Huaraz.
Today is a rest day in Huaraz. We´ve planned a mountain bike trip for tomorrow, ate, and hung out at Cafe Andino, a wonderful place which has a balcony with a view on the Cordillera Blanca, the mountain range that is visible from Huaraz.


Kobi is eating chicken, conveniently hidden by the condiments, while I´m having a pizza vegetariana con verduras (grande) on a lovely little square in Huaraz. Also wondeful are the fresh jugos (juices). Very big and very cheap.

My trekking companions, English David, Israeli David, Kobi and Tiffany (minus Bob, who took the picture).

Report Santa Cruz trek, part 2

Day two was a very long day, particularly because we made an underestimated side trip. To get an idea of the scenery in general, I let the pictures do the talking. In general, the days got successively easier, as we got used to the weight on our backs, I guess. Still, it kept hurting like hell in my lower neck and higher back. My physical condition was quite adequate – indeed David told me he didn´t know there were mountain goats in Belgium – but the pain from the backpack was torture. I am not sure yet if i will accompany the others on a next trek, but if I do, my stuff will be carried by a donkey (erroneously called monkey by one of the Walloon girls). I´ve been observing the donkies and must say they seem frequently overloaded, but if I go I will hire my own and will make sure no one else´s stuff is put on it, so that it has to carry a light freight. These animals are so wonderfully obedient, and I never witnessed their proverbial stubborness. When their arriero (the donkey driver) loads their cargo on them in the morning – not always very gently – they stand still, waiting patiently till the job is done.

On day three we reached our highest point, the Punta Union pass at 4750 meters, after a gruelling climb of three hours. After that it was downhill all the way. While mother nature called me and i was taking a crap in the wild, dozens of mosquitos made use of my defenseless position and invaded my pants. The same bastards were abundantly present at the campsite. I rubbed myself with some anti-mosquito poison – they were small enough to get in my tent – and was able to sleep after all.

For obvious environmental reasons, you are recommended to use toilets when they are available – which is at the campsites. They are indicated with the sign ´servicios hygienicos´, but that is wonderfully ironic, since these things are the most unhygienic things I´ve ever witnessed. I will not start to describe them here, though I should mention that next to the toilets on the third day´s campsite was the half decayed cadaver of a donkey, stinking like hell. Needless to say I dumped (as David calls it) somewhere else.
I never knew what a wonderful invention toilets are, and missed them a lot while trekking. Here, back in Huaraz, I can again safely use them. It is forbidden, however, to throw your toilet paper in them, as the Peruvian sewer system is not equipped to handle paper. So your dirty paper goes in the trashcan. Yuck.

Enough about toilets I guess. On the fourth and final day, we passed some small indigenous Qechua communities. Children kept appearing, asking for uno caramelo or dinero para estudiar. Even after the tenth time it is hard to refuse these children some nuts, some spare change, or the remainders of our food. Are they cuter than Belgian children, or am I all of a sudden softening up to them? Check the picture of the previous day and see if you could ignore them.

At our point of arrival we met a British company, apparently guys from the army. One of them had bought a guinea pig – a local specialty – and showed it to me, saying he was going to eat it. I was kind of depressed for some time, missing veggie friends around me (which I had not had a problem with till that point).

The busride back to Huaraz took us five hours. The first part was a dangerous climb and then descent along sharp bents – one of them called the Devil´s bent, where 30 people were killed last April. It would have scared the F out of me some time ago, but by now I know the Universe has other things in store for me than plunging me down into an abyss to a certain death. Above the window in the bus was a sticker saying ´Mi camino es seguro por que voy con Jesus´. Our American companions, though Christians, were not so sure and were visibly not at ease.

Back in Huaraz, we had a shower, of course, and then went out to eat. David found a 100 soles bill (about 25 euros) on the floor of the restaurant and that provided for two thirds of our dinner for six. Someone else had picked the restaurant and for the first time I ate in a non veg restaurant. My fear for lack of options was ungrounded however, and I am starting to believe that Peru is actually a better country for vegetarians and vegans than Belgium. The wonderful thing is you can order everything on the menu and still pay a tiny part of what you´d pay in Belgium. Wonderful!

Report Santa Cruz trek, part 1

This is my report of the Santa Cruz trek which I did 12 – 15 of Sept.

