Of Lima, Cajóns and Peruvian Mandolins

After climbing and descending Yanapaccha, I treated myself to two days of doing nothing in Huarez. Basically I was killing time before my flight, and spending it in a place that wasn't Lima. Fortunately there were some cool people to hang out with at the hostel, including an Aussie couple and a French dude.

Amongst some of the exciting adventure we shared: a trip to the market downtown to buy pirated DVD's. Most of these sold for the equivalent of thirty cents. The titles were in Spanish, but for American films, English was still the default language. They had a bunch of the latest films on disk, including Inception, but the Aussie guy told me that he had bought it and the quality was awful. He said that the older films were a safer bet because the guys doing the pirating usually just burned them off of an original disc, rather than setting a camera up in the theater.

Empowered by this knowledge, I purchased Casino Royale and Inglorious Basterds. We had ourselves a movie night at the hostel over some pisco. I found that pineapple juice makes a pretty good mixer. For about thirty seconds, Casino Royal went into German for some reason, but otherwise the quality was excellent.

I didn't actually plan to do nothing during the rest of my time in Huarez. I thought I'd do an easy hike out to Laguna Chirrup, a pond that was nearby. However, when I woke up too late on the second day to get transport, I resigned myself to indolence.

I booked my 15 sole ticket back to Lima with the Cial bus company. That night, A big group of us hostel foreigners decided to get dinner at El Horno, a pizzeria owned by a French guy. For the king's ransom of 18 soles, I indulged in a delicious wood-fired pizza. The owner came up to our table and struck up a conversation with his countrymen. Looking around the restaurant, it was probably safe to assume that there was nobody there who was actually born in Peru.

I don't think this is cute, but you might.

I had to put my cash down early and leave or else I would miss the bus. I had some regret that I hadn't done more in Huarez but I was looking forward to home--real home, back in Connecticut, which was only three days away. Boredom and a warm shower.

As the bus started rolling, I fell asleep. This was good because I could be rested up when we hit Lima and not have to use a hostel.

At five in the morning I woke up. The bus had rolled off to the side of the highway. An attendant explained that our ride had broken down. We would have to wait for other Cial busses to come and pick us up when they had empty seats. The wait meant nothing to me, in fact I embraced it because it meant that I had more time to sleep. Outside, I could see the hateful gray coastal fog hanging over colorless desert and knew we couldn't be too far from the city.

It's that goddamn fog again!

Over the next few hours, the bus emptied out as passengers got on board other busses. I was going to be last because my backpack was buried underneath everyone else's luggage. I didn't let it bother me and went to sleep instead. Finally, myself and five Israeli tourists left and got onboard a comfortable semi-cama with reclining seats. It was about another hour into Lima and then an hour going through Lima. Fortunately, I slept for most of the experience.

I got a cab from the bus station back to Plaza San Martin, back to where the whole crazy trip had started. There was an expensive hostel nearby, so I walked in and asked if they could check my bag. Walking around the city fully loaded with that bastard on my back was going to kill me. I opted for the light napsack, and set about my last Peruvian adventure.

A protest in Plaza San Martin

I had plane tickets home already, but hadn't thought about getting from Newark Airport to dear old Ledyard. I popped into an internet cafe to see if they had any Fung Wa Busses from Chinatown to Foxwoods, finally broke down and bought an Amtrack ticket to Mystic. Planning my journey across Connecticut while I was still on the other side of the equator did feel a bit surreal.

With that taken care of, I had one last goal for Peru, which was to buy a cajón. These nifty instruments are basically big wooden boxes with a sound hole in the back. In order to play, you sit down on top of it and hit the front panel. The cool thing about them is how their sound changes depending on where you hit them. In the middle, they make a dull boom but the top edge makes a sharp, ratatata snare sound. The cajóns with tightened cords inside do this much better than the ones that don't.

I had seen cajóns in every music store in all the major cities I'd been to and thought it would be cool to bring one home. I just learned from Wikipedia that the cajón is considered to have its origins from African slaves living in Peru. Consequently, I feel reassured that my purchase has even more meaning than I thought before.

I got lunch at a Chifa and then headed over to Plaza de Mayo. This place definitely comes recommended for all you travelers who think you might have a crack at Lima. A ring of dark blue buildings goes around a traffic circle and almost entirely consist of music shops. I went inside them all, ogling the amazing selection and occasionally fooled around with the instruments.

Along with cajóns, the most popular instruments were nylon string guitars and charangoes. The later is difficult to describe and difficult to play. It has ten strings grouped into pairs, and the set in the middle are one octave apart from each other. It resembles a ukulele somewhat. Also, you've probably heard it if you've ever listened to Simon and Garfunkle's rendition of the Peruvian El Condor Pasa. (Max, Ben and I have heard various renditions of this song almost as much we heard the reggaeton everywhere.)

Nearer to my area of specialty, many shops also kept mandolins, though I wouldn't have recognized them  because they looked exactly like the charangoes. The mandolins in Peru come with ten strings instead of the eight that I'm used to. Instead of grouping these strings into four pairs, the bottom two sets of strings are triplets. I don't really know why, but they are. Also, the instrument itself is much larger and has a bigger fretboard. Apparently most Peruvian mandolins use different tuning, but the one I took off the wall had its strings arranged in the same way that my mandolin at home does, EADG.

I began playing a couple chords and then tried out a couple of Irish reels.  Soon enough, the people in the shop started clapping their hands, dancing and spinning around with enthusiasm.

Nah, just lying there. I didn't actually sound that good, partly because I wasn't used to the oversized frets and also because I'm not that good. I declined the shopkeeper's offer that I buy it, but it had been a fun time anyway.

Plaza de Mayo

Instead I bought one of the smaller cajóns with cords. I had been planning on spending at least a hundred soles, but this one cost twenty. Call me a cheap bastard if you will, but I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't thought it sounded great. Also, I was afraid that if I tried to bring something too big as carry-on that airport security would confiscate it. As it happened, when I brought it through the checkpoint at George Bush International Airport in Houston, the guy by the X-ray machine was sure that he was looking at a birdhouse full of weed.

Climbing Yanapaccha

Me at the summit

We got into our sleeping bags around seven at night with my cellphone alarm set for one o'clock the following morning. What sleep I had was fitful. My heart pounded away and the headache from the night before made a comeback, though it was a bit less severe than it had been the last time. Maybe the extra day had been for the better because it had allowed me some more time to acclimatize.

As it happened, the alarm failed to go off. Fortunately I randomly woke up about a half hour later and then got Honza into action. The delay was not a really big deal, but it did mean we had to hurry a bit with breakfast. I spilled some oatmeal down my throat and sloshed back a cup of tea.

After the meal, we gathered up our crampons, axes, ropes and harnesses, put on small daypacks with warm jackets and water and began our walk to the glacier. The blue beams of our headlamps danced over the rocks as we wound through the moraine.

We stopped at the glacier's edge so that we could put our crampons on and rope ourselves together. All of preparation took time, and I felt my hands getting cold as I fidgeted with the rope and harness. I was glad when we started moving again.

