Happy birthday to Helga, first of all!


Cusco is wonderful but tomorrow I am leaving it already, for now, cause I´m going on a three day rafting trip on the Apurimac, one of the top ten rafting rivers in the world. I´ll be back on Tuesday evening. I´m going with perurafting.com. From their site (in bad English):

"Rafting and kayaking the rivers of Peru will be an unforgettable experience that you will really enjoy. The waters that flows down from the Andes form the mighty rivers of Peru and Chile, an authentic and irresistible challenge for lovers of rafting and kayaking , is an experience that will put you on the edge of risk and danger.
Among this Rafting Peruvian rivers is the Apurimac river, a classic class IV & V , run that drops through house sized granite boulders with canyon walls soaring thousands of feet above. It is rated among the 10 best rafting trips in the world and the number one Rafting trip in Peru.
This Peruvian river for rafting is born on the summits of the glaciar Misti only 100 km from the Pacific Ocean and cuts across the Andes of the South American Continent flowing directly into the Amazon river making it the longest river in the world.
You will feel the vertiginous fury of the waters , the raft quivers, jumps , sifts and you have to row with perseverance and passion, while your heart accelerates its beats and you grit your teeth."

Just arrived in Cusco after an 8 hour bus ride. Again it was a pretty irritating one. Like I said, not my preferred company, so it stopped every five meters to pick people up. Most horribly, at some point some woman entered with a big bag on her back. She put it down on the platform right in front of my seat, opened it, and the next moment she was hacking on its contents with a large butcher´s knife. Apparently there was some dead animal in there - fortunately hidden from my sight - which she was chopping up and selling to the passengers. I put my fleece in front of my eyes because the scene was too horrible (as were the smells and the chomping sounds), and the one time I looked, she reached over my seat with her hand to give some grisly, bony meat - or meaty bone - to the person behind me. I was briefly reminded of the Aztec sacrifices where the priest takes the heart of the victim and holds it in the air... Quite disturbing.

Tonight I am staying in Hotel Los Ninos (ninoshotel.com), which is way above my budget, but the profits go to a project with street children, so I figure it´s ok for one night. I´ll look for another place tonight or tomorrow. Now it´s chowtime.

stay beautiful

T

Foodieblog...
As I have to get up early tomorrow, I should be in bed by now. Besides, I sleep less well at this altitude, I noticed. But I can´t hit the sack yet, cause I over-ate, and I need to blog as I want to saveguard this culinary experience for posterity and my own memories.
Often when I eat, my stomach and my tongue start as allies, but end up disagreeing. My tongue wants me to keep eating as long as the food tastes good, but after a while my stomach may be protesting.
Tonight I started off with a big salad consisting of raw spinach, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, avocado, some strange but tasty vegetable called kaiwa, and other stuff. I let it follow by a kind of curry made with soy meat, koriander, garlic, vegetables, quinoa, sweet potato and yam, accompanied by a glass of red wine. There were a couple of vegan desserts on the menu, and as they were as usual pretty cheap, I took two. First came slices of orange that were to be dipped in chocolate sauce. The sauce, made with pure chocolate and mint, was the best I ever tasted. It was kind of messy to eat, and I positively ruined a napkin (all the more because I also used it to clean up spilled wine). Second was a dish consisting of apples baked in cognac, with raisins, nuts and blackberry sauce. Together with this I drank a huajspata, a warm drink with red wine, pisco (a local alcoholic specialty), orange juice and cinnamon.
Apart from the size of my stomach, my sweet tooth, and my spoiled tastebuds, I have only two excuses for this irresponsible case of gluttony: 1. it was raining very heavily and I couldn´t leave the restaurant, so I had to keep on eating. 2. twice, a beggar knocked on the restaurant door, and the wonderful waitress gave them free food. Without people patronizing this restaurant, this generous behaviour wouldn´t be possible :-)
The restaurant - called El Sol Interior or The Inner Sun, is kind of spiritually/religiously inspired. On their menu one can read: ´lo que buscas esta en tu corazon´, or ´what you are looking for is in your heart´. Good that it´s not in our stomach, cause there I certainly wouldn´t know how to find it there, at this point...

Oh, something I read in this Coelho book I mentioned. I have thought of this myself, but this guy put it nicely: something like ´...the sweetness of wine, which makes it easier for us to say and hear difficult things...´. Indeed, that is one of alcohol´s functions. Nothing wrong with alcohol, when consumed in moderation. On the contrary, it may help us to be true.

