day I just did an aimless jot through some hills surrounding the city, and another day I took a taxi to some ruins up and outside of town, and from there hiked back down to some thermal baths on the edge of the city. It was about a two hour walk down and I had some puppy dogs follow me the whole way. They had playfully come up to me at the ruins and I gave each of them some of my snack and a good stratch behind the ears. From there on out they were mine. They followed at my heels and brushed up against my legs all the way to the thermal baths where I had to say goodbye. No dogs allowed.
At the thermal baths I met some Argentinian girls. When we got to talking we found that while I was hiking down from the ruins, they had arrived in Huaraz and moved their things into the same room at the same hostel I was staying at. Two guys from Uruguay were the only others in the room at the time and when we all met back up later that night we found that the guys had already met the Argentinians breifly earlier on their trip. I guess that just goes to show how small the backpacking world can be.
 We all had a good time with the full room. One of the guys had a nice ukelele that he could play excellently so we had some nice jam sessions with that and my guitar. I felt kind of bad at time being the only one that didn't speak fluent spanish. It wouldn't have been a huge problem but all of their accents just seemed so strange compared to the Peruvian spanish I had been learning from. I'm at the point where I can carry on a semi decent conversation with a clear speaking peruvian, but everything seemed different with these guys. with their shortened words, different accent, and pace of speech, I had a hard time understanding even the simplest of things and had to convert back to english much more often then I wanted to, or usually have to.
 When I headed off on my three day trek they were all planning on heading up the coast within the next day or so. We said goodbye with expectations of seeing one another again somewhere down the road as we were all heading to the same beach town.

Huacachina

A few days after New Years I took a bus from Cusco to Ica. The ride is about 16 hours long and I did it overnight, arriving in Ica at around 11 in the morning. Ica offers museums and wineries, but I wasn’t there for that. The city is on the edge of the dessert and 5km out of town is Huacachina, an Oasis surrounded by sand dunes, some of the biggest sand dunes in the world. Growing up in Michigan, the Sleeping Bear dunes are my reference, and though they’re great, they didn’t compare to these Peruvian mammoths.

            After getting off the bus in Ica, I shared a taxi with three Argentinians who were going to the same place. Upon arriving we discovered that we all wanted a place where we could set up our tents so we set out to do that together as well. My new friends consisted of one guy who spoke some English and was a member of the Argentinian navy, and two girls that didn’t speak English. This was good, because I hung out with them for that whole first day and only spoke English to the guy when I absolutely had to. I didn’t speak a ton, but I was able to sit in on a days worth conversation without it being weird.

            Huacachina is not a big place. The town exists because of the natural Oasis it is centered around. Roughly two blocks of restaurants, hostels, and dune buggy agencies surround the water and that is the entirety of the town. Though the water is brown in the oasis it is said to have curative properties, and on top of that it’s extremely hot in the dessert so one of the first things I did after getting there was go to the beach for a swim. I’m not sure how much it really had to do with the water, but I had a nasty cut on my finger from the bar in Cusco that closed up by the end of the day after my swim.

            I don’t remember if this has been mentioned in past posts but from time to time, being a gringo, Peruvians will want their picture taken with you. It most often happens in places that are tourist attractions for Peruvians and international tourists alike. While I was on the beach in Huacachina it happened twice. The first time I though the woman wanted me to take a picture of her and her husband, so I agreed and stood up to take the camera. Her and her husband came to either side of me and had their son snap the shot, I thought it was pretty funny especially because they didn’t make any eye contact with me or try to have a conversation. They just got their picture and moved on to the next attraction. The second time, a group of girls asked if I spoke Spanish as I was leaving the water. They at least talked to me for a few minutes before asking for a picture, making it slightly less weird.

            After the sun had gone down on the first night, I decided to grab a couple of beers and leave my campfire to head up to the top of one of the sand dunes surrounding the oasis. It was a beautiful star filled night and my ambition eventually brought up to the top of the tallest dune I could see surrounding the town. When I got there, it was the view on the other side that was the most impressive. The seemingly endless sprawling lights of Ica were to my right, with an equally endless expanse of sand to my left. I sat there quietly for a while, drinking my beer, taking in the view, and feeling the breeze. Then I yelled, whatever I felt like yelling, for as long as I felt like doing it. When I was done I sprinted down the steep, smooth dune, putting my breaks on as the sand turned into a road at the edge of town.

            The next day I signed up for a dune buggy/sand boarding tour, which is the reason most people go to Huacachina. My group ended up consisting entirely of a group of Argentinian guys that were camping at the same place as me, two Germans, and myself. I learned that the Argentinians were a group of eleven, 19-20 year old friends, all traveling together, having what looked to be the time of their lives. At the campsite they had big games of volleyball, they were giving each other buzz cuts, cooking a group dinner over the fire and just carrying on. They same thing continued out on the dunes, and I couldn’t help but think how similar things would be with my friends and I, had we been together doing the same thing. Meeting these guys reassured me how important it is that me and all my fun loving amigos back home make a point to do something like this before we get too old. You know who you are. We just need a destination and a time frame.

            The buggy ride was awesome, and the driver was not afraid to act like he was driving a dune buggy and not a minivan. We got air once or twice, all 14 of us! We stopped off several places to take pictures and ride sand boards down the giant dunes. I thought it would be worth it to throw the extra 20 soles for a snowboard, with the boots and bindings and everything. It turned out that I made the wrong decision. The speed at which the board went down these massive, and steep dunes was quite disappointing compared to the speed everyone else was getting on their free pieces of wood. I would cruise down and the Argentinians would fly. They were getting running starts and going down on their bellies; easily reaching speeds of 45-50mph. They’d hop up at the bottom of the hill, eyes watering, nose full of sand, and grins ear to ear.

