Huaraz & Huacachina

We arrived  in Huaraz (2.5 hours late) from our night bus, after another terrible sleep. We had planned on going for a trek to Lake 69 that day, but arrived too late. Trine, from Norway, approached us and asked if we'd go mountain biking with her, so for lack of a better plan we went for it. She was really good at bartering so we hired a local guide and 3 full-suspension mountain bikes (best idea ever) and set off.

The car broke down a few times on the way up into the mountains, so we had to walk for awhile. The driver was crazy, and Lisa had to ask him to slow down around the cliff-corners, but he thought this was pretty funny, and sped up instead. We were not impressed, so he eventually slowed down a bit. No wonder their cars break down all the time here, Peruvians drive like maniacs.

The cab dropped us off at the top of a pass, and we kept climbing for 2 hours. We are not in shape for mountain biking at all, and it was a challenge. We biked through farms, small villages and Andean countryside.

We dodged barking guard dogs (strategy; slow and steady, but don't get off your bike), pigs, vehicles, cows... and descended back down to Huaraz, 5 hours later. We were beyond sore at this point, because although the bikes were great, the seats were NOT. Enough said. It was a great experience though.

Needless to say, we were far to sore to do the full-day high-altitude trek to Lake 69 the next morning, so we opted for the "tamer" Lake Llaca trek instead. We hired another driver for the day, and another friend from the hostal, Maike (from Germany) split the taxi fare with us ($16 each, for a full day!). The road up to the trailhead (1.5 hour drive) was less of a road, and more of a rocky, switchback hiking trail wide enough for a car. Alex is pretty sure this trip will cure her car-sickness, because nothing in Canada will ever compare to the roads we've been on here. The car broke down again, but we're getting used to this by now. Luckily we were next to a glacial stream, so the driver just poured ice water over the engine until it cooled down, and we kept going.

Lake Llaca was at 4800 meters, and we proved how unpredictable altitude sickness can be. Alex and Maike really felt the altitude here, but Lisa couldn't feel it at all, which is suprising because this was the same altitude as Cotopaxi, where Lisa barely made it up.

We enjoyed our left-over Chinese food picnic at the top (because once again, $3 of chinese food can realistically serve 3 people here).

We took another night bus from Huaraz to Lima, but this time we "splurged" ($20) on reclining bus seats "bus cama". It was worth every penny and got a decent sleep, but the rapid altitude change had our ears popping all night. We switched buses in Lima and headed straight for Ica, 5 hours south. From there we took a cab ($1) to the nearby village (200 people) of Huacachina, a desert oasis, and gringo playground.

Alex hiking up a dune, with Huacachina in the background

 We shopped around for the cheapest dune-buggying/sand-boarding option, and set up a tour in the evening.
There is no way to describe the experience. The dune-buggying was sort of like a rollercoaster.

Look twice: it's a bit hard to tell but we are headed pretty
much "head-first" down a sand dune in the dune-buggy

We tried sandboarding "snowboard-style" but discovered that going down on your stomach, head first, was way more fun, because you could get going way faster. We played around in the dunes until sunset then headed back to Huacachina.

One more interesting story:

There was an earthquake here last night (5.9 on the Richter scale)! You can read more about it on the links below, but it happened around 3:00am, and was centered at Chincha, about an hour away from us. The quake woke us up, but it took us a while to realize what was going on. The bunk beds were rocking, and car alarms went off in the street, but nothing was damaged where we are, and we are safe! It was a bit scary, but really interesting as neither of us have experienced a quake before. We've noticed that a lot of the building here have signs indicating where you should move to in case of an earthquake... we'll start taking note of these from now on!

News story 1

News story 2

We're off to Pisco, then Lima on the 23rd. We booked a flight from Lima to Cuzco because there have been bus strikes happening and a few fellow travellers haven't been able to get to Cuzco on time. It works well because it's about 24 hours on a bus from Lima to Cuzco, and the flight was only $100, and takes less than 1 hour.