We were would not be going up alone today. There were two other climbers going up the mountain, a Spanish guy and his Peruvian guide whose headlamps came up behind us as we began our ascent. They were setting up right near where I had stepped in the water, so Honza warned them not to repeat my mistake.

It was weird and unnerving to walk on the glacier in the dark. I was in an unfamiliar environment, knowable only by what I could see by the moonlight and my headlamp beam. The ground itself, one of the few things that we can usually rely on in life, had become an uncertainty. The crampons made stepping feel unnatural. They weighted my feet and required a funky stride to make the spikes would land properly. Being roped to Honza created an additional awkwardness as I had to match his pace exactly, no faster or slower. If I fell behind, I would be yanked, which threw me off balance, if I started to climb faster, there would be more slack between us, which would mean more danger if I ended up falling. Another frustration, was that I had to try not to step on the rope. When I did, it would get caught in my crampon spikes and throw me off balance.

By necessity, our path up the glacier took an erratic and unpredictable route as we swung around the huge crevasses in the ice. There were also smaller cracks that were about a three feet foot or less in width. These we would jump, counting on our spikes to hold the ice on the other side. I let my headlamp shine down into some of these cracks, but it didn't have the power to illuminate to the bottom--not even close.

I imagined what it would have been like if I had gone up unguided and unroped, without being aware of the subtle path I needed to take around the mountain's dangers. It would not necessarily have been suicide, but it wouldn't have been far off.

The ascent by headlamp

The slope became a steady uphill pitch. I didn't need my ice ax yet, but I had to lean forward and kick the tow spikes of the crampons into the ice. We walked a zigzag traverse in order to cut down on some of the steepness. All this time, I kept my head looking down, watching for bumps and cracks. The surface was uneven, broken into ridges. Lifting the awkward spaceman boots was hard work and got my heart and lungs working fast. Soon, I was very warm, and had to unzip my jacket before I got soaked with sweat.

About forty five minutes into our hike, we came to a much steeper section, that required me to use my ice-axes to keep going up. I could see the ice-plain in the moonlight, stretching out far below. It was not a good place to fall.

Honza put an ice screw in as an added security measure. As I went by, I had to unclip it from the rope and put it on my caribener, cold work that required removing my mittens.

Another section required two screws, which we would leave so that we could use them on the descent. This part wound through the bottom of a shallow crevasse and then ascended up the other side.

The ice here was far less sturdy than what we had dealt with before. I swung my axes wildly, to find any kind of solid surface. There was a second, massive crack that started over my head, with large hanging icicles. I whacked a few with my axe and listened as they fell, crashing and tinkling into the dark space below.

During the midst of the ascent, I realized that I had screwed something up with my crampon because it had come loose. Fortunately, I noticed the problem before it slid off my boot, otherwise it would have gone skidding down the glacier and been lost forever in some crevasse. Then I would have been really screwed.

I stopped the climb and did what I could to get it back in the proper alignment. I had to take my mittens off to fool with the scraps, felt myself getting chilled now that I wasn't moving. The fear of the cold meant that I rushed through it, and after another couple of minutes of ascent, it came loose again. I knew what I had done wrong, but Honza wasn't going to give me the chance to screw it up again and fixed it himself. To him of course, this was unforgivable incompetence.

I was relieved when we got through the most technical part of the climb, which gave way to a steep ascent up a dome of ridged and spiky ice. The ridges were about six inches tall, which made stepping in the crampons even more awkward. There were a proliferation of cracks as well, requiring me to break stride several times and take the leap of faith. For this part of the climb, I used my ice axes as short walking sticks, leaning over them in gimpy faction so I could use the points on their bottoms to get more traction. We kept the pace hard and steady all this time, keeping me breathing hard, fighting the fatigue building in my muscles.

At last, I began to see the dim light of morning begin to define the surrounding peaks, gray at first and then a burning orange as the rays of tropical sunlight hit their snows. After hours of looking at the ice in front of me, it gave me a boost to have something to see and appreciate. The extraordinary majesty I was witnessing, made some of the stress of the last couple of days subside.

We came to the top of a sharp, white ridge where we went out of the shelter of the mountain, and into a cold wind. The top stood in front of us, perhaps another half a mile distant and five-hundred feet up. The ridge followed a graceful s-curve and then hit the final pitch to the summit.

I endured another twenty minutes of low-oxygen cardio up the crenulated ice-surface and then we were at the summit. The sun, which had already painted the higher peaks, hit the top of Yanapaccha at the exact moment that we arrived.

Myself and Honza at the Summit

Morning light on the mountain peaks

Why I didn't want to stand on the edge

Huascaran, as seen from Yanapaccha

Yanapaccha's summit stands at 17,910 feet above sea-level. I'd really prefer to round that figure up to 18,000, but what can you do? Should've climbed Pisco. It was a bit vain to bitch about such things at that moment. After the exertions of the last six hours, this mountain felt worthy of being the highest that I'd ever climbed.

The Spanish and Peruvian guy had passed us earlier, but ended up just beating us to the summit. We exchanged pictures, and sat on the lip of snow for a while. Being a steep, crumbly ridge with a massive cliff on the other side, this was not very healthy place to stand, certainly not on a windy day. It was far safer to sit, even if the ice underneath our butts was actually dangling over a great abyss.

We didn't spend more than ten minutes at the top for fear of getting chilled. Other than the view and the sense of accomplishment, summit highlights included sinking my molars into a frozen power bar, which gave me some nourishment for the descent.

Descending from the summit

Ridge near the top. The actual summit is further back.

Negotiating some crevasses

I had worried earlier that the way down would be much harder than the way up during technical sections. In fact, having the illumination of the sun and not having to bust a gut working my way up made things a lot easier. I still had a few hairy moments, including when I failed to put my crampons down properly, fell and slid along the ice. Luckily, I caught myself with the axes before I went very far down the slope.

When we got back to the section where we had left two ice-screws, Honza flipped out because I ended up taking a different route from his on the descent. I had watched him descend, but lost track of his his footsteps when I was actually looking at the ice in front of me. I had wanted to get the descent right, so I asked him which way I should go.

"Down! Down! Down!"

Sounds obvious right? Not while I was hanging onto a crumbly ice wall with axes and crampons. I didn't want to fuck up here, I wanted specifics.

"Yeah, which way am I supposed to fucking go down?"

Fine, don't answer. Down, it's fucking down. I guess it didn't really matter which way, there was no preferred way to go down here except as it pertained to the force of gravity.

"You're not respecting me" he told me afterwards. "I don't like it." When I tried to explain the difference between not understanding and not respecting, he only got more pissed. Now, I just shrugged my shoulders, because I didn't really give a fuck what he thought of me. I had tried to watch, I tried to learn, but apparently my difficulties were the result of willful ignorance. And now I was ready to get off the damn mountain and be through with this shit.

