Advertisement
Published: September 30th 2007
We landed in Lima only to find that yet again we had narrowly avoided an earthquake (Tokyo all over again). This one was a massive quake of around 7-8 on the richter scale that unfortunately killed hundreds in a town called Ica, south of Lima. We missed it by approximately 4 hours, the length of our plane´s delay in Madrid.
Lima is perpetually covered in fog during winter, a fact we learnt soon after arriving. Foggy town plus us equals a bus trip to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca. From there we went on a 4 day Santa Cruz trek. The scenery was beautiful with snow topped mountains all around. Dave soon discovered that he has slight issues with altitude sickness - on the first night he had a very bad headache and was shaking somewhat, fortunately he found a cure - pooing and projectile vomiting. After an hour waiting in the freezing cold our donkey team arrived with warmth and protection against the hordes of midges who didn't seem to mind the cold or altitude one little bit. Hence the title for this, Daves altitude sickness remedy recommended to all travellers. Dave wasn't the only one to suffer, on
the second day when climbing the 4,750 m pass Sarah discovered that her childhood asthma may not have been left behind in childhood. After completing the pass, days 3 and 4 of the trek were a lovely stroll downhill through pretty valleys.
Nice weather seemed to suit us, so changing our plans completely we ventured further north in search of more sun. After a day or two in Trujillo and the cloudy beach side town of Huanchaco we went further north to a little beach resort called Mancora. We spent a couple of days lounging beside the pool and have the honour of being the only tourists in our resort not to be mugged on the beach.
After Mancora, we headed up north into Ecuador for more sun and a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the Galapagos Islands ...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0821s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
John
non-member comment
Midges
Leave the midges alone. They are smaller than you !!