Spanish to the core in Peru

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I got to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru,
early in the morning and landed at Paola's house, a
cool girl from couchsurfing that hosted me for the
next 2 days. After resting and talking to Paola a
little, I went to the center to see the city. It has
some nice building, but my general impression was that
it is too urban for me - too many cars, too much smog
so you can't see the volcanos that are around it... So
after that half day in the center I decided that I
don't have much more to do over there, but stayed
another day because I wanted to go on a tour to the
nearby Colca Canyon (one of the deepest in the world),
and wanted to rest a little before I get up really
early to go on the tour. At the night I went out with
Paola to a couchsurfing meeting in a bar, we met some
of the city's couchsurfers, drank a little and saw the
city's bars. The next day, like I said, I had nothing
really planned so I just rested and hung around with
Paola - we went to the center for some arrangements
and then to one of her friends' house. Overall,
although I don't have much time left, I do like taking
these days off traveling every once in a while...
The next day I (inevitably) woke up early to go to the
2 day tour in the Colca Canyon. On the minibus I met
the group that I was about to spend the next 2 days
with, that was consisted of about 4 Argentinians, 2
Chileans, a French girl and a few others, overall a
pretty cool group (although most of them were somewhat
older than me). The whole tour was a little too
'touristic' and organized for me, with organized short
stops at different places and with very little room
for spontanity... On the morning we made our way to
Chivay, the biggest village in the Colca Valley
(before the actual canyon start), and on the way made
stops at really nice places where we could see the
snow-capped volcanos that surround Arequipa (as soon
as we got out of the city the sky got much clearer)
and some animals... On Chivay they took us to eat
lunch at a pretty fancy touristic restaurant, but the
funny thing was that nobody stayed there and we all
went to look for the local cheap restaurants with the
fixed menu (traveling with latinos is almost like
traveling with Israelis in that sense 😊... From there
we moved on to a siesta, and after went to hot springs
(I prefered walking around and seeing the area a
little better). At night we went again to a fancy
touristic restaurant, this time to see a local music
and dancing folklor show. Again, half of the ppl
didn't really order anything, and the music was
actually much less bad than I expected (the local
folklor music can get really annoying sometimes...).
The next morning we woke up early again, this time to
go to a mirador where you can see the depth of the
canyon and watch the flight of the famous condors -
the huge bird that everybody seem to make a fuss of.
On the way we stopped at another village, and could
see how the poor local kids wake up early to dance for
the tourist buses...
From there we went to the highlight of the tour - Cruz
del Condor, the mirador where we could see the huge
condors flying above our heads and appreciate the
depth of the canyon. We spent a while there, it is
very beautiful but also very touristic, full with
tourists and locals that try to sell them all of the
usual stuff. On the way there and back we stopped at
a couple of other miradors where we could see a little
more of the canyon, but generally I don't think we saw
enough of it.. We made another lunch stop at Chivay
where everybody again didn't enter the expensive
restaurant and went to the market instead, and from
there drove straight back to Arequipa. I said goodbye
to the guys from the tour, and since some of us were
going to the same direction we said we might meet
at the bus terminal. I went back to Paula's to say
goodbye and take my stuff, and made my way to the
terminal, where I met the 2 Chileans - Fabiola and
Aldo, 2 very cool ppl, and we went together to Ica.
After the night in the bus we took a cab to the nearby
Huacachina - an oasis surrounded by sand dunes, that
is basically a small lake with about 3 streets around
it, all hostals and restaurants...We checked into a
hostel and spent out morning walking around the place
and relaxing at the hostel pool. In the afternoon we
went to this place's main attraction - buggy and
sandboarding tour. So our driver drove like crazy over
the dunes, some of them with great views of Ica and
Huacachina, and we stopped at one of the dunes to try
the board. We tried skiing on our belly and on our
feet, which was fun but didn't work very well for most
of us (including me), so before going to the big dunes
the driver told us all to go on the belly
exclusively... So we got to a huge dune that was
consisted of 3 parts of skiing, and on the last slope
we got to a pretty crazy speed. It was a lot of fun
and I even didn't break anything (well except for some
scratches and my crappy camera that didn't really
survive the ride...). Then the driver tried to kill us
all again while driving on the dunes (fun again...)
