Our last dance with Huaraz

Chey and I had been having this awesome fantasies about getting higher up North, and making plans in our heads that involved boats and jungle... but it was in our last few days in Huaraz that we decided that the money situation was no longer sustainable, and that we had to slowly start heading South, back to my hometown where we had a place to stay for free.

Huaraz had been so nice to us, with the great hiking and the sauna-birthday, and the delicious clay-oven pizza and spicy curries, that we really wanted to give it a proper goodbye before heading back to Lima.

We went to the tourist info place and asked them what was there to do that wasn't more of the same things we had already done, and didn't require expensive equipment (that we didn't have) or many days (that we didn't have either).

When traveling Perú I seriously, SERIOUSLY recommend you to combine word of mouth, your traveling guide of choice (in our case it's the Rough guide) and Tripadvisor references with IPerú, the official tourist info spots. They have offices in pretty much every city, and do a great job. And they don't mind silly questions or seeing your damn face all the time. Every. Single. Day.

After a long conversation with one of the info place guys, we decided to go on a last hike to a lagoon up a mountain right outside Huaraz.

So we grabbed apple cakes and a lot of water, and headed outside town (just a 15 or 20 minute drive, so we took a taxi because the buses were too full and not stopping).

We got off the taxi at a bridge, and as soon as we crossed it we got up to a natural lookout where we could see the wonderful rural landscape.

Later we saw a guy bathing in the river (with soap).

From the lookout we had views like this one.

And this one. Like a modern day The Shire.

 I was still pretty weary of the altitude sun (that had given me heatstroke after the 9 hour hike to the Secret valley of awesome), so I wrapped my head with my everythingie* in the hippiest fashion and we started the walk up.

The road wasn't like the one of two days ago, but instead it went consistently up though a village of scattered clay houses and farming terraces.

Many of the houses look like there's no-one living there, but in most
of them, there are people still.

Chey, looking very gringo next to the crops.

Beautiful golden fields.

 We walked by pigs, hens, donkeys, sheep and beautiful wheat fields that whispered in the wind.

Happy chickens walking around, oblivious to their dark fate.

As were this cute piggies.

Sheep family.

We also crossed paths with so many dogs.

Most times the dogs you meet while traveling (just like the people) are friendly and only want to meet you. But sometimes, out of nowhere, you'll get crazy feral dogs that come at you as if they had just escaped from the dephts of hell.

And that was the case of a dog gang we encountered halfway through our hike.

We grabbed rocks from the road and stood our ground, showing them we had no fear (which was a blatant lie).

After a lot of staring and measuring each other we won, and the dogs let us through.


The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about as we went up and kept seeing this adobe constructions next to the farming fields, was how different life seemed to be in those villages.

People live without most of the things we believe essential (wifi), and their lives are basically made of work and family. The houses, mostly, have no superfluous details. Most of them don't even have windows. It seems so minimal, so far from everything we know to be normal.

Again, it was like traveling back to a simpler time.

Ominous decoration: a message for trespassing owls.

wtf

Another cute piglet.

A bull with a tiara.

Harvesting the crops.

How pretty is this?

Pretty sure it's wheat.

Next to the fields (notice how I'm not wearing the turban for the photo)

More lovely landscapes.

More lovely landscape and an even lovelier Australian boy.

A donkey that was too fluffy for its own good.

 On the way up we met only three gringos walking together (we let them go ahead of us, expecting to arrive to the lagoon when they were leaving, because by then we were used to lonely natural places all for ourselves).

We also saw a couple of locals going downhill with their donkeys. Otherwise it was all peaceful solitude.

Hard working people and hard working donkeys.

The fluff.

After a few hours of walking (it was much lighter than our previous Huaraz hike), we arrived to the hill summit.

The lagoon was beautiful and full of wild ducks, the grass was green and soft, and there was a little lonely house by the water, where some kids were playing football (soccer, for our lovely gringo readers).

Kids being the lovely stereotype of latino kids.

The lagoon.

Chey walks by the lagoon.
The weather was ridiculously nice.

We went to the edge of a cliff to look at the view, which was honestly stunning.

I've never seen mountains like those.

One happy gal.

Chey looks like he's about to fly.

Then we had a little picnic, and lingered there for a while, enjoying the sun and the wind, and a sense of accomplishment, and maybe a little bit of a sense of being close to the end.

It was a perfect place for picnic.

Wild duck.

 This was our last little adventure before starting to head back South (which we knew was going to be an adventure on its own). It was just perfect.

When we returned to town we had clay oven pizza and craft beer, which made the day even more perfect.

*Random fact: Everythingie is the name I give to a sarong I bought in Bali, which I use for pretty much everything (as you do with sarongs): from yoga mat to blanket, dress, skirt, turban, picnic blanket, shower courtain, scarf, shawl, furoshiki-ish wrapper for stuff, sheet, bus pillow, and probably other things I can't remember now.

Our secret valley in Huaraz

It was already dark when we got to Huaraz, unintentionally directed a poor gringo in the wrong direction, and then quickly did our walking "research" and found a place to stay. 

The air was chilly and crisp as we walked out of our (yet another) family-owned-hotel to find dinner.

It felt like being out of the city again. Though the town centre is pretty crazy, with taxis honking every time they pass by a person (which is pretty much every 30 seconds).

Huaraz is a mountain town. That means the town itself is not too interesting, but the surroundings are amazing bits of the Cordillera, glaciers, lagoons, amazing hikes and climbs.

Nice looking car in the uninteresting town centre.
(the quietness is because of the early hour in which this was taken)

 As things were, it was impossible for us to acquire all the gear necessary for mountaineering (let alone hire a guide), so the snowcapped peaks of the Andes are gonna have to wait to our next trip to South America.

