Every where we go, we always take the (rainy) weather with us

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Hi again,

This entry is already completely Peruvian. As I wrote last time, we crossed the border to Peru in a bus last Monday. Our first destination (with the said bus) was Piura, a medium size city in the northern coast area of Peru (but not exactly on the shore). Apparently the northern coast of Peru is a flat desert that looks a bit like the northern part of the Negev (Piura = Beer Sheva). One new thing that they have in Peru and not in Ecuador is something called mototaxi, which is a motorcycle with some additional wheels and seats that serves as a taxi. It looks very funny, like an Indian riksha (you can see in the pictures). In Piura we only spent the night in some dump (but cheap) hostel, enjoyed its central location next to restaurants, shops and internet places, and continued to Trujillo the next morning. Again - the bus ride took most of the day (7 hours including changing the bus in Chiclayo), and we reached Trujillo afternoon.

Trujillo is located next to some pre-inca sites, so the next morning we took an organized tour of a whole day to see them. The guidance was supposed to be also in English, but since the group was composed of some Peruvians, one Ecuadorian and one Spaniard, the guide said she would speak in Spanish and explain in English what we don´t understand. So we had a whole day in Spanish and in fact I understood a lot, which was fun but tiring. First we visited ¨Huacas del sol y de la luna¨ (temples of the sun and moon), which are sites of the Moche culture, that existed between 100-900 AD. These two sites and the area between them were the capital of this culture. The temple of the sun (which was the administrative section) is now closed to visitors due to excavations, but we visited the well preserved temple of the moon, which was the religious section. Apparently the Moche built their temple with some nice decorations on the walls, and every something like 100 years they buried the whole building in bricks and built a new one above it, so the temple of the moon consists of 5 such levels. They also sucrified humans. By the way, the names of the sites are not the original ones, they were simply given by researchers who saw two sites close to one another.

After that we were taken to a restaurant for lunch, and then continued to see some sites of the Chimu culture which came after the Moche, around 900-1400 AD (until the Incas came). We visited a small site called ¨Huaca del dragon¨ (temple of the dragon) after the dragon shape that is part of the ornaments on the walls of this place. Then we visited a small museum that showed artifacts from all those pre-inca cultures (At that part I got quite tired, so I stopped understanding the guide). From there we continued to see one of the 9 palaces of the city Chan Chan, which was the Chimu´s capital. Each king there built his own palace, that´s why there are 9, but only the one we visited is open for visitors. We walked around in this big palace that contained (among other things) one religious court for the public, another private one and a smaller one which was dedicated for the burial procedrues of the king. The king was buried with all his servants (they were burried alive) and his property, because they believed that it was all transferred directly to the next world. (At this point I started understanding again). The last site was a small village on the beach called Huanchaco in which the fishermen use some unique boats, and we had some free time there.

In that day I had some very frustrating internet sessions, trying to upload the pictures of the previous entry (the text was already written) - in the morning before the tour we went to an internet place and after some trouble I almost managed to upload them, but then at the last stage we really ran out of time and had to go. When we got back from the tour we went to the same place but all the computers were busy. So we went to another place that had two computers, one of them didn´t have a USB connection and in the other the internet wasn´t functioning very well. At this point I decided to give up and do it in Huaraz, but on the way to the hostel we saw another place so I gave it one last chance. In that place the computer didn´t recognize my camera, and the internet explorer didn´t even open, so this was really enough for me. Luckily in our current hostel we have computers that work properly, so I could upload the photos here.

This was all on Wednesday, and that night we took our first night bus (9 hours) to Huaraz, where we got on Thursday morning and stayed till now. The bus was OK, we got some sleep, but still were quite tired when we got here. We payed 60 sols instead of 45 for the VIP seats (20 NIS difference), but I think the regular ones were comfortable enough. All in all we spent 30 hours in a bus in 4 days from Cuenca to Huaraz, and now we´ll have some rest from travelling. In Huaraz we went to a hostel that was recommended to us by the Belgian guy we sailed with in Galapagos, and found out that this was one of the 2-3 Israelis hostels here. We haven´t been in such a place so far, and it´s quite amusing. The house has four floors, and in three of them there are rooms, each with three bunk beds - 6 people in a room. There are some toilets and bathrooms with really hot water (sometimes too hot), a dining room with TV and DVD and some terraces. The population consists mainly of Israelis, and is changing very quickly - every day some people leave to treks or onward to Lima, new people return from treks or come from Lima, and the beds change their habitants every couple of days.