After some more down-climbing with the ice axes, we reached the flatter section of the glacial field and had to negotiate our way back through the treacherous crevasses. Because the daylight made them visible, these chasms no longer held the terror of the unknown, but the known was still pretty damn scary. From, cracks the size of credit cards to fifteen foot wide canyons, most of the drops seemed to go down about fifty feet. I snapped a few photos so that everyone could be duly impressed. At one point we ended up walking on a narrow ice ridge between two of these gulfs and ended with having to heave myself over an ice ledge.

At last we got back to the rocks. Honza shook my hand and congratulated me for the climb. I thanked him and we shared a couple platitudes about how difficult the climb had been. We were probably both kind of pissed at each other, but now that we were off the ice some of the tension had eased between us. No one was going cuss the other one out, partly because we had many hours of travel ahead of us. Maybe when we got to the hostel--but I would probably be out of energy by then. It was nine in the morning; even with the late start, we had made it down three hours ahead of what Honza had predicted for us earlier.

A rather large hole in the glacier. I added my ice axe to lend a sense of depth

Honza by a crevasse

One last crevasse to cross. Note that in the background, there

is a hugeass boulder, sitting on top of a slab of ice.

We had some sandwiches at camp and then packed up our gear. It was a huge relief to take off the clunky plastic boots, which made my leather ones felt as light as slippers by comparison. Then I put on the full pack, and it was back to clomping. The trail back to the road was tricky going because of the loose sand and slippery grass beneath, so there were still plenty of chances to take a nice fall. As it happened, at different points along the hike, we both did. By noontime, we were had reached the road. The hiking had ended, but the day's adventures were far from over.

When you hike in New England, getting to the road means you are free to turn up the AC, crank out the tunes and drive home in relaxation along the comfort of the American interstate system. Here however, reaching the road meant hours in a bumpy collectivo ride down the mountains on terrible roads . The van had no seatbelts and came with a worse suspension than your osteoarthritic grandmother. The driver hit a few bumps so hard that I smacked my head against the ceiling.

After we had left the park, the main road was blocked, compelling the driver to take us on an even-worse detour that was practically a dirt track. Whenever another vehicle appeared from the other direction, there was a game of chicken to decide who would like to back up several hundred feet to a wide enough place for the vehicles to pass.

At Yungay, Honza and I ate a dingy place where we got some cheap eats. We had about another hour of riding to get back into Huarez, packed together with locals inside another collectivo.

I dropped my gear at the hostel and went my separate way to get a pizza dinner at a Chifa. Go figure. The food was pretty good though, and I felt like my ten soles were well spent.

My reflections on the evening were that I had gotten what I had wanted and it was over. Time to go home.

15,000' Frustration

After I put my foot through the ice and we had to delay our climb, it was time to sit back and enjoy a day of tension.

The night before, I finally felt some effects of the 15,000 foot altitude. For one thing, I had a dull headache that would not let me sleep. I could also hear my breathing, which was far heavier than ordinary. I felt my heartbeat in my ears as it raced along at well over 100 beats per minute. On top of this, the fact that I was still pissed off at myself for my mistake and obsessing over whether the boots could be dry enough did little to promote a restful feeling. When I finally did nod off, it was brief and fitful. Overall, I probably got fewer than four hours of sleep.

The next morning, I set the boots and the liners out in the sunlight so that they could dry. After Honza and I ate breakfast, we walked up one of the rocky ledges near the pond (in leather hiking boots.) At least I felt better than the night before and had plenty of energy for rock-scrambling. That energy could have pushed me to the top of Yanapaccha, but 'nuff said.

When we had climbed a couple hundred feet up the rocks, we had an excellent view of the glacier's snowy flanks, directly across from us. Honza tried to show me the route that we would walk, but my eyes weren't sharp enough to see the footsteps, and any other points of reference were meaningless. As a hawk flew by, I looked away and tried to snap a picture, something that pissed him off.

Later, we went back down to camp so I could practice some more climbing technique. I learned a few things that ten-year olds at climbing gyms might already be familiar with, e.g., the figure eight knot, using a belay device. We practiced by looping the rope around a boulder and belaying up and down a small ledge.

I have to admit, I was a bit of a slow learner. Handling mechanical things has never been a strong suit of mine—also the learning curve might have been depressed somewhat at the higher altitude. Honza's frustrations were pretty much transparent. "This is basic stuff," he would say after I screwed up something that was pretty basic. He also cut me off many of my questions (which were many), got exasperated when I tried to figure things out for myself and screwed up.

At this point, I was getting a little sick of playing the role of good-natured dolt and staring to get pissed at Honza. He was full of helpful comments like "you're going to die on this mountain." He showed me another knot used to secure ropes to caribiners. "Maybe you can go home and use it to hang yourself." Hilarious.

The one thing that he said, more than once, which got me pissed was "You aren't born for it." Really? Fuck you, you smug fucking asshole. I've been climbing mountains my whole damn life. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was inept, that this was not the place for me--so it really did bother me.

The fact that I didn't have the means to prove him wrong right then, only made me more frustrated. I had an irrational urge to put my boots on right then, clomp up the mountain and flip him the bird from the top of the peak. It always sucks when idealism has to play second-fiddle to realism.

It's also good to keep in mind that pride goeth before the fall into the big fucking crevasse. The mountain and adventure literature I had read, such as Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air have reinforced into the point that arrogant souls are invariably the ones that draw themselves and others into dangerous situations. The 1993 disaster on Mount Everest for instance, was created in large part by the overconfidence of guides, who let their egos cloud their judgement and underestimated how dangerous the mountain was. I hated the idea that I was an inept climber, hated that I'd been dumb enough to step into an ice-puddle, but I hated most of all to think think that I was capable of deluding myself and that I couldn't trust my judgement.

The idea of fucking up badly on the mountain, getting injured or worse was more frightening than just the consequences themselves. To do so would be to have proven that I had learned nothing, to add my name to the roster of ignorant and deluded souls that have fucked up before. I won't be the first to make this point, but taking an unnecessary risk on a mountain and walking away unscathed is no victory. Cheating fate is still a form of cheating, demonstrating a failure to plan properly and a careless disregard for the conventions of safety that others have honored.

Even our humble New England states have more than a few stories of pride and death in the mountains. Check out Not Without Peril for some great stories about the hundreds who have died hiking in the Presidential Range in New Hampshire. I've always felt some disdain for these less-experienced hikers that kept going through bad weather or fatigue when it was obviously time to turn back. Now that I was stepping up to a new level of difficulty, I didn't want to refuse to acknowledge when I go in over my head, compound ineptitude with willful ignorance.

Fine. I'd have to let Honza handle finding routes, clipping me into belays. My guide deserves the credit for this stuff, and its stuff that, I must reluctantly concede, is still over my head. Someday I would like to be able to bring more to the table and feel that I have claimed a bigger piece of the victory when I come off a mountain. In the meantime, it would still be my lungs and muscles bringing me up the mountain. I wasn't going to be pulled.

