After our reunion at the airport, Cati and I caught a cab to the hotel I booked. Considering we were going to be sleeping in a tent and dirty hostels, I figured I’d splurge and get a nice 4 star room for a night. After we checked in and lurked around the hotel for a while we went outside to find a place to eat. We were staying in the Miraflores neighbourhood which was the nice tourist part of Lima. Still, there were only busted ass cars and a handful of broken down buildings. Cleary Peru was not a rich country but it had lots of charm none the less. We found a vegetarian place my lonely planet had suggested and got a meal for 5 soles each which is about $1.50CAD. Rice, soup, some weird gross watery tea, a curry thing with tofu and a veggie burger patty. Cati didn’t like the curry thing so I ate it and she ate the burger patty, it was pretty good but nothing special.
After we finished we went for a walk, bought a churro from a vendor (dough with caramel inside) and found a mall to buy a simcard for my cell phone. It worked out to about 5 dollars for a new phone number. Cheap cheap. After walking around for a while we went back to the hotel and I wanted to take a nap before dinner. My stomach was feeling grumbly and I felt like I needed to lay down. I woke up at 9pm and my stomach still didn’t feel better. I managed to make it out of bed and cati suggested we just go for a short walk to see what’s in the neighbourhood for dinner. I made it halfway around the block and had to turn back. I was burping up the taste of lunch and even though I was telling myself I was ok, deep down, (literally, deep down) I knew I was sick. After making it back to the hotel, it was on. All night I puked and sat on the toilet. At one point, I would puke, lie down beside the toilet, shake uncontrollably with a fever then get up and puke again. I was drinking Gatorade just so I had something to puke up. Poor Cati couldn’t do anything for me but order me Gatorade from room service.
By 11 am the next morning I was still puking and check out was 12. We called down to arrange another night but they told us we had to leave as the hotel was booked. I was in no shape to get on a 7 hour bus to Huaraz like we had planned so Cati did some quick missions up and down the block and found a nice hotel with a nice washroom for me. The only word I could describe this whole situation with is Tragic. I spent the rest of the day in the new hotel bed and washroom but my body seemed to be finished purging itself. Cati cared for me like a champ and by evening I was ready to try to eat something. She found a little market and brought home a melon, bread, cheese, apples, bananas and more Gatorade. I ate a mouse’s share of the apple and bread but didn’t want to, or feel I could fill myself up just yet. I finished my second night with Cati off with 2 gravol pills and an Ib Proffen. Again, one word. Tragic.
The following morning I woke up groggy as hell from the pills, but was happy to report an uninterrupted sleep and a fairly non queasy stomach. We booked some bus tickets from Lima to Huaraz for 1pm and went downstairs for breakfast. I ate toast and jam with a little melon, downed a coffee and called it good. I wasn’t 100% but it felt really good to get some food in me.
Upon check out, Cati and I were shocked we had a $24USD phone bill. The previous afternoon when we checked in, I still had a fever, and we were contemplating a trip to the hospital. Cati had called “collect” to my travel insurance but it turned out the hotel was still going to change us $1.20USD a min for the call. Just happy I wasn’t sick anymore; we didn’t say anything and paid the bill.
In Peru, the bus systems are amazing, but the one thing they lack is a central terminal. Instead each company has offices and you have to catch your bus from whatever company you booked with. We arrived at our bus companies building, waited for a few minutes and then heard the call to board. You check your bags at a counter then go through a gate where a man with a metal detector scans you. We boarded the bus and I was shocked... We had booked the 1st class seats for the bus trip which meant a separate section from the rest of the bus with only 12 seats. Each seat was massive, leather, and folded back like a lazy boy. Once we left, an attendant served us lunch and drinks and I suddenly noticed the whole “cabin” was really quite, almost sound proof. This was much better than any plane or any Greyhound id ever been on.
The highway from Lima to Huaraz went north and followed the Pacific Ocean for a long time. The poverty I saw along the way was something I won’t even try to put to words. People’s houses were half the size of the shed I keep my extra shit in. Both Cati and I recognized a slight feeling of guilt as we passed all of this in our first class seats. 8 hours passed easily and around 9pm we rolled into Huaraz, 3000 meters.
