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Published: October 22nd 2008
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Jumping off a cliff into thin air...
Paragliding was so awesome and incredibly calming. Well, last weekend I went to the hot desert in Huacachina and this weekend it was the complete opposite, as Christine, Kristine and I went to Huaraz and into the mountains!
We started the weekend off by going paragliding on Thursday afternoon in Lima. It was totally awesome to jump off a cliff and be sucked up into the air by the wind. I did some tricks swirling over the ocean and swooped precariously close to the cliffs, it was great.
We left on a ¨red eye¨ bus ride at 10pm on Thursday evening and arrived in Huaraz at the delightful time of 6:30am the next morning. We took Cruz del Sur, arguably the nicest bus company in Peru, so the trip was pretty good. In fact on the way there, we sat at the very front on the second floor of the double decker bus, so we had lots of space.
The first day in Huaraz was spent napping and generally acclimating to the altitude there (about 3000m above sea level). Lots of people have altitude sickness, due to the fact that oxygen is less abundant and air pressure is considerably lower than at sea level. It
Paragliding!
Floating above Miraflores! was kind of cool to see the granola bars and snacks we brought fill with air upon arrival - yay for physical chemistry! However, as I will detail later on, I appear to be immune to this type of illness...up to 5000m at least. Probably the most striking feature of Huaraz, to me at least, was the number of Peruvians in traditional dress. They were everywhere and it was fantastic! The women´s poofy, bright skirts, hats and colourful shawls and bags were just so lively! Friday evening we happened upon a genuine Peruvian market in a bunch of random alleys, complete with vegetables and scraps everywhere, loads of stray dogs, all sorts of random items and assorted dead chickens hanging at a stand. We´ve seen many, many ¨tourist¨markets with all of the colourful blankets, sweaters, ponchos, hats and the like (most of which I´m pretty sure are made by machine with synthetic material, and not handmade from alpaca wool as they claim) but this was the real deal and it was exciting to see. We wandered about for an hour or so and didn´t see a single other white person the whole time. It was great!
Saturday morning we
Pineapple cart!
Fruits that are considered exoic at home, like pineapples, bananas and mangos are cheap and plentiful here because they´re local, conversely, apples are pretty expensive. hopped on a bus intending to visit some nearby ruins. It had rained that night and morning which apparently caused a mudslide which blocked the road to the ruins. Instead, our bus took us to a park, Pastoruri, which was an incredible experience. We drove high into the mountains and saw many rural Peruvians in action, which was absolutely fantastic. Most of the people we saw along the roadsides were in traditional dress and were herding or watching flocks of sheep, small herds of cattle or were doing work with horses, donkeys and alpacas. These are real shepherds! Their homes looked like igloos made of straw - seriously, they have a rock foundation and then staw piled on top. I loved seeing people just living with what I´d like to think is fairly minimal western influence. Our destination, via a large bus on a narrow and rather sketchy road, was at the base of some glaciers! I walked up a series of stairs and came across a sign that said 5000m above sea level. That´s definitely the highest I´ve ever been (except for in airplanes). For some perspective, Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada is 5950m and Mount Robson,
Peruvian Market!
Here they are - the chickens in the Peruvian market. the highest mountain in BC is 3950m. It was chilly (and in fact started to snow) up there and was definitely harder to move due to being out of breath all the time because of the lower concentration of oxygen. All in all, a great day for me (not so for my companions who didn´t bring food and were starving when we finally stopped for ¨lunch¨at 5:20pm). That evening I went out with some new friends from our hostel (which was totally awesome I might add - $4/night with breakfast included!). The bar featured a giant fake tree in the middle of the floor and nine year old children dancing until about midnight. It was rather interesting.
Sunday was a 5:30am start for a day hike! A total of five people from our hostel took a colectivo for 2.5hrs to the start of the Laguna 69 trail in Llanganuco Park. The drive up into the mountains was great as it was through farmland. I´ve yet to take some decent photos of these farms, but take my word for it that they´re pretty awesome. Virtually everything is done by hand (plowing the fields with horses or donkeys for example) and
Pretty lake and woman with alpacas!
This was on the drive to the ruins that ended up being washed out. The baby alpacas were adorable! most of the buildings and homes are made of adobe. There are random cows/chickens/dogs/donkeys etc everywhere, in the ditch, on the road, on people´s doorsteps...it´s just super. The start of the hike was at 3900m and the destination lake was 4700m. It was a gorgeous though moderately challenging hike through the heart of the Andes! If the hike had been a few thousand metres lower it would have been fairly easy, but the altitude, especially near the end, made respiration rather difficult. I felt like a tiny ant climbing through the valleys and traversing the mountains, it was so cool. The views were just spectacular - we started up fairly high and everywhere you looked there were mountains soaring above you - due to the clouds I couldn´t even see the peaks of the highest ones. I was in complete awe of the sheer beauty of nature. I ended up doing most of the hike with Henrik, this friendly chap from Sweden, because we didn´t feel any altitude sickness and the others did. We saw two CHINCHILLAS, which are bizarre animals that look like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. We reached the end of the hike, the
Crazy Plants!
I don´t recall what these plants are called since the tour was all in Spanish and I only understood the basics of what was going on, but they were pretty wild looking! lake, after 2h45 which is pretty good because the average time for a first timer is supposd to be 3h30. At the top we ran into a group which included two people from Whistler, one of whom tree plants in Prince George in the summers. Imagine that - I´m in the middle of the Andes Mountains, thousands of miles away from home and happen to run into someone who knows about PG. The lake was absolutely gorgeous - it was a deep blue like I´ve never seen before. Suffice to say, it was well worth the sweating and gasping that the hike entailed.
That evening we took the night bus back to Lima. Since we purchased the last seats on the bus, I ended up in first class which made for a very spacious and comfortable ride. And now I´m back in Lima for another week of Español! Yippee!!!
Here is a more complete set of pictures for nonfacebookers:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2223925&l=3a532&id=21003528
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2223727&l=c7bd7&id=21003528
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