Watch Your Step

Yanapaccha, as seen looking up its glacier

The following morning, Honza and I embarked upon a multi-part quest to get to Yanapaccha. After our morning breakfast of oatmeal, we hoisted our backpacks and hiked into the center of town to get a collectivo to Yungay. The ride was packed as usual and our driver was playing a game where he tried to hit every bump and pothole in the road.

Meanwhile, Honza struck up a conversation with a couple of climbers. They were both Hungarian, but had lived most of their lives in Venezuela--not a combination you hear about every day. Since they were going to climb Chopicalqui, which was along the way for us, we decided to split a taxi with them in Yungay.

Yungay is famous because of The Great Earthquake, which struck the Ancash region in the seventies. According to Wikipedia, the disaster killed half of the people living in Huarez and destroyed 90% of the buildings. Yungay fared even worse. Situated beneath the slopes of Huascarán, it was right in the path of a gigantic mudslide that came down the mountain and buried the town entirely. Except for a few hundred survivors, all of the 20,000 living in the town perished under the onslaught of ice and mud. The scale of destruction wrought by the earthquake, both around Huarez and elsewhere in the region made it the most deadly earthquake in Latin American history--until the earthquake in Haiti this year.

Yungay, has since been rebuilt entirely, only a couple of miles from where the old town once stood. Because Peru's government has declared the site to be a memorial, the buildings and inhabitants remain buried where they were at the time of the disaster.

Our taxi ride got interesting fast as our driver began a steep ascent on the bumpy dirt road, climbing past farms and mudbrick buildings. We passed the site where Yungay used to be where there was a large Jesus statue, like the one in Cuzco (or Rio de Janeiro), standing over the site in commemoration of the dead. Huascarán loomed above us like a pillar of white, stabbing into the dark blue sky.

The driver was extremely slow and thus an exception to the Peruvian drivers that I had encountered thus far. When we came to some very tight, narrow curves, he would blow the horn as a preventive measure in case there happened to be another vehicle barreling down in the other direction. Another habit, which got old fast, was his tendency to spit out the window, an act that he repeated every two minutes.

After we had gained perhaps two thousand feet of elevation, we came to the entrance of Huascarán National Park, where all visitors have to pay 85 soles for a 10-day pass. The Venezuelan/Hungarians had paid for theirs eight days ago, so they lied to the officials and said that they were doing a two-day trip to Pisco and got out of paying an additional fee for their three-day excursion. For my part, I couldn't let them know Honza was my guide; he didn't have the proper certification and could have landed in trouble.

Back in the taxi, the road leveled out and we entered a canyon flanked by 500 foot walls of battered rock. We emerged from the canyon after about two miles and came into a vast, open area. Suddenly, I could see all the mountains in the valley. Huascarán is king here, but the other mountains are impressive in their own right and many exceed 5,000 meters. Even Pisco, which never seems to get any respect, looked like an impossible wall of monstrous white. The road went by two lakes that were an enticing shade of turquoise, reminiscent of the Caribbean. These waters were in fact glacial runoff, so they were probably ice-cold.

Honza and the other climbers talked about how the alpine maps from ten years ago were hopelessly inaccurate now because the glaciers had shrunk so drastically. That couldn't be because of global warming though--there were probably just layoffs at the ice factory or something.

Myself at the trailhead, with Huascarán in the background

High-altitude lunch. The lakes I mentioned earlier are visible far below.

The hike in. You can see Yanapaccha's Glacier up above.

The car began climbing again soon after the lake, up an endless series of switchbacks. After an hour of climbing, even the high-altitude lakes were thousands of feet below. When Honza and I got out, and started along the trail, we were already at almost 15,000 feet of elevation. The net climb I was about to do would only be about three-thousand feet. In other words, it would be less than climbing New Hampshire's Mount Washington from Joe Dodge Lodge.

This does seem a bit like cheating and I can't pretend that it wouldn't have been more badass to have started in Yungay--or maybe the Pacific Ocean at zero feet. Then again, starting at a high altitude, maybe already more than halfway up, is pretty much the norm in mountaineering. The summit of the mountain I was about to climb was still 2,000 feet lower than Everest Base Camp. Really, Everest is only a 10,000 foot climb--but what a 10,000 feet!

It is also true that the real mountain features, namely the glacier, don't begin until high-elevation, so if that's the only part of the climb you're interested in, you might as well take a road to that point when it's available. My head-start got me to the mountain's true challenge. Getting to the summit from here was going to be no cakewalk.

Honza and I hiked the trail for a couple minutes until we found a good spot where we could sit for lunch. We had some bread and avocado and then moved on. All around were spectacular views of Pisco, Chopicalqui and of course the mighty Huascaron, which loomed up behind us. About halfway into our hike, I got my first view of Yanapaccha, a little shorter than some of the other beasts on the scene, but impressive. A great glacier spilled down from the top to where it terminated a short distance above where we stood. At its bottom, the ice ended in a confused riot of seracs--thirty foot blocks that leaned drunkenly in different directions.

The trail was rugged going under our heavy packs. Still, I felt pretty high-energy and was doing a lot better under the lower oxygen than I had dared to hope earlier. The time that I had spent in high-elevation towns like Cuzco, Abancay and Ayacucho had evidently paid off in allowing me to acclimatize.

Despite some tricky terrain along our hike to camp, it was not incredibly hard, and we shaved half an hour off the two hours that Honza had anticipated we would need. We pitched tent alongside a high-altitude pond, where we would have a water source, as well as good shelter from the rocky walls that surrounded it.

One of the mountain agencies had done everyone a favor and dug a toilet about a thousand feet from the water source. Far from a mere pit in the ground, this lavatory had an elevated "bowl" built up from local rocks. Utilizing the facility required the initial unpleasantness of putting bare ass on cold stone. Following this however, I enjoyed the most scenic bowel movement of my career.

We got everything prepped in camp, and then put our plastic boots one and left for the glacier so that I could learn some climbing basics before our ascent. To get there, we had to climb over the rubble of the moraine, boulders that the glacier had scraped off the mountain. It was no small feat to negotiate the uneven terrain while wearing clunky boots and keeping crampons and ice axe in hand.

Our tent at base camp

A scenic shitter

We stopped at a large flat boulder at the glacier's edge and put our crampons on. Here, the ice left pools of melt-water we needed to step around, and formed a steep white slope that went up for about fifty feet until it got to the top of the glacier. Beyond this, the surface extended almost to the top of the mountain, a treacherous road, beset with crevasses and steep cliffs. An ordinary hiking boot would have been hopeless on the slippery surface. With the crampons however, I could get a firm grip into the ice, and kick my way up. I also had the axes which I could use on steeper slopes, to get firm, trustworthy holds that would support my weight.

I would have additional security in that Honza and I would be using snow pickets and ice-screws. These devices allow the lead climber to create solid holds to which he can attach ropes as a precaution against falls going up, or else for belaying down. Since Honza planned to lead most of the way, I would have the responsibility of removing his screws and pickets as we went and then attaching them to a caribiner on my harness.