until we got to a dune where we could see the
beautiful desert sundown. We sat and watched for a
while, took pictures and went back to the hostel. I
saw that before I go to Lima, I can still pass by the
Islas Ballestas (also known as the 'poorman
galapagos'), I just need to get up very early, so I
decided that it is worth the effort, hung out a little
more with the 2 Chileans, said goodbye and goodnight,
and in the next morning I woke up very early...
I went to Ica, took the bus to Pisco, left my stuff at
the agency, took the bus to the coast and from there
went to the boat tour to the islands. The tour was
quite short (2 hours on the boat, could've been much
longer if you ask me), but the islands are amazing. We
started by going through a peninsula that has an
ancient mysterious menorah-like sand painting, that
nobody knows its origin, and then sailed on to the
islands. The islands themselves are very impressive
rock formations in the middle of the ocean with
beautiful shapes, and on top of that they are
absolutely packed with animals. The boat passed slowly
through and around the islands and we could see some
cute penguins, a lot of sealions (including babies)
and some other animals, and during all of this time
massive amounts of birds were flying all around us and
the islands. Overall a very beautiful and almost
magical experience. On the one hand I am really sorry
I didn't have a functioning camera for this place, but
on the other hand it was good that I could stare the
whole time at the animals and the islands and absorb
the experience without worrying about taking photos.
We came back to the shore and then back to the agency
in Pisco and I had a couple of hours to see the city.
Pisco suffered a massive earthquake less than a year
ago that destroyed big parts of the city, so it was
interesting to walk around and to see how much
construction work is being done...
Then I took the bus to Lima. At first I didn't really
want to stop there, because it was supposed to be very
urban and I didn't really feel like big scary cities,
but in the end I decided to stop for a day over there,
to say hi to Kike, my friend from couchsurfing that I
met in Rosario (Argentina). He was working very late
when I got there, so he arranged for me to stay with
his friend Felix, also a couchsurfer, and we said that
we will meet the next day. At the evening I walked
around with Felix in his neighborhood, to get dinner
and to buy me a new camera in 50 soles... The next day
I went to walk around Lima's historic center. After a
month in the heights I was finally hot (well Ica was
hot too...), and there was so much traffic without any
laws or signs, that I had to run everytime I crossed a
street and almost got run over way too many times...
Definately too urban. The old center, when I finally
got to it, was quite nice with a lot of old colonial
buildings. I walked around a little and then entered a
monastery that also functions as a museum, and also
has catacombs (burying caves that were the city's
first cemetery). The monestary has some impressive
rooms filled with art, and the catacumbs are packed
with bones in surprisingly organized piles (a pit full
of just skulls, for example)... Then I went to a free
museum that had a nice exhibition of pre-inca
archeology and gold works, and then to the Inquisition
Museum. It is housed in the house were the Spanish
Inquisition operated before Peru's independence and
where the Peruvian parliament worked for a while
afterwards, and has a pretty interesting exhibition
about the history of the inquisition in Peru,
including demonstrations of the different tortures
(not as bad as you might think, they weren't even
allowed to spill the blood or to break the bones of
the accused!). I did the guided tour in there in 3
parts (after starting from the middle)... Then I took
the bus that goes up a mountain mirador where you can
see a lot of the city, but the bus did about 10 rounds
around the main square until it was full, so by the
time we got up there the sun had already set so I
could only see the city's lights. When I got down I
called Kike that said that he is at work, but he will
come by Felix's house later. So I went back to Felix's
house, but in the end Kike couldn't get out of work
and I had a bus to catch (I walked around almost 3
hours at noon between the city's different bus
companies to find the latest bus to Huaraz - why can't
they have 1 terminal and why all the buses leave
around the same hour?!), so I left the city without
even meeting him, we just talked over the phone...
