In the morning I got a bus back to Máncora, something I obviously could've saved myself the trouble of the night before. I stayed in Máncora just over a week, not doing too much but lazing around by the swimming pool reading, and going and watching the sunset every now and then. They were pretty nice:
After a couple of days a friend said she'd heard about some cool ruins not too far to the south, so we decided to go down and visit them. We arrived in the town close by and felt like we were getting ripped off by every place with a dorm we could find, and ended up going to another beach to spend the night before going to the ruins the next day. Wasn't much going on there but drinking beer and watching the sunset from the beach.
In the morning we caught the van that took us back to the town, and ended up paying more than necessary after they took us to the bus station instead of to the normal terminal of their route. Then in the bus station a couple guys said they were going where we wanted to go and put us in their van. A few minutes later another local noticed us and chewed out the van drivers for lying to us about where they were going, and led us to the correct bus.
At the ruins, we visited the little museum nearby, which wasn't too bad as small-town Latin American museums go, they had some cool stuff, pulled from the ruins:
Announcer of death.
The iguana man, god of death.
There was a few bodies like this guy that were found in burial pits that had been moved to the museum.
Looks like a real guy in there, but it ain't.
I assume these were for drinking pisco (distilled wine, popular in Peru and often made into "pisco sour," a cocktail of pisco, egg white, lime juice, syrup and bitters.).
After the museum, we walked up the road a bit to the ruins, which were described as reasonably impressive pyramids. The pyramids were basically non-existent, but next to them were a bunch of these holes, with what I assume are recreations of the warrior bodies found in them:
The view from the side of the "pyramids" wasn't too bad though...
Looking at what we assumed was the main pyramid.
Basically we were so disappointed by this whole ordeal we decided to go back to Máncora to regroup and decide what we'd separately do next. In the end, after a couple of days (in which I dropped and broke my Kobo D: ) I decided to go straight to Huaraz, a town a few hours north of Lima. Everyone I've met who's been there has said that the trekking in the area is spectacular, and highly recommends it. Coincidentally I'd bought a ticket on the same bus out of Máncora as another guy, Carson, so we basically ended up doing everything together for the next while.
Three buses and maybe 16 hours later we arrived in Huaraz in the evening, having left the night before to make the most of the drive from the coast to the mountains, which was pretty nice, though I was dead from lack of sleep. The next day we went to find info about the different places you can go around the place, and ended up booking a tour to a place called Laguna 69, as it sounded like the public transport there and back could be a pain in the ass. Even the drive up to Laguna 69 was really nice, with a stop along the way to take photos of a different lagoon, which was pretty nice in itself:
A lot of the trees were this weird guy, with bark like paper that waved around in the wind.
A few minutes later we arrived at the start of the walk, were told by the driver to be back by whatever hour, and were pointed on our merry way. It was a pretty nice walk, although it's doubtful whether we were acclimatised properly. The first part was walking up this almost agrarian valley, surrounded by huge mountains all around, which was to become a theme of our next week or so.
Not sure what these guys were, but they were definitely not in use.
There was also copious waterfalls everywhere...
... this one was pretty huge, and were were hoping that the lagoon would be just over the top...
... but instead this lesser lake was.
And was followed by more cow fields.
After 2 hours or so of walking, the last half hour of which wasn't too pleasant, we arrived, and it was well worth it. Dat blue...
We sat around for a while, rested, had a few snacks, then started the descent.
Looking back down over the first lake we stopped at.
We ended up leaving a little later than we should of, on account of the couple that got lost for an hour on the way up. Not sure how that could've happened. Then the bus took us straight back to Huaraz, on what proved to be a pretty picturesque road.
We rested for most of the next day, along with booking another trip the following day to a glacier whose name I forget. The trip to get there wasn't as long as to Laguna 69, and nor was the walk, so we left a little later.
We stopped a couple times on the way up to check stuff out as well.
I believe this was called the Rainbow Lake, or some such. Apparently when it's sunny it gets crazy colourful.
This guy's called a puya. He's probably around 30 years old, and can only live between 3,000 and 4,000m above sea level.
Papa puya. This guy could be up to 100 years old, and is around 10m tall. Puyas grow up to 15m tall, and have 6,000-10,000 flowers and 8-12 million seeds. There wasn't really that many around though, as they need pretty particular soil conditions and so on to germinate.
