Huaraz

Huaraz is the adventure sports capital of Peru. There's not much of interest in the city itself, because most of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1970, so the main reason for visiting Huaraz is the landscape that surrounds it - the Cordilleras Blanca and Huayhuash constitute the highest mountain range in the world outside the Himalayas. Most people that visit Huaraz go there for the mountaineering and trekking, and there are a lot of multi-day treks on offer, but since I'd only just recovered after getting ill on my last trek into Colca Canyon, I was happy just to go on a couple of day trips.

On Thursday I booked myself on a minibus tour that went to Lake Chinancocha via the town of Yungay. We first went to a viewpoint where there were good views of Huascarán (which at 6768m is Peru's highest mountain - see the photo below) and of other mountains in the Cordillera Blanca.
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We then went on to Yungay, which is most famous for having been completely buried by a landslide caused by the same 1970 earthquake that partially destroyed Huaraz. Only 92 people out of the population of 25,000 survived. We saw a memorial garden on the site of the old town (there are still apparently thousands of bodies buried underneath this), and Yungay's large cemetery. There was also an old bus that had been left in the position in which it was half-buried by the landslide. We then went on to Lake Chinancocha, which was quite pretty, and very turquoise. We also went on a slightly pointless 10-minute boat trip into the lake.

We had a late lunch in the town of Caraz, and it was there that I finally ate my first guinea pig, well half of one anyway. Here is a photo of me about to tuck into it, having put its cute fluffiness to the back of my mind. I ordered 'picante de cuy' (spicy guinea pig) rather than the more common 'cuy al horno' (roasted guinea pig), and I was actually a bit disappointed. The meat tasted OK, but it was a bit slimy and greasy, and not surprisingly for such a small animal there wasn't much of it, particularly as I only had a half. By the way, if you don't approve of eating guinea pigs, you should understand that they're not considered to be pets in Peru, and they're only bred to be eaten. Anyway, from now on I think I'll stick to the ceviche (raw seafood marinated in lime, chilli and onions), which is easily my favourite Peruvian food so far.

On Friday I went on a day hike to Lake 69, which is billed as the best way to get a taste of the scenery around Huaraz without actually going on a 4-day (or longer) hike. I found out that a couple of other people from my hostel (Harriet from the UK and Jeremy from Canada) also wanted to do the hike on the same day, so we decided to do it together. For 50 soles (£12) each, we could have booked a taxi to take us to the start of the hike at Cebollapampa, wait for us, and bring us back. That was my preferred option, but Harriet and Jeremy wanted to save money, so we ended up going by public transport, which cost about 30 soles each, and involved a nightmare 3½ hour trip each way.

We left the hostel at 6am, and after eating breakfast in Yungay we eventually reached the start of the hike at about 10am. It was an 8km walk up to the lake, which we were told should take about 3 hours. We started at the bottom of a valley at an altitude of about 3900m, and made our way up, passing through scenery like this and this. We passed by several waterfalls, for example here and here. We walked pretty quickly and actually made it to the lake in around two hours. Below is a photo of me at Lake 69 (altitude 4600m), and this is a picture of the three of us at the lake.

It started to snow just as we arrived, so we spent a pretty freezing 45 minutes resting and tucking into a lunch of Ritz crackers and coconut biscuits, which was about all we managed to buy in Yungay. We also heard and saw a couple of minor avalanches while we were at the lake, at the snow line way above us.

We made it back to Cebollapampa by 3pm, and we then had a long wait for a minibus to take us on the bone-shaking journey back to Yungay, from where we crammed ourselves into another minibus that took us back to Huaraz. I then had a mad rush to get something to eat and get ready to catch my overnight bus to Trujillo, which is where I am now, and will be for the next couple of days.

P.S. The map of my trip has now got so big that Google have split it onto two pages, which isn't what I wanted at all. I'm not sure at the moment how I'm going to deal with this.