Still, the day-long hikes up the mountains looked extremely tempting, and we devoted our first day to research and organize ourselves, all while becoming close friends with the local stray dogs.

Friend.

As our research indicated, it seemed like most of the hikes have tour agencies organizing them: they pick you up, take you to a base with a bus/van, you hike up a mountain with your group, arrive at a pretty place, stay for a while and take photos and then go back with your group on the bus/van.

Pros of such arrangement: 
-no chance of getting lost
-they know exactly where to go, so you just sit back and relax
-getting there is very direct

Cons of such arrangement
-you have to stick to someone else's time
-it loses a bit of the sense of adventure
-pickup time is at 6 AM.

To be honest, even if the only con was the last one, it would have been enough for us to decide not to do it with a tour... but on top of that we always like to do things our own way (putting the "random" in The random adventurers).

So the second morning in Huaraz we got up at a decently early hour, grabbed some coffee at a small local bakery (where they give you the coffee in a little glass jar to mix with the heated milk they heat over an old stove), and after that we took a crazy cheap local bus that took us to a close-by village a bit higher up the mountains.

The bus ride was bumpy and dusty. We shared it with the loveliest old ladies and local men, all carrying their plants, vegetables, and bundles of goods.

We got off at the last stop and spread a huge amount of sunscreen on ourselves before starting to walk towards the proper mountains.


As we moved forward,we passed by locals and their animals, little adobe houses, and at one point a whole village working on a water canal... elderly people and children included, everyone had a shovel or a hoe.

Heavy traffic.

Wide fields and adobe houses.

Local man and his mate.

The whole village, hard at work (dog supervises).

A view of the mountains.

 Soon enough, it was just us and the road. We actually didn't pass any other people, except for a couple on a motorcycle (who swooshed by us like the road-runner swooshes by Willie E. Coyote).

And we walked. And we walked, And we walked.

Chey on the rocks.

Me on the rocks.

Pretty landscape.

 Some two hours later, a chill guy sitting by the road took our names on a paper slip and charged us for the entrance to the National Park (5 dollars each). The paper slip was in case we died up there, I guess.

After that there was still a fair amount of walking, but the scenery kept getting more and more beautiful and soon we started seeing the glacier we were headed towards.

Stunning, ridiculous view.

"I'm the king of the world"

One day, I'll make a compilation of all the walking away
photos we took of each other on this trip.

Chey jumps over a bush.

We walked up and around many bends on the road, but up there it seemed kind of timeless, so I couldn't say for how long.

Then, on our right,  appeared this beautiful valley with a river running through it and a big family of cows just chilling in the sun.

Cows and scenery.

There was no path gong down to the valley and the road we were following continued in the opposite direction, so we (of course) decided to make our own random path into the valley.

We went down a steep grassy slope and walked into the most gorgeous meadow, fully covered in flowers, green grass and butterflies.

 The little birds were chirping, the water was singing... I started to think that, once more, we had accidentally walked into a Disney movie.

We had to pinch ourselves to make sure it wasn't a dream.

I also sang songs to the wild horses to make sure
 I had not turned into a Disney princess.

The horses ignored me completely, so nope. Still my regular, boring self.

We started to notice the ridiculousness of the animals
being there, away from any farm or populated place.

And we realized that most likely they are colonies of untamed
animals, probably escaped from farmers many generations ago.

Once being there, it started seeming kind of pointless to keep trying to advance towards the glacier. We could see it perfectly from where we were, and it was so beautiful. And the valley couldn't be any more perfect.

We walked a bit more through the valley, and finally decided to stay there, take loads of pictures, and just enjoy the fact that we had all that huge expanse of nature all for ourselves, with no-one around but the wild cows and horses.

Selfie: us and the glacier in the background.

The brown horse was a bit scarily obsessed with Chey.

Like, going out of its way to stare at him.

Walking around the valley.

It was probably one of the most awesome afternoons in the whole trip.

While looking at the river, we sat down and had our apple pastries that we had bought from the local bakery. Maybe it was because of all the walking, but they felt like the best apple pastries I've ever tried.

And when the sun started to slowly set behind the mountains the chinchillas began to appear!

First it was just one, quickly running over a rock. But in a few minutes the whole valley became a big chinchilla fest.

Camouflaged chinchilla on the rocks.

A bit closer. It was pretty shady by then, so we couldn't get clearer photos.

 Reluctant to leave but knowing we had quite a long walk back to the village, we started our way back.

TRA, in the already shadowy valley, before heading back.

It was, indeed, a long walk, and when we made it to the base we realized it had been 9 hours of (mostly) walking!

This is only a small part of the road we walked.

We stopped by the road, now pretty close to the village where we were supposed to take the bus, and wolfed down some crackers to recover our energy.

Regardless of the name, they were pretty nice.

Suddenly we heard a vehicle, coming towards us, and soon a police car showed up. They rolled their windows down and asked us if we were hitchhiking and where were we going.

We said we were just recovering our energy before heading to the village and taking the bus to Huaraz... and then offered us a lift all the way!

As every Peruvian we had met before, they were extremely interested in us, our cultural background and our impressions of their country.

They stopped over a lookout so we could see Huaraz from above (it is way bigger than I had hought), and dropped us just one block away from our accomodation. And before letting us go, the officer sitting with us in the back asked us to take selfies with him.

We look weird, but this photo is priceless.

Our new friends waving goodbye.

As we walked into our room and, sweaty and dusty,  headed straight for the shower, I thought about the fact that our perfect day had happened just one day before Chey's birthday. What were we going to do the following day that could possibly be as cool?