When we arrived at the carpark for the walk, the guide basically just pointed us in the direction of the glacier and said it was an hour or so away. It was hailing, so Carson and I powered off, leaving all the slow Ecuadorians to do their thang. Pretty happy it wasn't raining or snowing...
We arrived, walked/stood around a bit, and turned around to go back down. Was pretty nice even in the shitty weather though.
On the way back down it did actually start snowing, so we picked up the pace a bit. This lake was too cool to not stop at though.
The next day I was considering whether or not to do another trek called Santa Cruz, which is extremely popular. In the end I decided I probably would, and in the evening we chatted with an Italian guy, Lorenz, who was meant to be leaving the next day to somewhere else, but had all this info on Santa Cruz. Basically he convinced us that it'd be super easy to do without a guide and whatnot, backwards from the normal direction, and in 3 days instead of 4. I probably would've gone on my own (though I doubt successfully, in hindsight), but him and Carson said they'd come with as well as long as it was in 3 days.
So the next day we went and hired all the stuff we needed, as well as buying food (which probably cost us about NZ$15-20 for 3 for 3 days, oh my...), and working out the final details.
The following morning, we set out early to take the two buses to the start of the walk, which naturally left later than we thought and took longer than we thought. Also it snowed a bit, which was kinda worrying. But it was pretty amazing when we arrived, and for the rest of the day (while we were walking, at least):
Ski kiwi!
View down where we walked from, from our lunch spot.
View from the campsite. I guess from this we didn't arrive too late, since the sun still had to set behind the mountains. Sticking our hands in the river to fill our bottles was pretty unpleasant though...
The Dark and the Light.
It rained a fair bit overnight, and was still drizzling when we woke up, which wasn't terrific for motivation. Pretty sure I carried at least an extra couple kilos of water from the tent and the bottom of my sleeping bag too, which was worrying. The start of the day wasn't too bad, but the lack of sleep got to me, and the rain, while not heavy, was reasonably relentless. We came to another campsite (which was basically a huge swamp), and couldn't find the trail for almost an hour, and I'm pretty sure I would've turned back if not for the others. Eventually we found it, and we began the ascent towards the pass which we'd been dreading. It also didn't help that we couldn't actually see the pass, so we'd come to the top of ridges and peaks and think "oh, surely it must be that one," but it never was. When we could see and I could be bothered getting my half-frozen fingers to operate the camera it was quite nice though:
Eventually we made it to the pass, hungry and cold and tired, after what had to be the shittiest walk of my life. Whereupon we were rewarded with this view, which was one of the main reasons for doing the trek backwards, as otherwise you spend two days walking up the valley, turning around in your breaks and seeing it piece-meal. Well worth it.
Carson also spotted this guy, which a bit of wikiing told us is an Andean mountain cat, of which less than 2,500 are thought to exist in the wild. Also pretty rad.
I assume this was taken from our campsite. We arrived after about 10 hours of walking (the descent to the campsite went on and on and on), had dinner and a spliff and went straight to sleep.
Then in the morning while we were boiling water for our tea the gas stopped, and we'd eaten most of what we could eat without cooking, so we had a bit of chocolate, some nuts and a banana each for the day. We'd already decided to just power down to the town and eat there rather than have lunch on the way, but it ended up taking a bit longer than expected to arrive.
A few years ago there was a huge landslide from the left, which now doesn't really have any paths or signs or anything, so it was tricky finding the trail again at the end. Was interesting though, just a huge plain of sand in the mountains.
The latter half of the day's walking was down a big canyon with the most raging river I've ever seen in the bottom and dozens of waterfalls feeding it. We didn't notice all that so much, being hungry and wanting to get back to a nice hot shower.
In the end, though the second day was probably the worst day of my trip so far, the whole experience was pretty amazing. Definite type II fun.
After Santa Cruz, Carson and I were gonna catch the same bus to Lima for a day or two, then I was going to go on to Huacachina (an oasis: I've always wanted to see an oasis). But it was almost Easter, so there was no space on the buses, and we ended up staying a couple days extra, leaving not much time in Lima and no time for Huacachina before I had to get to Cusco to meet mum.
Also we had curry just before we left (I fucking love me some Thai food and it'd been over a year), and I assume that that made me throw up 2 minutes before the bus left. Fun ride...
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