Beach to the Mountains

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Our next stop was Trujillo, just a break in the journey to Huaraz and the mountains. We were lucky to get the last seats on the last bus, having failed to notice that it was Peruvian independance day, major national holiday, and the whole country was on the move. I don´t actually remember this journey, so I must have been tired. Anyway it was a night bus and we managed to sleep a little and not get robbed so I consider it a success. We booked our ticket to Huaraz for the next day and set about trying to find something to occupy us for 24 hours. We decided to ignore the city of Trujillo and go stay in the nearby seaside town of Huanchaco. Maybe we were missing Canoa. There are supposed to be some interesting cultural type ruins around Trujillo but after a drive-by viewing of Chan Chan from the taxi window on the way to Huanchaco we decided it looked lame in comparison to what we´d seen at Chacha and we couldn´t be arsed. There are many more ruins to come. Due to the whole national holiday thing we went to about 6 different hostals in Huanchaco before we found any free beds. I personally thought Huanchaco was a bit shit. It´s a seaside town like Canoa only bigger, move developed, less naturally beautiful, more touristy, colder, with uglier buildings and about 400% more hassling. The only attraction I could see would be the impressive surf on the underwhelming beach, which excited Kit to a disturbing degree.

I have decided that I don´t like this surfing buisness. Much to Kit´s disappointment, I will never be a surfer chick. I gave it a good try, but I can´t be arsed with something which has such an unsatisfying pleasure to pain ratio.

It goes like this - drag massive unwieldly surfboard across hot sand, sharp shells, angry crabs and sandflies. Paddle out through surf, getting repeatedly slapped in the face by each wave that passes. Already knackered at this point. Attempt to catch wave, fall off, headbut own surfboard, inhale saltwater, lose bikini top, emerge with leash wrapped around neck. Repeat 3 or 4 times before catching a nice wave which you can ride for maybe 20 seconds, if you´re lucky. Then spend another 15 minutes paddling back out. In my estimation this equals around 30 minutes pain and humiliation for around 30 seconds fun, or a 60/1 pain to pleasure ratio. And this is in Ecuador, where the waves are easy, the beach is soft sand not pointy rocks and the water is warm. There´s no fucking way you´d get me surfing in Scarborough in a wetsuit. I can only imagine that a large part of the appeal of surfing lies in the posing, the designer clothing and the fact that it gives straight men a legitimate excuse to wear long hair and jewelery.

We stayed one night in Huanchaco then got the bus to Huaraz, a city up at about 3000m in the Cordillera Blanca. These long distance buses in Peru are exponentially better than the ones in Ecuador. They have reclining seats and blankets and brakes and sometimes they bring you a glass of juice and biscuits. The journey was awesome, we were on the second floor of a double decker bus right in the front seats, meaning we had panoramic views of the mountains. The best sunset I have seen so far was from the window of that bus.

Huaraz is an exceptionally ugly city in spectactularly beautiful surroundings. The old city was pretty much totally flattened by an earthquake in the 70s, and it now consists entirely of half built concrete structures with pointy bits of metal sticking out at dangerous angles. We came there because we want to do some trekking and climbing in the Cordillera Blanca mountains, since we´d been repeatedly told was the best place in Peru, if you like that kind of thing.

On day one, to try to aclimatise to the altitude, we decided to go horseriding. Rather than booking through an agency in town we attempted to freestyle it and just turn up at the place where all the horses were. Due to what is in my opinion some poorly chosen village naming, we ended up in Yungay, not Yungar. Yungar is the place recommended for horse riding, Yungay is an hour in the wrong direction, notable only for having been totally burried in a massive mudslide which killed 20,000 people. Having realised our slight error, we tried again and managed to locate the right village. By this point it was about midday and it quickly became clear that all the good horses and sensible guides had been snapped up. Since the recommended guides were nowhere to be found, we went with a little local women who had a couple of animals that could loosely be described as horses. We had come with the intention of doing a four hour horse ride through the mountains, but after about 30 minutes it became obvious that our horses were knackered and metally unstable, so we decided to go back. Our guide sulked and refused to speak to us the whole way.

So that day was a bit of a dud. We spent the rest of our time shopping around all the tour agencies and eventually decided on a four day trek into the mountains, starting at 6am the next morning. I will talk about this in my next entry.

By the way, I am writing this from an internet cafe in Lima, about two weeks after this stuff actually happened. I am well behind on my blog but am taking this opportunity to catch up because Lima is shit, I am too tired from the night bus to do anything and we have 4 hours to wait for our flight to Cuzco, so I´m just going to sit here and rant 10 days worth of blog in one go. Enjoy.

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Photos

Sani-Jesus
For all your hygiene needs.

Fanny Jam
Fanny Jam is popular throughout Peru. Only me and Kit seem to find it hillarious. You can also buy Fanny Tuna. And KIT FIESTA brand condoms.

Journey to Huaraz
The coastal desert in Peru is mind bogglingly massive. Fall asleep, wake up 5 hours later, looks like you haven´t moved. This is the Pan American HIghway, pretty much the only paved road in the whole country. And somehow, despite all that space, the other bus is still heading right for us on the same side of the road.

Huaraz Cathedral
Poetic rainbow over Huaraz´s half contructed cathedral, the first one presumably having been destroyed in the earthquake. If you look closely, you can see that someone has spray painted "CATHEDRAL" on the front wall, in case there was any confusion.