The most basic safety precaution that we had was the rope we would keep attached between us. Two weeks before, an American had been on a guided tour up Yanapaccha and hadn't been roped to his guide. He fell into a crevasse to his death. Whoops. Presumably, if I fell anywhere along the way, Honza would have the time to perform an arrest with an ice axe and stop the fall. Of course, the rope meant that if Honza wen't down, I would have to perform the same duty or else be dragged after him into whatever crack he dropped into.

After showing me some of the basics, which admittedly, I needed to practice and would practice more before I tried any other mountain, Honza said we needed to get back to camp in order to do our cooking and have time to get to sleep early.

Approaching Yanapaccha's Glacier

The moraine at the glacier's edge

The Crampon Grip

At this moment, I suffered a severe attack of idiocy and stepped over onto a thin layer of ice, which, unfortunately, stood over a deep pool of water. The ice gave out immediately, dropping me in up to my knees. I thrashed out as right away, but it was already too late; the boots were soaked.

"So you are finished for tomorrow eh?" Honza said.

This was the absolute last thing I wanted to here, especially because I knew that I had just done this to myself. To compensate for the realization that I had been utterly stupid, my ego flashed into complete denial mode. It didn't matter that the boots were wet, that it was getting cold and dark, that people die ignoring basic shit like this. I was going to get the boots dried, and we were climbing tomorrow.

Back at camp, I took out the wet liners and began stuffing my boots with extra clothing, the T-shirt that I'd worn hiking in, almost all the toilet paper that I'd brought with me. I put the whole mess near the feeble heat of the cook stove and prayed that everything would work out exactly the way it was supposed to.

The thing was that it worked--mostly. After we'd eaten dinner and I'd spent two hours desperately replacing clothes and toilet paper, I ran my finger along the inside of the boots and liners, into their toes. Everything felt pretty dry, maybe a little moisture left over, but no big deal right? Obviously, there was no chance that I'd try to rationalize my way into thinking that I'd fixed something that was still bad.

Honza however, still felt dampness and told me that I was almost guaranteed to get frostbitten If I were stupid enough to try the mountain the next morning. It was far from what I wanted to hear, but I went with it. I decided that we could delay the hike a day and give the boots some more time to dry in the sun. Unfortunately, we couldn't start the hike in the afternoon because, during the heat of the day, the ice softens and starts to build up on crampons in addition to becoming unreliable and unsafe. We would simply have to move the entire plan up 24 hours and begin our night climb at 1:00 the next morning.

Despite being pissed at myself and the circumstances, I began to try to make the best of it in my mind. This was not one of those situations where, we had a narrow window in between storms or other unfavorable conditions. The Andean weather was guaranteed to be sunny and beautiful until the end of the dry winter season. Meanwhile, Honza and I could practice some more technique the next day.

Perhaps I was just as inexperienced as my American predecessor that had fallen into the crevasse. Still, I was glad that my misstep had resulted in only a lost day, and that we weren't going to let it become something far worse.

Let's Climb a Mountain!

It was around six in the morning when the bus pulled into Huarez. I got a taxi to Joe's Place, a hostel that the guidebook said was a popular haunt for experienced climbers and guides. I figured that it would be a good spot for me to pick up advice about which mountains in the Cordillera Blanca were good, what kind of challenges I could expect, and information as to where I could pick up a reliable guide. While I did not have much experience climbing on ice, I also didn't want to do a mountain that was too easy. The mountain I was looking for definitely had to require crampons and ice-axes, and had to be something that most people wouldn't be able to do. I didn't want to come home to America and ask myself, "What if."

Joe's Place had multistory dormitories and a courtyard for tenters. The outside staircases and patios it the feeling of a large treehouse. Joe's wife Vicki put me in one of the bunk rooms. Inside, a dreadlocked fellow wearing glasses was already up and moving about. His name was Honza, yet another one of those permanent European wanderers, he was born in the Czech Republic and been everywhere from Japan to Canada and Ireland. He had spent six months in the last country as a guest worker in Oughterard, County Galway. This was only twenty miles from where I had spent my term abroad two years before, and I had even stopped in that town to go off hiking in the mountains of Connemarra.

More relevant to my current mission, he had lived at Joe's Place since April and since then had done nothing but climb mountains in the Cordillera Blanca. In addition to climbing dozens of local mountains that were above 5,000 and 6,000 meters, he had climbed Huascaron, the tallest mountain in Peru which stands at 6,768 meters or 22,205 feet. Honza showed me pictures from his latest exploits on the hostel computer.

Pisco, which he had been up a month ago, was one of the most popular mountains for inexperienced climbers as it required few technical skills. "A hike on crampons," he said dismissively. Despite Honza's disdain, the pictures of the ascent up the glacier and the shots of the surrounding Andes at the summit were striking and looked more wild than any mountain I had climbed. Then he showed me the pictures of Yanapaccha, a shorter mountain, but one that he had more respect for because it required technical climbing: crampons, ropes and ice-axes to get up the face of the glacier. He had guided a couple there a week before and considered it a worthy challenge. I still wanted to consider a few other mountains and look at the guides in town, but I asked if he would be available to guide if I chose to go up it. He told me he would be willing to go back and guide me up the mountain if I paid for his services. It was a steep price, but he said that I could save some money if I found a partner who was interested in climbing with me and would split costs. Meanwhile, I would go into town and check out some of the other tour options.

Huarez is a pleasant enough city; it resembles Cuzco in that it is approximately the same elevation and also fosters a good amount of tourism. Several alabaster peaks rear up around the town in all their jagged splendor.

The breed of tourist that comes to Huarez is slightly different than the Cuzco variety in that he is more likely to be someone interested in serious climbing and trekking. Thus, the area around the main street and the Plaza de Armas is clustered with guiding and equipment rental agencies that supply foreigners with the resources they need to claim an Andean summit. Treks offer an option for those who are interested in putzing around high altitude trails with heavy backpacks or mules.

I walked around to a couple of tour agencies to see if I could join any planned expeditions. Many of these went up to Pisco or to Vallunaraju which is an even easier peak. I was nervous that the climbs I was finding were not supposed to go until a few days in advance, cutting into the amount of time that I'd have to get back to Lima. I had a bordering-on-irrational fear of missing my flight. Because mountain climbs were unpredictable variables, I didn't want to push my luck with getting home.

After wandering a while amongst the various agencies and randomly asking climbers I saw on the street if they wanted to join an expedition, I began to think about taking Honza's offer and whether I was willing to do this as just the two of us. If anything this would cut down on the risk of screwups--if somebody else went who didn't have experience, he might not be up to it, forcing us to bail on the expedition, and losing me an opportunity to climb. On the other hand, most of the climbers in town were more experienced than I was, so it was far more likely that I would be the weak link.

Back at the hostel, I ended up to talking to Eric, a South African who, like Honza, had done a lot of climbing in the area. He was another Pisco hater.

"Its just a walk, not a climb" he told me and was more enthusiastic when I told him I was thinking about Yanapaccha.

"You'll just feel better when you get to the top, knowing that you climbed something real." He agreed that it would be challenging, but thought that I could do it.