When we got off the bus both of us gasped as our lungs took our first full breaths of the high altitude air. Cojitambo was the same elevation but this air seemed way thinner. I’ve been told that not just elevation affects how much oxygen is in the air and Huaraz was feeling a lot thinner than Cojitambo. After we got our stuff from under the bus we went outside to haggle for a cab. The first guy we asked said he didn’t know where the address was. The second said 4 Soles and we were told to pay 3 maximum when we arranged our room on the phone so Cati said 3. The guy promptly rolled his eyes and wandered away to find other passengers without saying anything. After a quick pep talk in which I told Cati about my experience with inflated prices at night time bus terminals, we found a cab for 4 soles and made it to our room. I don’t say hotel because it’s neither a hotel nor a hostel.
This was a home owned by an elderly couple. Their son was a mountaineer with many friends from Argentina before he died on an expedition. Since then, Orlando and his wife have rented out a room to climbers from Argentina through word of mouth. Catis friends had been here in Aug and that’s how we had been hooked up. I wish I had a photo of Orlando. He was about 5 feet tall, 75 years old and always sharply dressed with a green fedora on his bald head. I hope to have this much style when I’m his age. Our room was nothing special and I joked with Cati how it felt like we were staying in a church. We walked around Huaraz in the dark passed old ladies selling wool touques, sock, mitts and pretty much anything else you could knit. It was pretty quiet, slightly cold and walking around grew old fast so we went back to our room for some well deserved sleep.
I woke to the sun shining directly through the little window in the room onto my face. Following such nasty food poisoning I was pretty happy to be feeling better each morning. We read up on some places to get some food and chose a place called California Kitchen. It was very Nelson like with colourful walls, books, and couches and a pretty good breakfast menu. They also had free wifi, so in the back there was a handful of gringos sipping coffee and using their laptops. Still wary of food from random places, I ordered a frech press of coffee for us to share. After some pondering I decided on a bagel of cream chees e. We sent some emails, I made some Skype calls and when I started on the bottom half of my bagel, I could smell fish and stopped eating it imediatly. Making sure I wasn’t crazy, Cati confirmed the smell and that was the end of breakfast. MMM coffee, how I love that you can’t be spoiled. Well…as long as its purified water!!! Shit… is nothing safe? Needless to say, neither of us got sick, and California Kitchens was put on the safe list in my mind.
After going back to the room and chilling, I did some writing, Cati read her book, and we decided to go find this guiding company her friends had suggested. We walked through the crouded streets taking in the sites of Huaraz. There was only 120 000 people here but the downtown core wasn’t much bigger then Baker street in nelson so it has a hustle and bustle feel to it. Mini casinos with slot machines, grocery stores, internet shops, banks, clothing stores and much more filled in the street on either side with of course people selling tons of random stuff at renagade kiosks.
Sitting here describing Huaraz I’ve forgot to mention the best part about the town! Massive 6000meter peaks all around covered in snowy glaciers looming in the distance. You can see them from pretty much anywhere in the town. Breathtaking is a word underrating the view and pictures would not do these mountains justice. Simply divine creations of mother earth will be the best words used to describe something I cannot describe.
We found the guiding shop called Andean Kingdom tucked in a walking only street and inside we met the owners, Lully and Andreas. They are both from Argentina and both have lived in Huaraz for a long time. I think Huaraz has the same affect on people as nelson does. You come for a visit, and you don’t leave. For a mountaineer, there is a life time of climbing here.
Andres told us that he was planning on going up to the Refugio he and a crew had built in conjunction with the locals who lived up there the next morning. A Refugio is basically what we call a cabin in Canada, usually no power, phone or anything. Sometimes running water. This Refugio was a stones throw from Hatun Machay which has a few hundred single pitch sport routes. Other than that, I didn’t know much else about the place but the pictures and description were enough for me and Cati to get STOOKED. We agreed to meet at 8am at the shop and then took off in search of a grocery store, or to be more exact, the town’s main market.
The market description could take up a whole page but I’ll leave it to a few words. Dead chickens hanging on hooks, rotten meat, beef carcases getting cut up with bare hands and rusty knifes, produce, coca leafs and everything in between. I swear I only gagged a few times while we shopped. When Cati was bargaining for a kilo of cheese I noticed a woman and what looked like her daughter staring at me from their shop a few doors down. They smiled, I said “hola” and they replied
“Gringo Con Huevos!” (White boy with eggs!)
I looked down at the 12 eggs I was holding, blushed and walked away. There’s a saying in Spanish. “El tiene huevos” which means He has balls or guts... I suppose this is what I was being heckled about but I didn’t stay around long enough to ask...
That night we packed all our stuff we needed and left the rest locked in the room which we were allowed to store our stuff free of charge. We went to bed with dreams of epic sport routes to climb which was only a 75 km drive away.
Hatun Machay here we come...
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