The final leg...

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The final part of out time in Peru was spent visiting some of the towns and cities in the North East of the country. For the remainder of our trip we came across very few tourists and for the most part there was less of a touristy feel to these places, the best thing being less hassle from vendors trying to sell you their goods.

While it was great to go to Iquitos it is almost impossible to travel from there to anywhere apart from Lima. So we had to fly south to Lima, sleep in the airport (didn't actually get any sleep), then fly north to Trujillo. We had a night there before cruising on to a little beach town called Huanchaco

The fishermen in this town still use the same sort of craft that their ancestors were using 1000 years ago. They are these little single person boats that look like a surf ski made out of bamboo that has been tied together.

We spent a couple of nights here taking it easy, enjoying the local seafood before heading on to a city called Cajamarca. This place is often called the Cusco of the north and the similarities are readily apparent. This was the town where the last Inca emperor Atahualpa was murdered by the Spanish - even though he offered to them a ridiculous amount of treasure to let him go.

Highlights of Cajamarca included - meat. Lots of meat. Took a tour to the 'stone forest' nearby, as well as some pre-inca structures and petroglyphs. Ate some more meat. Got water bombed by the local kids - all part of the build up to Carnival. Meat.

From Cajamarca we travelled to Huaraz which is the town mountaineers use as their base before heading off into the Cordillera Blanca, a mountain range of 180km with over 20 peaks above 6000m. One of these peaks was the location of the mountaineering accident depicted in Touching the Void.

We took a tour up to a pair of lagoons which sit about 4000m above sea level. On the way we stopped in at a town called Yunguay which was levelled by a landslide in 1970, killing 35000 people. Pretty sobering as you can see the mountain 25km away where it started, taking only 7 min to arrive at around 300kph.

We would have liked more time in Huaraz, there's so much to do - paragliding, mountain biking, hiking, rafting, glacier climbing (and skiing/snow boarding in the middle of the year) etc. Also has the best pub scene outside of Cusco that we'd seen all trip.

From Huaraz we took a bus back to Lima (first class) to finish the trip off nicely. We got Renee settled into a hostel then i took off for the airport to fly out to Phoenix for the next leg of my trip. I had a great time in Peru and am already looking forward to exploring more of South America at some point in the future.

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