Mountain Climbing & Trekking in the Andes

To get out of Pacasmayo as quickly as possible, we'd bought a cheap bus ride to Trujillo, just a couple of hours away. We got there and went to the first hostel we found. It was cheap and  the old man who owned it seemed really nice. When we got into our room, we met our roommate, Neil, an inspiring British man cycling around the world. He'd been at it for two years and eight months and was still going strong. He was stuck in Trujillo waiting for a bike part to arrive in the mail so he knew the city fairly well and took the liberty of showing us around that night. We spent the night chatting away and listening to his awesome stories.

The next day we took a tour of the Chan Chan ruins and Huanchaco Beach. We enjoyed the tour but my favorite part was Andrea goofing off and making up her own tour. The beach was beautiful (nicer than Pacasmayo's, we decided) and there were tons of people learning how to surf. On the bus ride home, we started talking to other people who'd been on the tour and made friends with two different girls who'd come by themselves. One was from Arequipa and the other was from Lima. They were wonderful and we've kept in touch with them ever since.

Since there didn't seem to be that much to do in Trujillo, we decided to leave that night, spending a grand total of about 24 hours in the second-biggest city in Peru. (It was hard to leave the hostel though since it had a giant tortoise that walked around the rooms and did whatever it wanted.)

From there, we took a bus to Huaraz where a young couple from Colorado had agreed to host us. It was going to be our second couch surfing experience and, again, we didn't know what to expect. She'd explained how to get to her house but addresses here are a bit hard to find and we were going to be arriving in Huaraz at 4:30 am. Anyway, she explained how to get to the house and said that, if no one answered the door, to just yell and that someone would wake up.

We weren't sure if we'd found the house or not once we got out of the taxi but he was gone so it was too late anyway and we seemed to be in about the right spot. Thanks to Andrea's 3G, I was able to call Jenny and it turned out we were in the right place.

She showed us inside and gave us a quick tour of the house. She and her husband live with another couple (an Italian and an Argentine) and they have an entire room dedicated to couch surfers. (That was actually one of their requirements when house-hunting. Amazing!)

When we woke up the next day, we talked with Jenny for a long time and she gave us plenty of advice about where to go and what to do. Thanks to Jenny, Huaraz stole a tiny piece of each of our hearts. The town itself was beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains and it was the first place we'd been on our trip where men said "good morning" or "good afternoon" instead of whistling when we walked by. The town was cute and the people were friendly. What more could we ask for??

It gets better, though. We took Jenny's advice and decided to do a one-day trek in a part of the Cordillera Blanca in the Andes. It was BEAUTIFUL...and what an experience! We walked through all types of weather...hot & sunny to freezing & rainy and everything in between. We walked right alongside cows and donkeys (which was a first for me, being from suburban US...any wild animals I'd been that close to before were in a zoo). We walked through a lot of animal crap as well but hey, that's nature, right? (The war cry for my friends and I in Peru later became "Just keep telling yourself it's mud" - thanks, Duncan & Ian.) As we were walking, I started to hear my friends' and my own breath getting heavier and heavier. Altitude. We'd been hearing about it for so long and now we were finally dealing with it. We kept walking higher and higher until we reached the third of the three beautiful lagoons. It was foggy as we reached the top but as soon as we got there, everything cleared up and we had an unbelievable view of Laguna 69 before the fog closed in again. The water was the clear blue and there was a beautiful waterfall on the side. It was absolutely amazing. We sat on some rocks to eat and rest until we got too cold and decided to head back down.

As fine as I'd felt going up (minus the shortness of breath) thanks to the coca leaves we were chewing, the altitude hit me when I got back down. We got back into our van to head home and I realized how much my head hurt and how nauseated I felt...and Lizzy felt the same. It was a rough ride back but things only got better from there.

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A few days later, we decided to go to the Bosque de Piedras which is an absolutely beautiful piece of land in the Cordillera Negra in the Andes. We bought a rock-climbing tour which turned out to be private - the three of us, a guide and our taxista. We showed up in the morning with all our warmest clothes and ready for a new experience!

Our guide was interesting and had an admirable attitude toward life so we enjoyed talking with him the whole way there. When we got there, we went inside the cute little cabin to have some tea and then we set off. More beautiful nature and more cow poop to walk through. Before the rock climbing, we went on a mini-walking tour through the area and, even though there was lots of fog, it was quite impressive. The fog gave it a mystical quality (which characterized a lot of the places we went in Peru) which made it all the more interesting.

