Peru-July 2009

My time in Peru was short, only about 10 days.

Lima
I arrived in Lima at about 11 pm with my friend Kevin from Santa Cruz. We arrived at the airport in Lima and I couldn't believe it. I finally got out of my country.

We walk out after going through immigration, and we find the taxi driver from our hostel. He's a friendly Limeno. We get to the car and there's playboy bunny and Jesus stickers on the windshield. Welcome to fucking South America Emerald!!! As we zoom onto the freeway and every sign is in Spanish I begin to cry a little bit. I finally got out of the country! I was so excited.

We get to our hostel and sleep well. The next day we just explored the city a little, walked around, made plans (we both were going off to do our own thing). Ate good Peruvian food for dinner.

The next day Kevin and I went to a farmer's market-type thing. All organic...all natural. Yummy stuff, but expensive. Later, me Kevin, and Talib (a guy from Santa Cruz who was actually staying in the same hostel as us) went to the center to check it out. We walked around a bit...saw the Parque de la Exposicion where there were lots of young couples making out...went and got some delicious ceviche and drank beer. After that I took a taxi to the bus terminal and said goodbye to the boys. I showed up at the terminal way early because I didn't like the idea of taking my first taxi alone late at night. At 10 pm my bus left for a little town called Huaraz, which is in a mountain range called La Cordillera Blanca (white range). I met a nice Australian fellow on the bus named David.

Huaraz
We arrived in Huaraz at 5pm, and I invited David to come to my couchsurfer host's house with me. My host, Frank, was actually a tour guide for extreme sports, and I stayed in a small room that he had in his agency. Frank turned out to be a really fun host...speaks Spanish, English, and Quechua, he helped both David and I out a lot.

When we met with Frank we went to get some breakfast at Fruti-Frutita...and I got a delicious fruit salad with papaya, apple, grapes, kiwi, yogurt, and honey for 3 soles (1$). Yum! Later we accompanied Frank and his sweet friend Elizabeth to some thermal pools. Him and Elizabeth even taught us some words in Quechua! After that, I ate cuy for my first time (guinea pig) with potatoes and aji. It was alright, nothing too crazy...really crispy! The meal also came with chicha morada, which is a sugary drink made from fermented blue corn. Yum! After lunch David and I took a hike to to see a view of the entire town. From up there we could see some of the highest mountains in Peru...it was lovely.
Later that night the 3 of us went to dinner and I got dieta de pollo, which is just chicken noodle soup that is delicioussssss. Then we went to a semi-nice bar.
One pisco sour.
Lots of fun conversation.
Good night's rest.

Because I knew I just had one more day in Huaraz, David and I went on a tour of the cordillera in the morning. On the tour we got to see a lot of beautiful things, including La Laguna Llaganuco, which is a marvelous turquoise lake surrounded by mountains. Another place we saw was Yungay, a little town that was destroyed by an earthquake which has a view of the highest mountain in Peru. After walking around Yungay a little bit, there were three little kids approaching us (us= the tourists) and usually when little kids approach tourists they do anything they can to get a little money. But these 3 little kids didn't ask us for anything. They just followed us and stared. When I arrived to our bus I got in my seat and the little kids were outside of our bus...still just looking at us. I had some dried apricots with me, and so I yelled out of the window and asked (who appeared to be) the oldest child if they wanted one. They shook their head yes. At this point the other children had wandered off to play. So I dropped down one of the little dried fruits to the child, and I saw that they put it in their pocket, probably to save for later. I yelled "try it!" because I wanted to see if they liked it (I made the safe assumption that they had never had this fruit before). They took a bite, told me it was yummy, and then put it back in their pocket. I assumed that they were going to save it for later...and then the child left. A couple minutes later all three children returned, with a much younger and tinier child tagging along with them who was munching on the dried apricot. It was sweet.

After the tour, we stopped at a lovely little traditional Peruvian Andean restaurant. I ordered llunca de gallina, which is something along the lines of barley/wheat soup with chicken. It was in this place that I had some really sweet experiences. While I was waiting for the rest of the people on the bus to finish their food, I walked about a quarter of a kilometer to these two little houses on the same hill that the restaurant was one. There was a Quechuan woman washing clothes in the creek and hanging them up to dry. I asked her if I could help her (In Spanish) and all she could say was "yes, beautiful young woman". I helped her wash clothes and dry them. I never thought I was going to meet someone who didn't know Spanish, so it was quite the surprise. Soon after we were done, I noticed that in the second little house there was a courtyard, and there were children spying on me and so I went to go play with them. They spoke an interesting mix of Quechua and Spanish, but we could communicate well. Apparently a school had just been built in the area, and that's where they were learning Spanish. I played soccer with them until my group was ready to leave.

That night I left Huaraz, and it was a little sad saying goodbye to my host. He was so neat and I would have liked to get to know him more---not to mention spend more time in the mountains and do some trekking. But it was time to meet my good friend Jane in Huanchaco, on the coast. After meeting up, we went to a town called Chiclayo and checked out some ruins in Tucume.

We decided to go to this beautiful little town in northern Peru (inland) called Chachapoyas. We arrived there and stayed with a couchsurfing host who had a little adobe room on his sister's property that we were able to stay in. The bathroom was a little hole in the ground, outside, with some clothing hanging up around it. When we arrived it was really early, so we went to sleep and woke back up to go to Kuelap, some pre-Incan ruins. The bus ride to Kuelap was amazing...going up into cloud-forested mountains...We got there and the ruins were pretty neat, but I honestly am not that into seeing ruins. Nevertheless, it was an interesting site with black llamas, lots of rain, and I had good company.

Came back to our room...sleep...only time on the whole trip that I had tummy problems. :(

Wake up...hang out with some cute kids who were verrrrrrrrrrrry curious! They followed me around everywhere, and wanted to take lots of pictures.

We decided to start heading towards the Ecuadorian border. Also, we decided to go the crazy way that doesn't go along the coast on the pan-americana. So, we were the only white people...and we had to take about 4 cars to get to the border (first to Padro Ruiz, then Jaen, then San Ignacio, then La Balsa) and then when we got to the border we took another one into Loja Ecuador, which was actually really fun.