Did a guided tour today of Titicaca, visiting the Uros and Taquina islands. Actually I dislike guided tours. They make me feel like a tourist - which in a sense of course I am. Anyway, Titicaca is nice, but it´s, well... a lake. A lake trying to be a sea. You don´t really notice that it´s a lake at 4.000 m above sea level, so it is just a lake. The Taquina island is just an island, while the Uros islands are man-made islands, made from reed. However, this is now mainly a tourist attraction. So sum total: not really worth my time I guess, and certainly not worth five hours on a boat. Of course, I had some things you just have to see in order to know you wouldn´t have missed anything if you hadn´t :-) I´ll wash this down with a nice glass of wine and a good meal in a minute... Puno has cosy restaurants - obviously, the vegetarian ones do no fall under that category, unfortunately. But at least I had a great meal yesterday. Mashed potatoes, for the first time! Didn´t realize how I had been missing them till I tried them again.

Finished Paulo Coelho´s ´A las orillas del rio Piedra me siento y llore´, which I can recommend. It´s about love :-)

The bus company I am normally using doesn´t do busses to Cusco for a month, so I am scheduled for another bus. Touching wood. It´s another eight hour ride. If they´re gonna stop every five paces I´m going to screaaaaaam.

Daddy, happy birthday!

Hungry. Catch you later, amigos...

This morning I left Arequipa, and I just arrived in Puno, the Peruvian gateway to the Titicaca lake, at 3.800m above sea level. Heather will remain a couple more days with Johanna and we will meet up later again in Cusco.
I had a great time in Arequipa, mainly because of Johanna´s kindness. It is so great when people you randomly meet online, turn out to be wonderful persons in real life. I knew Johanna was a very kind person, but in real life she was even better than expected, and it is hard to express my fondness and gratitude towards her for what she did for me and heather. I hope to get better at expressing those things, some time...
Tomorrow I´m going for a tour on the lake and visit some of the Titicaca islands, and the next morning it´s finally off to Cusco.

Yesterday was world animal´s day I believe, because it is also the day of St Francis. I visited a church of St Francis here, and came across the Spanish version of the so called Prayer of St Francis. (a wonderful prayer/poem, google it up if you´re interested). In the Spanish version, there is one wonderful sentence not figuring in the English or Dutch one. It is:
´olvidandose se encuentra´ en betekent zoveel als ´forgetting one´s self one finds one´s self´. Prachtig he ;-)

going to search for some food...

all the best a todos!

Couple of more pictures. Here´s a view on Arequipa, with the Misti Volcano in the background.



















Heather and Johanna.

I´ve been with Heather in Arequipa for three days now, staying with Johanna, my internet-friend (or previously only internet friend, at least). Our last stop, Ica, was kind of a miss. I just wanted to briefly stop there for a particular museum, but it never opened that day. Also, I was a bit sick in the stomach. So at the Plaza de Armas - or town square - I lied down on a bench, till a security guard said I couldn´t do that. He left and I lied down again. He saw me, told me I had to get up, and I said I was feeling sick. He said if you are sick you have to go to the hospital. I stayed down, so he said ok then I´ll call an ambulance. I said yeah, as if... but ten minutes later the ambulance was there. Anyway, we left before we got into trouble...
At five pm we got back on the bus, and a horrible ride it was this time. The driver put on a DVD of five Jackie Chan movies, and if I hadn´t asked him to stop it as no one was looking, it would´ve played all night – as did the music. The bus stopped every two hours and then people got up, crying loudly to sell whatever they were selling, before disappearing again. Of course all the time the lights went on. So when I leave tomorrow for Puno, I´m taking a more expensive bus.

Anyway, now I am still in Arequipa, which is a very nice city, its horizon dominated by the 5800 high El Misti volcano, and some other snow capped mountains. Our host, Johanna is a wonderfully sweet girl. Staying with a family is a different and interesting experience. Her father runs a business that publishes school books, and I´m going to take some to the orphanage I´m going to in Cusco. We had some days of rest here and hung around the city, visiting the Santa Catalina convent, rowing a boat, seeing some churches... Yesterday Heather and I cooked for the family and they seemed to like it a lot. The mother, a very sweet woman, spoils us with good food (the first time it was hard to get around a soup with beef stock, and I had a few spoonfuls before I put it aside, and yesterday we had to refuse a gelatine-dessert).