We stopped to rest for a few and then it was time to climb. The guide taught Andrea how to support him with the rope from the bottom and then he went up first to hook the rope through all the metal loops already bolted into the mountain. He went ridiculously fast and made it look way easier than it actually was. When he came down, Andrea took the first turn going up and the guide taught me how to support her on the rope from below (although I made him stand behind me just in case). Andrea did an awesome job and then Lizzy and I followed afterwards. It is an awesome activity!!

There was a lot of "I can't find anywhere else to go" or "My hands are frozen. I'm coming back down!" going on whenever someone was on their way up but everyone at the bottom was extremely supportive. No one let anybody else give up.

The guide set up three different routes for us while we were out that day and each one was a little taller than the last (the third being about 30 m high). Lizzy was the only one to reach the very top of the third one (yay, Lizzy!!) but Andrea got within two meters of it before it started to rain and she had to come back down. My lame self didn't even attempt the last one because it was raining and I'm sure I would've fallen and hurt myself...plus it was way too cold to be out there any longer.

The climbing was awesome, though. It was an intense psychological exercise. The most difficult part was the temperature, but the altitude didn't help either. My circulation sucks and my hands were either yellow (liver issue) or purple the whole time we were up there but you can't wear gloves while climbing; you have to be able to feel the mountain. Toward the bottom of the mountain, I spent a lot of time talking to my friends down below who told me repeatedly to quit talking, start focusing and get climbing. Once I got up too high to really be talking though, everything changed. At that point you're on your own and it's all about what you have going on in your own head. It's easy to freak out as you get higher and higher, farther away from the sound of voices and when you can't tell how tightly the rope's being held. You realize you can't feel your hands but that you need them to climb and you don't know how the hell you're ever going to make it to the top. A few times I freaked out a little because I couldn't feel my hands. My friends yelled to stop climbing and blow on them and then to keep going. I did but at first I almost passed out. Exhaling like that when you're not used to the altitude is no joke. It can all be controlled in your mind, though. Realizing that you're in control and taking your time makes all the difference in the world. Every once in a while I would stop and breath normally into one hand at a time or rub them against my legs to regain feeling. Once you feel your hands, climbing is much easier. It's amazing when you focus on one little step at a time...finding a tiny hole, pushing your toes in as far as you can, pushing yourself up with your legs and grabbing any little portion of the rock you can with your fingers to balance before you look for the next foothold...you suddenly look up and realize how close you've gotten to the top. Touching the top is an amazing feeling and then repelling down is slightly terrifying but really fun.

I can't wait to rock climb again but in summer weather rather than winter. Again, the altitude got to Lizzy and I but it wasn't quite as bad as the first time had been.

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We also went to the hot springs in Huaraz one day. We took a bus and the hiked for about an hour to get there. It wasn't a very touristy place (although we'd passed some that were). It was a tiny, traditional street with a few stands selling food and then the hot springs. We went first into the natural caves that work like saunas and it was awesome. You choose which temperature you want (I think we chose 45) and then the three of us went into our cave with our friend, a French guy who was also couch surfing in our same house. We'd picked eucalyptus leaves off trees on our hike there thanks to Jenny's warning that the caves didn't smell good and it was great advice. We stayed in the caves for about 20 minutes and then jumped into a warm pool with a view of the mountains so we could cool off. Hiking back, Andrea used her excellent negotiation skills (the same ones she used to get us all our hats/gloves at ridiculously cheap prices) to get us a nice, cheap ride back to town.

We can't thank Jenny enough for the wonderful time we had in Huaraz. Besides the adventures we had and the fact that we were in a friendly town surrounded by the Andes, we had an amazing time back at the house. Our hosts were friendly and, between them and the couch surfers, there were 10 of us from all over the world, cooking dinner together and sharing laughs every night. An Australian couple, Brendon and Emma, came and spent our last few days there as well. The first morning that we were all there together, Emma came and sat on our bed and talked to us for a while and we never wanted her to leave. She was absolutely hilarious and sweet and they were such an inspiring couple. They were traveling the American continents cycling on - get this! -  a tandem bike, raising money to buy bikes for kids who have to walk long distances to get to school. 

(Shoutout to Liz Blopez & Allie Krech -remember when we joked about crossing the Mexican/US border on a tandem bike? These guys seriously blew us out of the water on that.

We had a blast hanging out in a houseful of amazing people and, I'm not gonna lie, it was a little difficult to leave the amazingness that is Huaraz. Had it been any warmer, I don't think we would've.