The Alpine of Peru

We arrived in Huarez yesterday morning after riding the bus all night. We went over a pass at around 12k feet and I could notice it. The city is at 10k feet and we were out of breath at first. Today is much better though and we went rock climbing and to some hot springs.

Yesterday after telling Craig and his girlfriend Denise they were at the wrong hostel we went and explored town.
The market is interesting, although the food isn´t as exotic as Thailand. Just your typical dead chickens and fish out for sale. We did see pig fetus´ for sale though. The town is pretty dirty, especially by the river, but that´s life.

We found a really good Chinese restaurant 2 blocks away. For 5 of us our total bill was under 7 US. And Erik can´t even finish the meal. Craig is being brave and drinking the water from the sink, but we´ll see how long that lasts.

Today we went rock climbing in Monterrey. There were maybe 4 routes on the wall, but it was fun. I got owned and couldn´t even get up one, but oh well. The rock feels a lot like Smith rocks in Oregon. It has that soapy/slick feel to it.

After that Erik, Sondra, and I went to the hot springs while Craig and Denise went in search of some pre-Inca ruins up the hill. Sondra and Denise´ mom came and sat at the hot springs.
They weren´t hot, but they weren´t cold and it was pretty fun.

Erik and I had a pullup contest with the locals at the pool and dominated them in good fashion, haha. I learned some Spanish, most of which I´ve already forgotten, and got to interact a bit with some locals. That is probably the best part of traveling.

Tomorrow we are going to head up to Laguna Churup, which looks like an awesome lake with some bouldering around it. It sits at 4600m; higher than Rainier. It will be our first time to 15k feet so it should be fun. Bouldering is going to be brutal.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.