So tomorrow I leave for Puno, the main city near the Peruvian side of the Titicaca lake. The day after or two days after I will leave for Cusco.

Ica.
Heather and me - and also Kobi, who just left us right now - are travelling south. Two days ago we jumped on the bus towards Lima. A very comfortable luxury bus, for the price of about 3 euros for 7 hours travel. I didn´´t sleep the whole time, and next to me Heather was very motion-sick all the way. We left the clear sky of Huaraz at 10pm and arrived in smog covered Lima at 5am. As we were gazing at the very bright stars and what i believe was the planet Venus through the bus-window, I felt a rush of excessive happiness...
We didnt spend the night in Lima but rushed right on to Pisco, where that same day, without having slept, we did a guided tour of a nature reserve. I felt too much like a tourist to enjoy it much, and there wasn´t that much to see anyway. This morning, after a wonderful night´s rest, we drove one hour to Ica, and now I am waiting in a cybercafe for the museum next door to open. Tonight at 17 we start the 14 hour journey to Arequipa.

Resting at the San Antonio Pass.


My posture is not entirely secure, as there was like a precipice gaping in my back...


I am reading The Time Traveller´s Wife. Recommended!

Heather and I are reunited since yesterday. She spent two weeks with a family, some 6 hours from Huaraz, in apparently even more primitive circumstances than me... She is now apparently inhabited by a parasite and has giardiasis. We went to get the medication, even though she is not in favour of western medicine and is afraid of the side effects of the pills. Heather asked me to teach her some words in Spanish for ´sod off´as she is constantly being hit on and even felt up by Peruvian guys.

Here is a picture of us having breakfast at the cafe Andino. Did I already tell about the cafe Andino? It is the most wonderful place in the world (cafeandino.com)

Tonight we are getting on the bus South. Plan is to visit Pisco, the so called Galapagos of Peru, and Ica, a little town where I´d like to visit a mysterious museum showing the Ica stones, supposedly thousands of years old, but depicting impossible scenes like people with dinosaurs, blood transfusions, telescopes... After that, we´ll head to Arequipa where we´ll meet Johanna, a girl I met on messenger and practised Spanish with online.

Huaraz, after the trek.

Yesterday afternoon I got back from the Huaywuash trip. Unexpectedly, this eight day trek that is described as ´difficult and demanding´in the travel guide, turned out to be a lot easier than the four day Santa Cruz trail, described as ´easy/moderate´. What a difference a backpack makes! We gave our heavy mochillas, as they are called in Spanish, to the convoy of donkeys, and walked easily with a lighte daypack. Also, we were by now much better acclimatized to altitude. That is not to say the hike wasn´t strenuous at times. Take the San Antonio pass, for example. At 5.200 meters it is the highest point of the entire trek, and you get there after a gruelling and seemingly endless two hour climb. But what a vista once you get to the top! The kind of scenery that makes you say ´Well done, God or whoever made this! This is what this Planet is all about!´ I´m afraid my pictures here can´t quite capture the feeling of grandness or smallness you experience when looking at these white giants.

Our original company of four people was first joined by two other Israelis, and then together we hooked up with a group that was put together by a trekking agency, Andean Kingdom. We ended up being 22 people, among which were only two girls (both vegetarian). Fifteen of these 22 were Israeli – they called me Tuvia, which apparently is the Hebrew version of my name. There were also 15 donkeys, a guide, three arrieros and a cook. Our little group was only partly connected to them, as we cooked our own food and slept in our own tents, but we benefited from the safety of a larger group.

Our day schedule looked more or less as follows:
- 7 am: rise and shine
- 8 am: leave the campsite to start the trek
- 16 pm: arrive at the next campsite
- 17 pm: cook and eat
- 19 pm: retreat to our tent, some to sleep, in my case to read a couple of hours.

One of the memorable events was our enjoying a thermal spring. The water was 47 degrees Celsius, and I was the first one to dare to get in. Scorchingly hot, but a nice experience, being very cold, wearing fleece and windstopper jacket at one moment, losing it and entering a very hot bath the next...

On the second to last day we visited one more so called mirador: a top with a particularly good view. The guide hadn´t warned us that in the end we would have to go through some very steep and dangerous rockclimbing. I was glad to come away unscathed, although there was one moment when I got a slight vertigo-attack, seeming unable to move up- or downward. Fortunately, right under me was Jane, who pointed out where I could put my feet and fifteen minutes later I made it safely to the top. Apparently one guy freaked out and had to be saved by our guide Armando.