This is our 6th day in Huaraz so far, and in fact we hardly did anything. When we got here on Thursday we were quite tired so we didn´t do much all day, just went to town twice to have lunch and dinner. On Friday we went to town again to check with some tour agencies about a trek we want to do, and then we did some shopping and cooked SEUDA MAFSEKET in the hostel - vegetables soup (without taste), rizoto and baked potatoes. After that I started fasting (would you believe it?), and in fact this was one of the easiest fasts I had. Some of the people here fasted too and some didn´t, and anyway there were enough people in the hostel on Saturday to pass the time with. It was a very good Yom Kippur for me - I thought a lot, wrote in my diary, spent some quality time with the internet, played cards, listened to music, spoke with people and so on. When the fast ended I ate half a box of cookies that we bought in the market here (I was looking at them the whole day...) and then another dish of pasta in some good restaurant, and then I felt VERY full.

On Sunday we planned to go on a 4 days trek called ¨Santa Cruz¨, but since my throat hurt since Friday and I didn´t know if I´m going to be sick, we decided to postpone the trek and go on a one day trip instead to a lagune called Laguna 69. The transportation there and back (3 hours in each direction) was arranged by the hostel, and we were 24 people in it, 22 of them Israelis. The bus took us to the beginning of the trail (which was very clear this time) at around 3900m height, and from there we climbed up to the lagune at 4450m. First we went for a while in a plain, then there was an ascent, then another plain with a small lagune and then another ascent, steeper than the first, up to the laguna 69. The second ascent was quite hard, I had to stop for breathing every few steps, but eventually we got to the lagune which was definately worth it. On the way up we were easily passed by a group of Peruvian teenagers and also a mother and her 5 years old daughter, who all seemed to be walking very easily. Anyway, the view during this walk and the lagune itself were amazingly beautiful, as you can see in the pictures, and I just couldn´t stop taking pictures. When we got up we sat next to the lagune for a while and had lunch and snacks, and some people made tea for everyone. Then we headed back in the same trail but this time downhill, which was nice and easy. The driver waited for us at the right time, and we got back to the hotel around 9PM, happy but very tired.

I haven´t explained the title of this entry yet, even though it´s probably quite self explaining - after running away from the rain in Baños, it seems like the rainy season here started exactly on the day we arrived. So far it´s not so bad, something like an hour or two of rain every afternoon, but I´m afraid this might mean we won´t have enough time to do all the treks that we planned here. On the day we visited the lagune we had some really good luck, and except for a very short drizzle on the way up, all the rest of the time we had a perfect weather, and when we reached the lagune the sun was shining and the clouds spread, so we had a wonderful view.

Yesterday (Monday) and today I´m not doing anything, because my soar throat has turned into a regular cold, and I´m waiting for it to pass. I don´t want to go on a trek when I´m like this because with the current state of my nose I can´t breath even when sitting in the hostel, but on the other hand it´s hard to sit in the hostel all day and pass the time while I know the weather is against me. I hope I´ll be able to go on some trek tomorrow or the day after. In the meantime - I´ll upload some pictures.

Happy Sukkot!
Efrat.

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Photos

Pictures in a museum near Trujillo
On the left - a real indian woman, on the right - a woman figure in pottery.

The palace in Chan Chan
The wall of the public religous court.

The palace in Chan Chan
Some more wall decorations.

A market in the village Yungay
We stopped there on the way to the lagune 69.

Comments

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Very nice..
Very nice! but where are the other halfs of the fishing boats. Feel well, Enjoy the trek