So I took another night bus, this time to Huaraz, that
should be Peru's trekking capital. I spent the first
day walking around, trying to figure out the trekking
situation - which treks are open, what is the weather,
what are the costs etc. The 4 guys that were with me
on the bus to Huaraz were going the next day to a
shorter version of the Huayhuash trek, which should be
one of the best in the world and was what I wanted to
do, but it seemed too fast and unorganized for me. I
also met an Israeli couple at my hostal that knew a
guide there and was organizing a group for a pretty
cheap price, so I told them I'm in too and we said
that we will meet the next evening. That evening I
also met in the street my 2 Chilean friends (Aldo and
Fabiola), that arrived there a day before me, and we
said that we will go the next day to Chavin, an
archeological site in the area. So the next day I got
up early, moved hostel (really didn't like the one I
was in), and went to join the same tour as Aldo and
Fabiola. On the way to Chavin we could see some of the
snow-capped mountains that surround Huaraz and made a
short stop at a beautiful lagoon that was on the way -
great scenery - and to keep us even more entertained
the guide was explaining some things about Chavin and
some other random stuff. We stopped to eat at the
small village near the site, and then entered. It is a
city that was probably the base of an ancient pre-inca
culture, that on a first site is not very impressive,
but after some explenations, when I started to
understand the meaning of all the ruins, I could
apprecite how surprisingly soficeticated this culture
was so long ago (way before inca times. they had a
complicated religion and astronomy, and their buildigs
survived many earthquakes and years...) - but still,
not more impressive than the archeology back home...
After I came back I discovered that we weren't going
on the trek the next day, so I met the Chilenos again
and we went to eat and then to some discoteque,
drinkning and dancing. The next day I discovered that
the trek was postponed in another day, to Wensday, so
I had nothing better to do besides walking around with
the Chilenos around Huaraz for the day. We had fun
walking around together for the last time, and at the
evening we said goodbye, they moved on to the north
and I went to meet my partners for the trek - the
couple (Maor and Adi), Alex, a guy in the beginning of
the trip, and 2 girls - Adi and Adar.
So basically, between traveling with Fabiola and Aldo
and couchsurfing, I spent most of my time in this part
of my trip in Peru speaking Spanish, which wasn't very
easy (Chilean Spanish is full of weird slang!), but
probably somewhat improved my Spanish (and made my
English worse 😊.
The next day our trekking group met in the morning,
and then met our guide, Juan, that Maor and Adi knew
from another trek they did with him. He seemed pretty
serious and offered us a very low price, so we settled
the details, went to check some of the equipment, and
paid him so he will go shopping for food for the trek.
Me and Alex spent the rest of the day walking aroung,
buying stuff for the trek and preparing our backpack,
and the next (very early) morning we all met and set
out for the trek.
In short, the Huayhuash is 8 days of not-so-easy walk
between beautiful scenery of snow-capped mountains,
lagoons, green valleys and rivers. It was less hard
than I expected actually, partly because our gear was
carried by the donkeys, and I almost wasn't affected
by the height (5200m at the highest point we reached).
We had a pretty cool group, but after a couple of days
we discovered that our guide was unreliable as far as
promises goes, and childish, annoying and selfish as
far as behaviour goes, which was sometimes annoying,
but couldn't really damage the views. As far as
weather goes, we had a couple of days with crazy
snow-rain-hale storms when we got completely wet and
couldn't see much of the views, a couple of nice days
with some hours of clear sky, and a couple of days in
the middle...
At the night after we finished the trek I got on a bus
to Trujillo, spent a couple of hours there looking for
a bus (saw the city in the process, nothing
special...), and after 3 more buses and almost 2 days
I ended up in Quito, Ecuador just in time for kabalat
shabat... I did the seder here at the beit jabad, met
in the street quite a lot of ppl that I traveled with
before, and am currently couchsurifng. I hope I will
have more time and energy to write more about Ecuador
later. On wensday I am going to baños, which should be
a cool town.

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