One night while I was reading, I felt as if someone was moving my tent. I thought I was imagining it, but the following day Kobi asked me if I had felt the earthquake...

Apart from the majestic scenery, the physical challenge, the air, the feeling of being closer to Something, the friendship... I must say one of the main merits of doing something like this is also to realize the value of what you have at home. How wonderful things like a real mattress, a real toilet, real good food, your own private room etc... seem at the moment these things are not available. And obviously, once you are no longer sleeping in nature, you start missing the tent, the stove, the mountains... Life, as Milan Kundera wrote, is Elsewhere. At least for me it is often like that, but I suspect for you too... It must be one of our biggest and most difficult assignments in this existence to really live in the Here and Now, not missing anything, just Being.

I go on a bit about what I missed, but don´t go thinking that I didn´t have a wonderful time. This is just a good opportunity for philosophy and pondering. You know I´m good at those ;-)
Apart from these things, I also missed like minded people. I am absolutely not used to the company of non-veggies, and this was the first time in years... At home I have the luxury of having a circle of friends and family that CARES about stuff. Here, the guys were good people, but, if you understand what I mean, as far as I could tell most of them didn´t care or feel or do much ´above and beyond the call of duty´. Perhaps an elitist thing to say, but that´s the way it is. I am used to people who will pet a dog when they see one and not throw stones at them to chase them away for fear of rabies (even though that may be a more sensible thing to do). I´m used to people who won´t even THINK of barbecueing a sheep on the last day of the trek (fortunatley in the end it didnt´t happen). I am used to people who WILL give a little something to begging children. So being with these although quite nice people wasn´t always that easy, but at least it made me realize the value of the wonderful group of friends and family around me, and I am very very thankful for that.

Now about the last thing I have been missing. Good food. I can really eat pasta with tomato sauce for days on end, but unfortunately our quick cooking pasta was hardly edible. So it was wonderful to get back to Huaraz yesterday and eat in a vegetarian restaurant and order two main plates... I still miss vegan baked things though. If there´s anyone picking me up at the airport, please bring vegan pancakes. Or some (10) waffles ;-)





Daddy told me not to touch the dogs over here, but what can I do? They are love on legs, and still my favorite animals in the world, even if they are mangy and not very clean...

Reading The Time Traveller´s Wife, and in it came across a nice poem by Derek Walcott. It´s about finding yourself...

Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved

you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Aaargh, Huaraz...
Got up at 4am but half an hour later, at the trek agency, I heard the trek was canceled for today. They hadn´t been able to warn us because they didn´t know what hotel we were in. Apparently one of their groups had just turned back from another trek, and their minibus had been bombarded with stones by the strikers, making them very afraid. This is the second day of the strike and the agency doesn´t want to take the risk.

So I´m stuck here one more day, but there are worse places to be stuck in. Because this is kind of like paradise... At the risk of deterring the non-foodies from continuing to read this blog... food has everything to do with that. I guess I should call this blog tobiaseatinginperu. Anyway, so yesterday i went to the vegetarian restaurant again, had big soup, big plate with lentils, rice and seitan, and then went to eat at another restaurant with other friends. I had already been in that one, and that time I had ordered a BIG pasta (which was not really an option on the menu and which the guy made bigger especially for me) and had ordered another one after that. So when I came in this time, the guy recognized me and asked me ´do you want a big one again´and I say ´no thanks, normal, I´ve just eaten' :-) Damn, I´m such a glutton.
Soon I´ll go to Cafe Andino again and have another one of their heavenly breakfasts. Need to eat a lot on my last day before the trek - which I have been saying for three days now...

Perhaps some people may find it strange that I´m online so much, but when you travel for three months, you take your time and this blog serves as my personal diary. Also it´s obviously nice to be in touch with the homebase. I can do anything here: skype, webcamming, msn (add me at go_veggie@hotmail.com if you like).

Still in Huaraz.
Ok, the strike is ´fuerte´, as they say, and we can´t leave Huaraz today. So we will go tomorrow and hope we can get out then. Getting up at 4am. We have decided to join an organized group (without eating their food or using their tents) to be safer. Several people have been killed by bandits on this trail, and we figure that if we´re a group of ten, they won´t stop us so easily.
We´ve been shopping at the market yesterday and today for food. Here´s a (very dark) picture of what I´m taking, for a week. Apart from this, there´s also rice and pasta.