Regardless of the lesson learned about snowboards belonging in the snow, I still had a great time, and was blown away by the view as we drove back to town with the sun setting over the sand. Huacachina is definitely a place to stop if you’re traveling through Peru. It was unique and worth seeing, even if there is still sand in my ears.

 Mannn, the bus food is crap.

 where I made camp

           

Christmas and New Years in Cusco

As I have read and been told, Cusco is supposed to be one of the best cities in all of South America to celebrate New Years. What I mean by that is it’s one of the busiest and most popular. This fact, on top of all of my friends from “The Point,” still being there, had me excited to be there for Christmas and New Years. When I first arrived unannounced a few days before Christmas, the bar staff was full and they couldn’t use me. After Christmas however, a few people would be leaving and I’d have my old job back! And trust me, although there is no money involved, it’s an awesome job, especially when the hostel is full for New Years.

It felt weird being back in Cusco after being away for a little over a month. To come to a city in South America and to be so familiar with it was funny to me. It’s so far from anything I knew a few months ago yet now I feel totally comfortable with it. Leading up to Christmas I had no real plans for the day. For the first time in my life it was a question. Exchanging gifts with the family and then heading to grandma and grandpa’s house for the day wasn’t an option. On Christmas Eve night I Skyped with my immediate family back home. It’s always nice to see their faces and say what we can but the connection is never great so it can be frustrating. Half the time is often spent communicating the fact that we cant hear/see each other.  On the bright side, it will only make the real conversations we have and stories we share that much better when the time comes to have them in person.

By Christmas day the hostel was very close to being full. I didn’t do much of anything out of the ordinary until the evening, when a big feast was cooked for anyone who wanted it and was staying at the hostel. The cooks spent all day preparing what ended up being delicious moist turkey, stuffing, sliced apples with a special sauce, and a whole bunch of other things I had never had before but tasted excellent. Unlike Thanksgiving, it was not a downgrade from the meal I was used to. That night the streets were full of little kids lighting off fireworks and throwing them around. People and cars were not excluded as targets. It was a pretty funny thing to watch.

After Christmas things started to get extremely busy. The city was noticeably busier at all times of the day and the hostel became booked well through the New Year. As all 96 beds filled up, right after I joined the staff, we all gave up our beds and moved out into the backyard to camp. I think I was the only one who didn’t mind. I’ll take my own tent on a soft bed of grass over a bed in a room with 14 other people any day. I finally had my own room! For the next week, the hostel was bustling like I’d never seen it. I’d wake up and walk into the usually empty bar for breakfast to find the place full, and the person working the morning/afternoon shift begging for help. It was great!

Yea, the bar staff was overworked for a week, I pulled a couple of 10 hour days, but it’s not like the work was that difficult, and I got to meet a huge amount of people. The plan for New Years was a “glow party,” with black lights and paint. Starting the morning of, Ben, the owner who bought the place seven years ago when he was 21 and restored it on his own, was well at work getting things in order. The carpet downstairs got ripped out and we slapped down an inflatable swimming pool and filled it with hot water and balloons. A giant frame got built and a white tarp got thrown over it to splatter paint under a black light. We closed down the travel agency desk downstairs, wheeled in a refrigerator and turned it into a second bar.

            We were ready for a good New Year! The city, and the party did not disappoint. At first we were a little worried, having transformed the hostel, no one was really there at like 10:30 pm, but the streets were absolutely packed. It was actually empty enough that at midnight most of the bar staff was able to head to the square with what costumers we had at the time to go enjoy the countdown. The entire city was a big party. Imagine Time Square, only everyone has like a dozen personal fireworks and they’re all just playing around with them. It was insane. The firework show ran by the city hardly mattered compared to everything else that was going on. Right when we had muscled our way to the edge of the square we noticed a growing countdown murmuring through the crowd. With about ten seconds left we noticed, and joined in. When the crowd said uno everything went nuts. Firework! Fireworks! Fireworks! Champagne in the face! Confetti! It was by far the craziest transition of my life into the New Year.

We got back to the hostel to find it twice as busy as we had left it, 15 minutes later it was the busiest I had ever seen it. The bar stayed packed until 6:30 in the morning when it was finally shut down. People were covered in paint. Many people, including myself were soaking wet from the kiddie pool, and everyone had a smile on their face. I went to bed in the backyard with the sunrise but it didn’t really matter because the 30 or some people that hadn’t had enough headed out to the backyard bar to keep the party going, about 20 feet from the thin walls of my tent. I didn’t mind. I fell asleep until the sun became too hot to bare, sometime around 11. When the sun woke me up I realized it was just as loud out there as it was when I had gone to bed. 20 people were still going strong!  They were lead by a fearless Irish DJ named Corey, who had a knack for keeping people awake, in a good way.

I had no choice but to join them. Technically the fiesta lasted until 2pm on January 1^st, 2013. It was a celebration I’ll never forget. I stuck around at the point for a few more days just because of how much was still going on. I took my time figuring out what to do next and enjoyed a few more days with friends I might never see again, in a city that I love. 

 

 Angel waking me up in the tent.

 "The campground," before it was full.

 A product of the party

 Ben bought two ducks and two chickens while a was gone, they chill in the back yard.

 All I captured of New Years aside from video... but it about sums it up.

I'll miss this place!