Blogs from Huancavelica, Peru, South America

If Huancavelica moves slowly, Yauli goes in reverse. A bucolic settlement forty minutes from Huancavelica by taxi, it is an unassuming town of a few thousand far enough away to leave the tedium of Huancavelica behind but original enough to make a day of it. Within ten minutes of leaving Huancavelica, the taxi turns off to the right and dips along an unpaved road. The track hugs the mountainside. Large birds of prey float overhead. Cattle graze in yellow fields cordoned off by stone fences. The river water looks deceptively clean and fresh. Rosalinda and I jump in the collective taxi at the noisy and scummy bus depot in Huancavelica. Just two minutes later, the final third and fourth passengers arrive. Collective taxis only leave when full, meaning it could be a quick wait or it ... read more

I once thought that those who contract altitude sickness were simply doing something wrong. They didn’t take the proper precautions. They were not employing the proper breathing techniques to get enough oxygen into their system. I was sure if I concentrated enough and took very deep breaths this surely would not happen to me. Rather it would be the other passengers who would start to sway and feel ill on the morning bus ride to Huancayo. It would take me over a high range of the Andes. I have rarely encountered motion sickness, so there was nothing to worry about. Motion sickness and altitude sickness are nearly the same, right? The highway from Lima to Huancayo begins to seriously incline after Chosica. The climb is not as if the bus were pushing its way up a ... read more

Hey Everyone, I am back in Lima after my month stay in Huancavelica. I will tell you about the bus ride back first because it was pretty interesting. I got on the bus in Huancavelica at 8pm Sunday night. It has been raining a lot up there so there are a lot of rock slides. The bus was pretty nice with reclining seats and a bathroom. We were on the road for about 2 hours when I woke up and we were stopped at a rock slide. We had been stopped for about a half hour and got going again after about another half hour, then a little later at about 1130 I woke up again and we were stopped again. This time everything was quiet, the bus was off, and everyone was sleeping. I guess ... read more

Hey Everybody, I finally got my pictures uploaded from my camera, so I am going to post a bunch on here. For New Years here I had a huge Thanksgiving like dinner here on New Years Eve with turkey and Paneton and a little wine and hot chocolate. I guess it was a typical thing. Then we hung out and the priests sang some songs in Spanish that I didn't know. I shattered my record of eating dinner with 7 priests. This time there were 16. At nine they all went to bed or to do whatever priests do, so I decided I had to stay up until 12, so I watched a movie and the horrible CNN coverage until 12. At 12 I went outside and people were lighting off fireworks and burning things all ... read more

We left Huancayo by taxi at an all too early hour in the morning - our driver collected us from the hostel as arranged, and as Nico decided to join us on this leg of the journey we unfortunately had to bump another bloke out of the ride - who we later met in Huancavelica, Luke, from the Lonely Planet... top bloke. The taxi ride was straight forward, we passed massive farming areas and learnt that the locals grow a ridiculous number of potato species, passing security checkpoints was stress-free, the road soon climbed over several passes - and down the other side was possibly the one of the world's most impressive potential Targa stages, I failed to get a photo but imagine about 40 mins of continuous sealed-road hairpins winding down a stunning valley, gold ... read more