At this point, I had figured that I could afford the time it would take to do an expedition up Pisco or Vallunaraju. Moreover, it would have been far cheaper to do it with group rates. But dammit, I did want a real mountain. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone. Sure my experience with ice axes and crampons was slight and experience using ropes and harnesses close to nill. Truthfully, I didn't exactly relish great heights. But then, I was able to function when I went up and down the broken ladder near Machu Picchu. Maybe a little fear was allowed. The serious possibility of failure was necessary for success to mean something.

With these high minded values bouncing around my brain, I went over to the computer room where Honza was working and told him that I could pay him and that we would do it tomorrow.

Motivation seminar cheese aside, there was a lot of basic preparation to do and I had started late. It was about six at night. I would make some pasta and lentils for myself to eat and then Honza and I could get food supplies in town and also rent the stuff that I needed to make a climb.

We set out for a gear rental place in town where I got some of the the badass mountain climbing stuff that I needed. This included crampons to dig into the ice, hard and heavy plastic boots with insulation, twin ice axes, waterproof pants as well as gaiters to keep ice and snow out of the boots. I also got a sleeping bag and mat. Honza already had a tent we could use, so we were fine there. Back at the hostel, Honza loaned me his climbing harness, gloves and thermal underwear. I was already had the rest of the clothes that I needed such as my heavy mittens, parka, fleeces and tech shirts.

We brought food for three to four days, though if things went according to our ideal plan, we would be able to finish in two. With the food included on top of everything else, we had amassed ourselves a heavy payload we would have to haul into camp. I spent a good part of the night wrestling all the necessary crap into my rucksack and tying it together. All together, it probably came to close to forty pounds.

According to plans, we would leave around midmorning, get to the trailhead around noon and then take a two hour hike to the base of the mountain. After practicing some climbing technique on the glacier, we would get to sleep early and set an alarm to wake us up at 1:00am to hike the mountain by headlamp. We would be able to summit by early morning and get back to camp by noon. If all went as planned.

The Colca Canyon Adventure

--------------------The best shot I got of Colca Canyon-----------------

While in Arequipa, we popped into a few a few of the shops that offered tours to Colca Canyon. This great rift through the Andean highlands is in fact twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and is the second deepest canyon in the world. The holder of that distinction would be Cañon del Cotahuasi, which is only a few hundred miles away and merely a few hundred meters deeper. Cotahuasi is also a lot harder to get to and we weren't in the mood to sink a day into the bumpy ride out there over obscure roads.

Where we were, the canyon depth was probably only three-thousand feet up, though at the rim we were probably close to 12,000 feet above sea level--high enough so that altitude was no joke and had potentially unpleasant consequence for the unacclimatized
Colca Canyon, was up to then, the most beautiful place that I had ever seen. The rock walls of basalt and other minerals plunged down to the sparkling turquoise river below. The natural environment in and around the canyon varies from alpine desert near the top to edenic stands of trees and cactii that grew near the bottom. Even cooler, it was home to the Andean Condor. We saw these big, graceful birds slipping along the thermals at Cruz del Condor--along with two hundred other tourists shooting them out of the sky with their digital cameras. After we had left this popular, however, we still got a few views of condors as well as hawks.
Had my camera been working, I would have had a photographic field day. Unfortunately, the sand that had slipped into the workings at Huacachina had put my camera in an ornery mood. Now, the lens was permanently out of focus, and I could only take blurred out drunken snapshots of the awesome majesty around me. I was furious at myself for the earlier clumsiness, but at least Max had a camera, so it was not a total loss.

What was particularly inspiring to me was that even in it's rugged isolation, the canyon had held people, societies that went back thousands of years. Today, people still inhabit small towns built by the Spanish. Our hike led us through these villages where people still spoke their native languages, including Quechua and Aymara. Present day farmers still used the ancient infrastructure of terraces and aquaducts.
I must be careful not to enter the territory of cliché if I get overly romantic about the simple, harmonious arrangement that the locals lived in. It is important to note that it is still pretty common for people to move out of the canyon for their education, jobs and the like. Cement and tin-roofed huts suggested that there wasn't much money to go around.
Still, I saw an austere beauty to it all. They had obviously manipulated the local ecosystem with their irrigation ditches and livestock, but trees and cactii were still in abundance. There was also far less litter on the ground than what I had seen in the citiies, none of the desperate sprawl that I had seen in Lima and Nazca. People along the trails included several post card-ready local women adorned in colorful robes. Some of them sold bottled water and soda to thirsty foreigners but even where there was no opportunity for them to gain from us economically, they remained incredibly warm to the visitors to their canyon. When we passed someone along the trail, we were sure to get a smile and a "buenas tardes."

The day we would leave Arequipa for Colca, we had to set an alarm 3:00 in the morning in order to make the tour, which was supposed to pick us up at the hostel. We lurched out of our bunks, gathered our packs in the cold darkness and walked down the hall to some chairs by the door where we could wait.
We jumped up at the sound of the doorbell, but when I unlatched the entrance, it turned out just to be some German guy coming back from the clubs. It was now 3:30 and we were starting to worry about our tour showing up. The bell rang again--only this time it was a Scottish guy. He seemed fairly awake and aware considering the circumstances. When he saw our group sitting around waiting, he decided to sit with us and shoot the breeze for a while.

At last, the actual tour guide knocked on the door and lead us out to the street where a minibus full of other passengers was idling. We tossed our packs in the back, and got our sat down in the last row of seats.
Sleep-deprived as I was, it was almost impossible to drift back off. Instead, I watched as the Arequipa suburbs went by and the bus began to climb up along a windy mountain highway. The stars became vivd as we left the town limits and then filled the sky with so much detail that it made my mind hurt to keep them all within my gaze. The moon was a tiny sliver, making the contrast off the heavens against the darkness of space all the more striking. I could dimly perceive the hulking stone outlines of cliffs to our right; to the left, the dim twinkle of the city dropping away as we climbed. The breath of all the passengers formed a layer of frost on my window which I had to scratch away in order to continue watching outside. It was worth it because I managed to spot two shooting stars.
In a surreal moment, the bus went by a burning truck. Its breaks must have failed coming down the hill and it was now blazing heartily along the roadside. A group of men stood outside the catastrophe like a group of boy scouts at a campfire.

Meanwhile, it became obvious that with each switchback going by, the van was gaining some serious altitude. At around 15,000 feet, the bus reached a flat wasteland of scrub and rock. The rising sun illuminated the gray landscape patched over by frost and frozen pools of water. It was all incredibly beautiful.
My ears had popped several times during the climb. More amusing, Ben's bag of Oreos from Arequipa had swollen up like a balloon in the lower air-pressure. I felt like I was breathing a little harder, but because I was sitting still, the effect on me was not so great. Once I got out to move around, I could tell that ordinary physical effort had got a lot harder.
Ben and I had been hydrating regularly to counteract the lower oxygen but soon found ourselves thinking less about air pressure and more about bladder pressure. Finally, we got the driver to stop and scrambled out and down a rocky ditch so we could relieve ourselves. I reflected that (disregarding airplanes) this was the highest altitude piss that I had taken yet. When I tried to hurry back to our ride, the ten feet of effort had me sucking wind and got the heart pounding. That's when I realized that altitude was real and that I felt it as much as anyone.
After our excursion, the bus began winding down into a lower valley. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I'd seen yet. Too bad the camera wasn't working.