The four day Santa Cruz trek is described as ´easy/moderate´ in travel guides, but I feel this has been one of the biggest physical challenges in my life. That´s not due to poor physical condition, but to the fact that we were carrying our own backpacks, which made the whole thing a lot more difficult.
For those who have no idea about what a trek is: it´s basically a long walk in the mountains (at least in this case), getting up at 6 am, hiking the whole day, putting up your tent around 16 or 17h, eating and going to bed early. The highest point at the Santa Cruz trek, Punta Union, is a pass of 4750 meters, my own personal altitude record I guess.
The company we started out with was David, from England, Kobi and David from Israel, and a pack of five Belgians. We lost the Belgians at the end of day one and were then joined by Tiffany and Bob, two Americans that accompanied us for the rest of the trip, making a total of 6.
All days were hard, but day one especially so. You wonder why you are actually doing this and you want to go back to mommy. Everything hurts and you wonder how you are going to keep this up for four days. Obviously, especially the uphill parts are grueling. I was never so glad to arrive somewhere as that day, at the first campsite. And I guess pasta never tasted so good. Here´s the recipe of the dish I ate for three consecutive nights:
- scoop a pot of water out of the river
- as even at this high altitude, the water is contiminated by animal faeces and other dirty stuff, purify the water with three drops of iodine per liter. Let it rest for 20 minutes
- heat the water on your camping stove (in my case provided by David)
- add 250 grams of pasta when cooking (portion for one person)
- add soy meat (fine mince) three minutes before pasta is ready
- take off the fire, pour off, add tomato sauce from little bag bought in supermarket, add salt. Serve hot and ignore the inevitable dirt and cracking things that got in your food by accident

Obviously, if you eat this three days in a row, it won´t taste as good as the first time, but still, it´s the best moment of the day.

My tent was rented. 2,5 dollars a day. Couldn´t complain about it. At home, I feared I was turning into a snob, buying outdoor stuff from expensive brands like North Face and Patagonia, but God I was glad I had it during the trip. The Minusfive sleeping bag was just warm enough. The Thermarest matress made sure I wasn´t too uncomfortable on the hard ground. Still, nights weren´t as comfortable and restful as i had wished.
At night and in the morning, I´ve made good use of my fleece and windproof Paclite raincoat. Didn´t have need for an unvegan down jacket so far (usually recommended).

Huaraz. Since yesterday night, I´m back from the four day Santa Cruz trek. Here are some pictures to start.

Huaraz.
Had a wonderful day hiking to Churup lake at 4500m. It was not the piece of cake David and I expected it to be, with some quite steep rock climbing along a waterfall in the end. We experienced slight symptoms of altitude sickness - which was to be expected when you climb 1500 meters in a day. But I´m sleeping in Huaraz tonight at 3000 again, so no problem.
At one point on the trek, I discovered a lost my brand new camera. I run back like a crazyman and was able to find it. An hour later, exactly the same thing happened to David. Disorientation is one of the altitude sickness symptoms :-)
On the way back we met a pack of 4 Walloons, who are going to start the four day Santa Cruz trip with us together. From the trailhead we got a ride on an open truck, together with them. It was one of the most wonderful and fun rides ever.
The views were magnificent, but I´ll upload pics later to show that.
Getting up at 5.30 tomorrow, so I´ll leave it at this.

Decided not to start trekking tomorrow yet, but to do a half day hike instead, to get more used to the altitude. On Monday then I will start the three or four day trek and won´t be able to update this blog for a while. I guess I´ve bought enough food for the trek now. Pasta, tomato sauce, soy meat, nuts, dried fruits, muesli... I´ve decided not to be a sissy and to carry my own backack. I think it weighs about 11 kg.

I have to say i´m really pleasantly suprised with the food here. There´s fake meat in the supermarkets! I counted at least four vegetarian restaurants in the small city I´m in now, and I´ve eaten some pretty good meals, for one or two dollars. Life is pretty cheap here. There´s some strange health consciouness going around here... There´s some sort of bars where you can get healthy drinks, and there´s lots of street stalls and carts advertising drinks that are protective against this and that disease...
Speaking of street sellers, it´s really sad to see sometimes how people are trying to eke out a living. They are selling everything on the streets, from toilet paper, disgusting candy, to Harry Potter and Codigo Da Vinci.

adios
T

Time for a pic. Isnt technology wonderful?

Tomorrow its time for a first small hike. More news later...

'Only the mountains can heal our souls'... My father wrote it on a photograph of some Himalaya scenery that was hanging in our living room. I have arrived in Huarazm, a village at 3000 meter, surrounded by mountains. And indeed, seeing mountains is always awe-inspiring but also soothing.
We got here after a 7 hour trip from Lima - very nice and comfortable bus, not expensive. I´m feeling a slight headache, probably because of the altitude, and Heather is lying on her bed, a bit dizzy. I right away felt great in this place. The plan is to find someone or some people to trek with - I guess i have found someone already, David, from England, who was on our bus. He plans to do the same treks as I. We have to get used to the altitude first of course, and would start on Sunday. The first hike would be four days. Dont know yet if I will carry my big backpack myself, or wether I´ll support the local economy and hire a burro with an arriero, or a donkey and driver.
Yesterday was a nice day in Lima. The cab dropped us off at the wrong museum. Entrance was a suprisingly high 8 dollars. Heather had to pay only half that, thanks to a long expired student card. I tried to convince the guy that I was a student of the erotic arts (there was an erotic art section in the museum) but he didn´t buy it.
That night we had dinner with volunteers from a local animal rights/vegetarian organisation. Very nice people. They paid for our food, a vegetarian version of ceviche, the national seafood dish. The best thing was that this was only the first dish and that it was unexpectedly followed by the main course. The kind of surprise me and my stomach love!
I´ll try to upload some pics to this blog tomorrow perhaps.

hasta pronto, amigos!

