Since I added a stop in Nasca in last minute, I didn't know what to expect when I got there. My bus ride from Cuzco was nightmarish - I skimped out and bought semi-cama, breaking a rule I've made for myself along the way about taking semi cama on overnight buses. The woman at the agency told me the seats were similar, and I stupidly trusted her. The seats barely moved back and they were blasting the movies in espanol at top volume. The woman next to me pitched a fit that I wouldn`t trade seats with her, even though I was sitting in the right place, and she spent the first 2 hours of the ride complaining and jabbing me with her elbow. I tried to read, but the roads were so windy there was no way to do anything other than stare into the cover of my blanket, which was now over my head trying to drown out the volume of Spanish My Sisters Keeper. I got to Nasca at 7 the next morning feeling awful from the motion sickness from the bus, but once I saw the town was 4 blocks long, I decided to do the flight over the lines anyway and get out ASAP in the morning.
There is a little airport specifically for the flights over the Nasca lines, and I've been told there are lots of accidents on te cheaper airlines so I went with the more expensive one. There were 2 girls from my hostel that came with, who it turned out are skaters with Disney on Ice. They travel around the world 10 months out of the year, and were telling me that Bogota got cut from their SA trip for safety reasons, another reason I won't be going there! We waited an hour and a half for te clouds to lift, otherwise you can't see anything, and got in the tiniest plane I`ve ever seen with the 2 pilots, the Disney girls and another random person. The flight only lasts 35 minutes around the lines, and the pilot wraps around in circles so both sides of the plane can see everything. Somewhere between the monkey and the condor, the movement of the plane and the motion sickness from the night before caught up with me and I felt like I was going to be sick. I had to close my eyes and do yoga breathing for the second half of the flight. So I spent $110 airport tax to see half the lines. Not cool. I kind of wish the clouds had never lifted in the first place! I nursed myself back to health with Ritz crackers and a Sprite, and found comfort in the fact that I was the only one in my dorm, which conveniently had a TV in it as well.
I had an amazing nights sleep in my private room, and when I woke up in the morning felt okay enough to go for my first run in ages. The altitude in Bolivia and Peru has been so high I haven't even tried. I set off down the block, more excited than normal to go running, and remembered that the other thing thats been a major prevention from running has been stray dogs. 1 minute and 43 seconds into my run a giant pitbull spotted me and circled me barking and baring his teeth. I stopped running immediately and walked quickly back to the hostel, with the beast following me barking until I was inside. Majorly disappointing, but I at least had space to do pilates instead. Now I'm off to see Kenzie in Lima for a night before heading up to Huaraz to do some hiking.
June 28th
On to Lima, the wonderful city of nothing but American chain restaurants.
The last time I found myself in Lima, I decided it wasn't worth leaving the airport. I chose to spend 10 or 11 hours sitting in the terminal playing sudoku with Becca rather than go into the city where I've heard not one good thing about. On this trip I planned to bypass Lima again, but I decided to head up and spend a couple more days with Kenzie before heading up to Huaraz.
I got there and my first impression was that everyone was right. All I saw was highway, people that looked like they wanted to rob my cab, and bus stations. We pulled up to Miraflores, and right across from my hotel I found: a McDonalds a block long (complete with McCafe). Burger King. KFC. Starbucks. Pizza Hut. Dunkin Donuts. Now I'm not a fan of fast food, but after being in places like Nasca that didn't have a mini mart to buy a bottle of water, seeing things that remind me of home are kind of exciting.
Our first stop was Dunkin Donuts. I've missed my DD since I've been away. To my surprise, this franchise of DD had an entire Peruvian selection of donuts! They had a chichi morada donut. One called an Incan, with a big smiley face across the front. A dulce de leche filled. It was the best thing I've ever seen (at least since getting to Lima). I don't remember the Puerto Rico DD having a specialty donut selection. After our coffee break, we stopped for dinner at KFC. Yes, I understand that Lima is know for their ceviche and not their fried chicken. But I wanted a twister! Kenzie took me down the main strip, which was filled with about 40 giant casinos with neon lights flashing Atlantic City. At the end of the strip, there were stairs leading down to an outdoor shopping center over the beach. It was complete with a movie theater, bowling alley, 2 arcades and tons of stores and restaurants. It was a blast! We spent hours running around, playing Dance Dance Revolution (which had Queen songs DDR style, totally awesome!) and Deal or No Deal en espanol. Our whopping 61 tickets that we won got us Winnie the Pooh hair clips, and tiny plastic babies that we walked around taking pictures of all around the city, until Kenzie laid the last of them to rest by melting them in our candle at dinner the last night.
On our second day, we took a cab down to the center, which everyone told us was muy peligroso (Spanish for Danger! Stay away!) Not only was it not at all dangerous, but it was a holiday and the whole city of Lima was in the streets, dressed up in awesome costumes and dancing around the Plaza de Armas. One group of marchers came by all holding beer bottles. Loved them! We found Lima's Chinatown, and had my first wonton soup in a Chifa in 3 months! Then it was back to Miraflores, where we wandered around the shore and parks and found the best chain restaurant of them all - Pinkberry! It's near impossible to find froyo in South America, but to find one I know and love - amazing. Kenzie has never had, and I've been raving about my froyo addiction for months, so of course we had to go. I couldn't make out all of the flavors, but I decided on one that tasted like strawberry Yoplait yogurt. They had different toppings too, like some fruits that were native to Peru. And all for around $3! Best treat ever!
I had a great time exploring Lima with Kenzie, planning our futures, and bringing our fake babies all over Peru.
June 30th
Huaraz, the accidental destination
Since I had planned on flying straight from Bolivia to Ecuador, once I went off course through Peru I had no idea what I was doing. I detoured to Nasca and then to Lima, and was planning on heading straight up on an 18 hour bus to Mancora when I decided to completely change it all up and go to Huaraz, a town famous for it's proximity to trekking in the Cordillera Blanca.