The bus pulled over in Chivay, a local town so that we could have a spartan breakfast of rolls, jelly and coca tea. That's right, it's the same stuff that goes up your nose at the frat, only in its milder organic form. Here, locals consider it an altitude supplement, even though it probably has less of a kick than a cup of coffee. Since everyone knows that drugs are cool, I chugged my mug. Tasted a bit like grass clippings. I thought the coca cookies I'd brought were far tastier. I even distributed some to two British women I'd been talking to along the ride, thereby elevating my status from use to dealer.
We boarded the bus again, which took us off the paved road and onto jaw-clicking dirt. The constant rattling battered all the dust out of the seats and into our air. It was soon as dusty within the cabin as it was on the road outside.
Lots of people were asleep, but I they were missing out. Colca Canyon was on our right, a massive gap in the land surrounded by frowning rock faces. Below, there were fields of terraces built into the slopes. Special bridges built for aquaducts went over the road. At one point, the bus went through a 200 meter long tunnel so that it could cut through a slope. There were no lights within, save from the bus, and the space was filled with dust. We emerged on the other side and drove a few more bumpy miles until we arrived at Cruz del Condor.
At the crest of a rise, we could see the tourists in Peruvian knit caps and massive cameras, thronged about the clifftop like a conquering Inca army. The bus offloaded us at the side of the road and we went out along footpaths to swarms gathered around the edge. People looking down into the canyon hooted, screamed and clicked their shutters as the birds made their lazy swoops along the thermals. Many ran around recklessly without regard for the trails, mindlessly trampling over the vegetation. The whole scene was kind of disgusting, and I was glad to get back in the bus.

If we had signed up for the one day tour, Cruz Del Condor would have been the big highlight of our trip. After we got our pictures, we would have grabbed up some tourist trinkets from one of the stands and called it done. Fortunately we had had the foresight to sign up for the hike and the overnight stay, which meant that we had a chance to explore the canyon's depths while getting away from some of the hoards of people.
The van took us a couple of miles down the road to an adjoining farm path where we got out again to begin our hike. The guides split the bus into two groups. As it happened, we three Americans got the Spanish-speaking guide even though we had signed up for English. This was a surprise blessing however as we got a learning opportunity out of it. Because she spoke clearly and took the time to explain things along the trail, I got a language lesson to go with the tour. She was patient enough to wait for me to piece together my scraps of vocab into coherent questions so that I got practice in speaking as well as listening.
Ben and I took the lead for the descent until there was a French guy that went past us. The canyon's geology was eye-popping: massive basalt walls, rockfalls that had tumbled down the sides. It was extremely warm and bright. There was a wooden-decked suspension bridge at the bottom with a big sign welcoming us to the national park. The patch of shade it created was a popular piece of real-estate for resting hikers and women selling soda and bottled water laid out on blankets. We scooted in out of the sun, took off our bags and waited for the rest of our group.


---------The river as seen through my camera from the bridge--------


Eventually everyone caught up, paid up for bottled water and soda. We crossed the bridge together and followed the path up a steep grade for about two-hundred feet until it leveled out and took a more leisurely course in the direction of the river's flow. The climate down in the canyon was mediterranean with plenty of green plant life, but also with man-made walls, steps and the aqueducts that I had mentioned earlier.
After about a half mile walk, we came into a small town for lunch on an outdoor patio. We had a German couple at our table, along with a Hungarian woman and a gaggle of French. The Hungarian and the French were roughly our age; all would be students at university in Lima in the fall. The French didn't know much English, but we could communicate with them somewhat with the limited Spanish on both sides.
The rest of the hike took us along many ups and downs, through other small canyon towns and to spectacular vistas of the high mountain walls around us. The towns were only accessible by foot or hoof for those with burros. Despite their isolation, some of them had good-sized buildings and works of stone. One had a large stone church and an event plaza. Wires supplied the homes with their electricity. I don't know for sure about internet access, but I kind of doubted it.
I was particularly impressed by the aquaducts, which rushed alongside the path in narrow concrete trenches. The waterways were everywhere, stretching up for miles to their origins in the mountains. In some places, locals had cut tunnels into the rocks to allow the water to pass through the mountainside. At another point, the trail followed the edge of a steep drop where the builders had left room for the aquaduct and not the path. In order to walk around, we had to balance carefully on the concrete curb. Looking down was optional.
Around four o'clock, we redescended into the canyon, pounding down the loose gravel trail, sending clouds of dust into the air. I waved to the brits as we fell past their group. Fast as we were hiking, some guy in running shoes without a pack came sprinting, literally sprinting, out of nowhere and flew past us. In a couple of seconds he flew around the side of a canyon wall and disappeared. I would have liked to know his story, but he wasn't going to hang around and and answer questions.
The descent ended in a bridge over the rapids and consisted of stout lumber supported by steel cables from overhead. The old girl buckled and swung quite a bit as we crossed, but unfortunately it was too wide to have the drama of a true Indiana Jones bridge.

No, we did not sleep in one of the local towns. On the other side of the bridge, there was a settlement of bamboo huts built specifically for tourists. Ben, Max and I got one with three beds, threw off our packs and chilled out for the two hours we had until dinner. Interestingly, these thatched dwellings were perfectly see-through, though I suppose there was nothing we had to hide inside our hut, so it was not a big deal. The place also had an icy spring-fed pool nearby where I refreshed myself to near hypothermia.
I got into my fleece and parka for dinner. The high heat of the day vanished with sunlight, and I relished the thought of a warm dinner alongside a steaming cup of tea. We three Americans sat with the Hungarian and the French for a long dinner inside the central pavilion. Spanish was language of choice at the table, though it was hard not to throw in English words when I got stuck trying to express my thoughts. Trying to justify vegetarianism using a second language is an interesting challenge.
After we'd scraped our plates and drank the dregs from our mugs, I stepped out afterwards to see the most striking star display ever. The southern hemisphere has a different lineup from the north and I didn't recognize anything, save Venus, which shone with the intensity of a searchlight coming over a mountain. I knew about the southern cross, but I didn't know how to look for it. The milky way appeared in such crisp detail, that I felt like I could look at it like a three dimensional object. It is crazy to think that in the days before electric light, our ancestors could look up on any clear night and see that. Maybe that's why they were so nuts.

