Huarez

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So, day 3. Lima is best forgotten, given that I had less than 12 hours there, at least 6 of which were sleeping... I was greeted at the airport by Alfonso, who didn´t stop talking despite the fact that he had no English and my Spanish is limited, to say the least. He did his best to show me the sights, even though it was midnight. I did understand when he took me through the high rolling areas though, because he kept saying ¨mucho dineros¨.

Alfonso took me to the bus in the morning, which was hugely luxurious. I´ve never seen anything like it. I was in the first class bit, which had fully reclining seats and footrests... so you can imagine what I spent most of my time doing. Although I did occasionally open my eyes and saw a huge variety of things. After we left Lima - which extended at least 50kms with shanty towns, we hit a desert, which was literally just sand. There was a town in the middle of the desert. Lord only knows what they live on. We then ascended 3,500 metres in about 60 kms, so you can imagine how winding the road was. We then reached a plateau, which was much greener and rimmed with snow topped peaks. Bit more money and definitely quite a lot of agriculture going on. We saw lots of chillies and corn laid out drying by the side of the road. There are quite a lot of houses perched right at the edge of the road. Apparently that´s allowed. After the agrarian reforms the government in theory took land off the rich to give to the poor... but it´s fair to say that a fair bit of palm greasing goes on.

The guide Val met me - she is a tiny dynamo... it is interesting to arrive first and see that the guide is more nervous than I am about what the rest of the group will be like. I think she´s quite relieved that I´m not expecting her to spend every second of the day with her.

Today is chilling. We went to some hot pools in the morning, but I didn´t take to the waters which were very brown and unappealing. I can take a bath at home! And wandering around town. I think I´m acclimatising quite well, but defintely get more puffed than usual. Either that, or I really am incredibly unfit and have no business being on this trip! Walk tomorrow and then most of the other people will arrive tomorrow evening.

All good so far. Hope everyone is enjoying the winter... though winter here, we are pretty close to the equator, so temperature is around 23 degrees in the day, which is pretty pleasant.

Lucy xx

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Photos

Woman with alpaca
I had to pay 2 soles to get this picture (about NZ$1)

Huarez
River running through the town... and then spectacular views to the mountains.

Comments

[Jacqui]

Hi Lucy!
Hi Lucy, great photos! It sounds like you are keeping yourself busy. I hope you were able to access your emails with the information I sent you? Looking forward to your next update! Cheers, Jacks :-)