17 Aug - 26 Aug: Lima, Huaraz, and the Peruvian Alps

Well, it's been over a week since I've been in Peru, and about time for a blog post.

I left Denver on August 17, spent the night in Toronto at my friend Matt and Bec's place, and then caught a flight from there to Lima on the 18th (kind of a weird itenerary, I know, but you take what you can get when using frequent flyer miles). As my flight arrived late on the night of the 18th, I decided to relax the next day and check out Lima, the sprawling oceanfront capital of Peru that is home to over 8 million people. Although it's a huge city, there are only two primary areas that are frequented by tourists; the center, and the affluent coastal suburb, Miraflores. As I had booked a hostel near the center of town, I decided to walk around and check it out.

I'd heard alot of negative things said about Lima, so I was really curious to find out for myself if such insults were warranted. As it turns out, some of what I'd heard about Lima was true. Lima is huge, noisy, dirty, and polluted. But although it's certainly not a place I'm inclined to spend alot of time in, there is something intrinsically fascinating to me about massive cities like this. I find it amazing to just walk around and watch people, and contemplate how such a massive "machine" functions. But beyond that, central Lima did have some interesting plazas, colonial architecture, and an interesting 17th century monastery called the Monasterio de San Francisco (pictures weren't allowed) which houses some really really eerie catacombs. Here are some pics of my day in Lima:



Although Lima wasn't as bad as what I'd heard, I really was anxious to get to Huaraz, which is in the Peruvian Andes next to the Cordillera Blanca (White mountains). So I booked an overnight bus from Lima, which left at 10 at night and arrived at 6 the next morning in Huaraz.

Huaraz is a fairly small (80,000 people), relatively mellow city at 3090 m (10,100 ft), which has an awesome climate with warm days and cool nights. The views of the surrounding peaks of the Cordillera Blanca (which go up to 6,769 m, or 22,200 ft) are just jaw dropping.

Although I plan to do some climbing, my first goal was to find some people to go on a trek to try and get used to the altitude. After spending the day searching around for people, I got connected with a group of people who were getting ready to go do the 4-day Santa Cruz trek. The trek is quite popular, and is most commonly done guided (with a donkey carrying all of your stuff), but as I had prepared for trekking I was looking for a group to do it unguided. Fortunately, this is exactly what the group I found was planning to do. Even more fortunately, the group turned out to be in-shape and experienced, as well as really cool and international. Among the members were two Dutch (Lotte and Hilda), an Israeli (Itamar), two Americans (me and Katrina), and a Kiwi (Sam). Below are some pictures from the Santa Cruz trek. I wont go on too much about it here, as I've put captions on the pictures. I wasnt able to upload some of the pictures from days 2-3 for now (long story), but the pics here give the gist of the trek.



Well, I returned to Huaraz from the Santa Cruz trek on the 24th, and have been somewhat anxiously trying to get set up to go out and climb some real mountains here. It's been a bit slow getting that organized, but it looks like I'll be heading off on the 28th to climb Vallunaraju, and work with a guide to refresh some of my glacier travel skills. Then, depending on how I'm feeling, I may attempt Chopicalqui, which would be a pretty big climb.