We would get up at five o'clock the next morning to begin our ascent back to the canyon rim. I should guess that during the course of the climb, we went up about 2,500 feet. This was particularly tough going because we had rocks sliding out underneath each footfall. The effect of the altitude was palpable as well. It is hard to say how much easier our ascent would have been at lower elevation, but I'm sure that the thinner air was no help to us.
Amazingly, despite the tough conditions, I saw men and boys go running past us down the slope, chasing after fully-loaded burros. Our own hike from the base took about two hours, with Ben leading and Max and I trying to catch up.
We waited at the rim for about forty minutes for the rest of the group to catch up. After a short while waiting, I felt the warmth of the hike leave me and the sweaty t-shirt I was wearing gave me the chills. I changed into my fleece, and then put on a hat and parka. As the sun came up. a bunch of Eastern Europeans stood out in warming rays, looking cool as shit smoking their cigarettes. Actually, considering that they were smokers and had still gotten there before us, that was pretty impressive.
We hiked the rest of the way up to a small town where we had lunch and I ended up talking to the brits again. One was an art teacher and the other sold insurance. Both said that they'd found the morning's hike to be more difficult than the Inca Trail. They were both really fun, and sounded like they'd been having a grand time in Peru. Perhaps too much of a grand time based on what they told me about Arequipa.

On the way out of the canyon, our bus stopped at some hotsprings in Chivay, where I took a dip i what appeared to be a dirty swimming pool, only filled with scalding water. Some people apparently think the hot springs have medicinal properties. I agree that they could be a cheap solution for those that want to be sterilized.
Food followed swim--a twenty sole buffet lunch where the true Americans stuffed themselves with as many plates as we could fit. With the proper amount of gumption, we'd be able to get full enough to skip dinner befire we got on the bus to Cuzco.
On the way back over the pass, the Germans complained that they hadn't gotten a chance to see the alpacas and felt cheated. "So you're a liar," one of them told the guide when he told them that it was the wrong time of day for it. Eventually, he pointed out some grazing llamas as we went by. They muttered angrily that it was the wrong kind of dromedary.
The bus began climbing out the way we had came and stopped at 15.000 feet. We got out to sample the altitude, which really wasn't so bad if you weren't running. For some reason there were thousands of rock piles all around. I think it might have been a good luck thing.

It was still a few hours back to Arequipa. We had about an hour to grab our stuff and chill out before we got in a cab and off to the bus station for Cuzco.

Arequipa: The City in The Mountains

After Huacachina and the lines, we spent two nights in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. The town stands at a lofty seven-thousand feet (suck it Denver!) and is nestled amongst twenty-thousand foot mountains. The most famous of these is the Mount Fuji doppelganger, El Misti a mostly inactive volcano whose lower slopes are populated with the city outskirts. Basically, there were two directions to walk in Arequipa, up and down. If you keep going up and you don't mind a little cold and some oxygen deprivation, you will eventually end up at the top of Misti.
Though we didn't do anything too spectacular or dangerous while in town, we had a good time all the same. The city was far more tourist friendly town center than Lima did. There were shops full of popular Peruvian crafts, including elaborate ceramics to cuy-themed t-shirts (cuy is the word for guinea pig when it's on your plate, an ancient and popular Peruvian dish. I thought the guinea pig "Cuy Cobain" with guitar and cigarette was kind of stupid.) It's also just as common for shops to stock "keep it legal" t-shirt with a coca leaf on the front as it is to see mary jane. Woven goods were hot in the shops, giving us tourists our fix of scarves, ponchos and gloves made from wool, llama or alpaca. For my part, I bought myself a nifty Peru hat. Every other storefront offered tours out to nearby Colca Canyon, trekking, river raftting, mountain biking etc. With all these places to spend money here, it was surprisingly easy to find an ATM.



Amongst the highlights of our stay, we checked out the Santa Catalina Monastery, which went back to the fifteenth century. Back in the day, it had been a party school. Partying may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of monasteries, but apparently all of the women who went there came from the rich, influential families of town who kept their respectability by packing their girls off to study there. The girls may or may not have been interested in God, but they were out to have a good time too—probably broke a few vows if you know what I mean. There might be a profitable independent movie in this for someone.
The place took up a large city block and was built like a maze we could wander. I got some photos of its bright-painted walls, and its walls, which looked really cool against the high-altitude blue sky. We also found a beam of light, that just might have been the holy-ghost. I got a few good blasphemy pictures of myself and others. The reserved spot I have waiting for me in hell just got a few degrees hotter.






Dining in Arequipa was delicious and we also found it to be cheap in a lot of places. We tried out an all-vegetarian restaurant, which had appeared like a yuppie oasis before our eyes. We got the menu, the multi-course meal. For the price of five soles we got soup, a tofu dish, pineapple custard and a refreshing purple glass of chicha morada corn drink.
At the opposite end of the price to value spectrum were the cities two Irish pubs. Let me qualify by saying, that I think its awesome that there are Irish pubs even in high-up, isolated place like Arequipa. Too bad that they sucked.
Beyond the fact that I really like Guinness, The idea of getting a pint in South America appealed to my appreciation for the surreal. Giddy with expectations of creamy, dark Irish goodness, Ben, Max and I went into the pub that was closer to our hostel to get our lunch. Unfortunately, we were already seated and munching on complementary bread when it came time to order so we felt obliged to stay.
"Quisiera un Guinness por favor?" The waiter seemed not to understand. "Tienes cerveza negra?"
Of course! We must want Cusqueña Premium. There's no Guinness here, but the fridge is full of the darker, crappier malt version of cusqueña. Disenheartened, we ate our lunches dry.
That night, we cruised up to the other Irish pub. Guinness! They had Guinness on tap! It would only cost twenty-five soles—a nine dollar pint. In other words, it would cost the same as our two nights in Huacachina. We walked away with low spirits but fortunately there was a place nearby that had some excellent pisco sours that we could cheer ourselves with.

Running in Arequipa was an improvement from our previous (mis)adventures in Lima and Ica. I might even go so far as to say that there were times that I even enjoyed myself. Arequipa's seven foot altitude, pretty much tied it with the Grand Canyon Rim as the highest place I'd stood (never mind the sense of accomplishment that comes with climbing Mt. Washington.) I was a little nervous about trying my legs and lungs out in the thinner air but didn't feel as limited as I had feared. The run, basically half uphill and half down, elevated my heart-rate to skull pounding intensity as we ascended the city's outskirts going towards El Misti.
Views of Misti, and down into the town with its surrounding mountains and desert plains, lent our runs a sense of epicness. It was also a plus to be out of the worst traffic and crowds of people.
The main aggravation and lurking fear we had to worry about were dogs. Dogs wandering on the street, dogs barking at us from rooftops. On our first day in Arequipa, Max and I decided to add ten minutes to our run and got cornered in an alley by a snarling mutt. I had to yell at it and threaten it with a piece of wood from some road construction before it went away. The next afternoon, the three of us were finishing our run when two dogs charged out from behind a wall and danced around us, barking and nipping until we shouted them down. Oh yeah, one of our party, probably not me, had gotten bitten while running in Ica. Thank God the teeth hadn't broken the skin or else we would have had to have tracked down a doctor to administer the necessary, painful round of rabies shots. Considering all the dogs I've seen in Peru and the dog-related grief I've had on this journey, I think money for someone to spay and neuter the population could be one of the best donations Peru could get.