The day started off interesting enough. The lady where I bought my bus ticket told me the ride was 10 hours, which would have gotten me in to Huaraz at 8:30 am. When the bus stopped at 6:30, I didn't move because I was still 2 hours away. The man sitting next to me was nice enough to point out that all the other tourists were getting off, and I probably wasn't going to whatever local village was coming up next. I scrambled to throw on my sneakers and shove my pink Bratz blanket into my bag and darted off. Once I had my backpack, I opened the door of the bus terminal to leave and was attacked by people trying to get me to take a cab. The hostel was only a 10 minute walk and I needed to wake myself up, so I opted to walk. But no one wanted to tell me where to go. I dont think people know how to walk places because they're ways shoving you in a cab, even if you're going across the street. So after wandering in circles for a while, I found my hostel. The hikes all leave at 6am, which I did not know, so I had to hold off til tomorrow. Which would normally be fine, but this is another one of those towns where there's nothing to do if you're not hiking. I found a place to rent a mountain bike, but the trail consisted of me taking a taxi 45 minutes up a dirt road and then gripping my brakes for dear life coming back down again. I keep forgetting that mountain biking is not like the biking I do at home. I think since I saw the guy from San Pedro get his head split open, I've been a little bit nervous too - especially on this trail where I was by myself and there was noone around for miles. I need to remember these things the next time I go to rent one. Which I'm sure will happen again next week. I got back and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how I get out of here after I hike. Since I went off the path, I now have to take a bus to a random town, Trujillo, and hang out for the day with my bags til I can catch another overnight bus to a town called Tumbes, and then backtrack an hour to hit Mancora. Oops. I would almost skip Mancora altogether and head straight to Ecuador but I have a feeling finding a Galapagos boat is going to be pretty taxing and I think I'll need the down time at the beach beforehand. Plus I'd love to take a few surfing lessons.
Huaraz has a beautiful landscape, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, but the people in the streets are in a constant game of Frogger with you that you never seem to win, and a homeless lady grabbed me and chased after me at the market when I wouldn't give her money. My first day was pretty unproductive, but on the second day I took the hike to Laguna 69 tomorrow, which is supposed to be the nicest day hike in the area. It`s supposed to be a prep trek to get people doing the longer treks acclimated to the altitude before they set off for 4-6 days on the Santa Cruz trek. I took that to mean that it would be a) easy and b) not that high c) not a 3 hour drive from Huaraz. I'm sure you can assume that it was definitely all of these things. I got picked up at 6:15am, and we set off for the mountain. After a couple of pit stops, we get to the place a little before 10. They tell us it's 3 hours up, 1.5 hours down. Be back at 3. I made friends with the only 2 girls not speaking in Hebrew (this car had the worst group of recent Israeli army grads I've encountered yet) and we set off. I knew off the bat I was in some sort of crazy altitude because I was having trouble breathing on flat ground. Half an hour in, we were stopping for breaks to gasp for breath every few feet. It was well worth it, because this was one of the most beautiful hikes I've done ever. The mountains are looming in the background, behind fields of beautiful flowers and lagoons with crystal blue water. I didn't mind the breaks at first because it was so pretty, but after an hour I realized I was never going to make it to the top at this rate. I latched on to 2 guys that seemed to be going a little bit faster, and we pushed onwards. When we got 2.5 hours in, we were standing at the base of a tremendous mountain, at the top of which was our final point. The kid told me the apex is at 6,112 meters. That is not even a number. I have no idea who declares this an easy acclimation hike, this was like climbing Everest! One of the guys dropped out, so it was me and the other guy left to get up there. I was pretty convinced my lungs were going to explode, but somehow they survived and I made it to the top. I was ecstatic that I finished it, especially when I realized we were the first ones from both groups (28 people in total) who got to the top. Not only that, but half the people never made it at all! God bless those countless hours at NYSC for making this possible :)
I decided to head out before everyone else, one of my favorite things is just listening to my iPod, not thinking about anything at all, while I'm coming down from an amazing hike. Bands of choice today were The Smiths, Death Cab, Dashboard and Postal Service. Those always seem to be my default iPod choices when I´m hiking. Only bad part of the day was when I just barely made it back in time for my night bus, since the idiots in my car felt like spending an extra hour at the Laguna. I did make it, but it resulted in a dinner of random snacks from the bus station. Which I'm fine with since it was also my cheapest dinner to date - the equivalent of about 66 US cents! And totally acceptable after my 6 hour death hike! I do have to say, I'm really glad that I did the hike today, am not doing another tomorrow, and even more so, and not attempting the 4 day version!
And then, Trujillo.
The timing of the buses left me with a 14 hour stay in Trujillo. The only thing really to do here is go to some ruins nearby. It looked like it was going to rain and since when it rains in NY I have to force myself to get off my couch, I decided to just stay in the town and keep myself occupied. I asked a taxi to take me to a mall, assuming the town had a mall, and sure enough it had a makeshift mall with not too many stores, but a gym, grocery store and movie theater! I went into the gym to see how much a day pass would cost, since I would have to buy clothes to change into I wanted to see if it was worth it. And the guy let me in free! He probably saw how excited I was to have found an elliptical machine to keep me occupied for a few hours. Not only did I get to use the machines and mats, I got to shower too - which I wasn't going to be able to do til Mancora and wasn't happy about. Nothing else worth mentioning about my Trujillo experience, which is pretty sad but I still managed to enjoy myself, mainly due to finding that mall. I also got a heads up for a travel agent for Galapagos that has some cheaper trips, so I'll hopefully figure that out when I'm in Mancora over the next few days.
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