to the mountains!

I'm too lazy to type this again so here's a copy of what I wrote on my other blog about the recent trip to Huaraz I made with some other teachers. It will come in a few parts, so be patient while I get them all written. Cheers!

a group of us met at the bus station for our night-long journey to huaraz. the trip takes about 8 hours (350 km) and we booked our seats on a sleeper-bus. the chairs are big and comfy, reclining most of the way to horizontal to make it as nice as possible to sleep. i got stuck sitting next to the freaky woman from seattle who wanted the window seat yet constantly needed to pee. gee, thanks for that...

but i got some z's and was awakened at 7am on thursday morning when we arrived in huaraz. after getting off the bus, the first thing i noticed was how hard it was to get my breath. sure enough, 3100 m (10 000 ft) above sea level will do that to you. our group of 6 headed off to our hotel (hostel) to drop off our stuff and set off for the day. the crazy pee-woman from seattle had some idea of stuff to do for the day and so we followed this lady on her expedition to buy native goods.

what a mistake THAT turned out to be...

she said there was an artist's colony in some town called marcara, so we went there. it turns out that the place is there but doesn't allow visitors - they sell their goods in another town. so we piled back into a taxi cab and went to monterrey; another 25 minutes in a cab. we get there and have lunch before heading off to the artist's shop only to find out from the locals that the shop is actually a bunch of shops that are located up the road. grrrrr - we are not happy at this point. so she and some others head off to the hot springs that are in this small village (population 30, maybe...) while the rest of us decide to head back to huaraz to get a nap and relax for a bit.

so kelsey (a student teacher at the school) and i hop into a combi to head back into huaraz. what is a combi? its a mini-van that fits 17 people but are known to cram well over 20 people (like 27) into it. the cost to get to monterrey by cab - 25 soles. the cost to get back to huaraz from monterrey by combi - 1 sole. nothing like travelling like the natives - a true peruvian experience.

we all met at the hotel and relaxed for the afternoon, wandering about to take some pictures and shop at the local stores. alpaca (llama) sweaters and hats and all the other local wares were to be found. i think i found one in orange, i wonder if anyone would be interested in it... in any case, some shopping and some dinner eventually led us to planning the next day, a trip to lago 69 up in the mountains near huscaran (a glacier). friday was going to be a long day so we hit the sack earlier and prepared for our trek up to 4450 m.

details on the trip to lago 69 and the rest of the mountain expedition later.