Something more about food, which remains a very important subject...

Yesterday I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant. Big soup, meal, drink and salad for about 1 €. Some of the veg restaurants here serve meat too. I had picked the dish of the day, and hadn´t asked what it contained. I took a few bites from the meat substitute that was on the plate and it tasted and felt suspiciously like chicken. As the waitress passed by I asked ´no carne, right?´ She said ´si, carne´. At that moment I spit out what was in my mouth, but then she added ´Carne vegetal´. Phew.

I had dinner at the wonderful Cafe Andino again. Don´t know if I already talked about it, but it´s a wonderful interior, a library, a balcony with a view on the Andes... They only thing they have to eat, apart from pies, is big breakfasts, but they are available all day. So at 8pm I had a veggie breakfast, consisting of thea, fresh orange juice, a big bowl of fruit with muesli, three sauces, two slices of toast with bread, and a big dish of potatoes with vegetables and three big slabs of tofu - first time I saw tofu here. Wonderful. At 3 euro it was quite expensive for Peruvian standards.

On the street you can get big pieces of watermelon or pineapple for 0,15 euro. At lunch today we had a liter of juice for 0,60 euro. It was a filling meal in itself.

To give you an idea of how Huaraz is situated, here´s a picture. You can hardly see it, but it´s in the centre of the photo.

Hmm, looks like we may not be able to leave tomorrow yet. There may be a general strike. In that case the trek is postponed a day, and we might go iceclimbing instead. Veremos...

A postmodern picture: me blogging in a cybercafe. As you can see I found out that my electric razor plug actually fits the power outlet here. I left my sideburns (sloppy job, I know) because this is the place to experiment and because I want to introduce the Peruvians to the Fine Art of Elvis Imitation :-)

Huaraz, rest day and preparation for the trek.

I decided to start the Huayhuash circuit tomorrow and will be back the next Monday. If you´d like to know more about the trek, see http://www.i-needtoknow.com/huayhuash/index.html. It sounds quite scary from this page, but we´ve met enough people who´ve done it and I´m sure we´ll be fine.

Yesterday night I attended a church service, to get soaked into some more culture. Weird spectacle. The seats were plastic garden chairs, and in front were drums, big microphones, keyboards... There was a veeeeeery long talk by someone - guess it was not a priest - which I understood only for 30 percent. Then this same guy started to talk for fifteen minutes in a weird language, I can only guess Hebrew. As if he was excorcizing devils or something. All of a sudden, he started to cry, I don´t know for what reason. It kept on and on and I left before the service was finished.

Health flash: apart from the pain that I had in my neck and higher back, I have no problems. Crap is looking OK. Just some blood when I blow my nose - dunno what that means - and a slight cold. I guess I´m pretty safe, not eating animal products.

Yesterday on the road up the mountains, they were playing Let it Be in the car. It struck me for the first time what a wonderfully wise song this is, and that to let it be might just be the biggest thing one can ever learn in life.

Thought of this: ´Wherever we are, we are on our way home´
Would this get me in the Oxford Quotations Dictionary? :-)

See you all later!

Tobias

Around Huaraz
Another fun but exhausting day. We drove up the mountains of the Cordillera Negra with a little bus. On the roof were rented mountain bikes, with which we descended back to Huaraz. Most of the time we cycled downhill on dirtroads, but now and then we descended on very small and rocky tracks, where the descent was a lot more technical. Modesty forbids me to say I was the only one to dare to descend a very technical part with a lot of rocks and steps. Our guide, a very cool American dude, was apparently impressed, telling me ¨this is really your sport man!´.
All in all, it was a great experience. While going downhill on the easy parts we could appreciate the snow capped mountains of the Cordillera Blanca ahead of us. Kind of dead tired now.

I´m in a dilemma: shall I do the next trek with the guys or not? It´s the Cordillera Huyawash circuit, an 8 eight day long and very challenging trek. For one thing I feel I haven´t really rested enough, taken a real holiday, as everything was kind of physically intense so far, and 8 days is very long. On the other hand, now that I´m here... and this is one of the classic treks in the world (rated the third most beautiful, and the best in South America, I heard someone say). We´d leave on Monday but I need to make a decision soon because we have to get the burros and the arriero. Veremos...

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!