Lima, 9am. Hardly slept last night, because of the time difference. Waited up for Heather and we talked till it was the Belgian time to get out of bed, so I guess my sleeping rhythm is kind of screwed up. Anyway, it was of course great to see her again. It's been two years since I last saw her (in California). She's 26 now and hasn't changed a bit (which in her case is A Good Thing). She still sleeping now so I'm blogging :-) Looks like we'll already split up tomorrow, as she has to meet someone in the south, while I want to go North first. We'll see about that later today. Hasta pronto.

It seems like I will survive today as a vegan. Right next to my hotel is vegetarian restaurant. Not exactly a cosy place. The interior kind of looks like a chemist's and the place advertises itself as a "natural centre". I had a strange plate consisting of: a mountain of lettuce and carrots (which I ate, in spite of guides recommending not to eat raw veggies - damn vaccinations better do their job), a slab of rather dry seitan (but still: seitan!), a lot of cooked potatoes and, finally, corn on the cob, which, unfortunately, seemed to be of the cattle-feed rather than the sweet variety. 2,5 euros for a very big plate, not bad.
The hotel owner is... Dutch :-)

¡Lima!
To say that the flight can only be described as uneventful would be untrue: I can also call it LONG and BORING :-) No hijackings, no crashes, no weirdos, nobody even as much as puking on the plane. Only a kind of annoying Japanese guy who kept wanting to gaze through MY window. I travelled about 28 hours in total. Minced soymeat in my vegan dish¡
Heather is arriving around eleven tonight so i am kind of just killing time. Nobody thinks highly of Lima, and we'll get out of here asap, probably after a lunch with people from the local vegetarian society.

abrazo para todos

Leaving in a couple of hours. Slept remarkably well. Only thing that remains to be seen is wether I can stuff all my stuff in my backpack...

I'll try to be mindful of this quote that my roomie wrote on a byebye card:

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not"

It's by RW Emerson. Wonder if this guy ever said anything trite or stupid :-)

hasta la vista!

My itinerary

This is what I know so far about my travel itinerary

Sept 7: arrival in Lima
Nov 8: Lima - Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Dec 3: Sao Paulo - home sweet home

First month in Peru should be seeing the country. I'd like to spend some ten days to two weeks trekking, would like to explore some archeological sites, but there's also jungle, rafting, cities like Cusco, Arequipa. There's just too much to do in this country. I'd also love to see a bit of Bolivia, but we'll see where we get.
The plan is then to volunteer at an orphanage in the Sacred Valley for maximum one month. You can check it out at www.samanawasi.com. I already feel like I won't have enough time for all of this. Let's take it day by day.

Three and a half more days to go. I need to get out of this country before I spend my entire budget buying stuff. Bought a gore-tex paclite jacket (it weighs absolutely nothing!) and a fleece that i maaaaaybe didn't really need. But ok.
My travel companion is Heather, a wonderful American girl I worked and travelled with in the US. She's fearing her airline company might file for bancrupcy, in the wake of hurricane Katrina's evildoings (Oh Katrina, cruel woman, what are you doing to those people?). Heather will do the whole trip with me, including Brazil, but she won't do treks with me because of bad knees. She is also more interested in homestays in rural areas - something I guess I won't participate in.

This weekend we had a belated homewarming party at our place. Just like you realize how much you enjoy your health when you've lost it, I suddenly realized all the more how I like my circle of friends, right when I'm about to say byebye to them for a couple of months. Why is it so difficult to really "live every day as if it were your last"?
Damn, I'm already getting sentimental and I haven't even left yet.

I'm slowly assembling the contents of my backpack. On a great website I use to help me prepare (http://www.i-needtoknow.com), I downloaded an excelsheet of a couple's backpack content. It's a list of the items, their weight and their price in dollars. The total content of the couple's belongings is 6.500$. Perhaps I'd better take some insurance? Too late, I guess.

I'm thinking of doing the Alpamayo trek, which takes me right to the base camp at Alpamayo, by some considered to be the world's most beautiful mountain. The trek is 7 days and is considered "difficult". Check it out at http://www.i-needtoknow.com/alpamayo/index.html

Still in Belgium, but the date of departure is approaching fast. Went to the doctor to get a tetanus shot today. God I hate needles - although it wasn't so bad as I expected. Bought some more expensive stuff yesterday: sleeping bag and sleeping mat. Hope I'll be able to use them there.