Just Chilling
Hola mis amigos! (Note increasing fluency in foreign tongue.)
I’m still enjoying myself in Huaraz. It's amazing here - mountains all around. I'm at 3095 meters and still breathing, though I don't breath quite so well when I get over 4000 meters!
Over the past 3 days a Kiwi couple, Kerry and Chris and I have been on a brilliant trek. We did a 5000-metre pass. It was very painful and took me ages to complete. I imagine that I now know what it's like to be asthmatic or smoke 40 a day. Near the top of the pass I was taking 8 steps at a time and stopping to catch my breath before carrying on. The thing that really annoyed me was that I’d assumed, due to being quite fit at sea level, that I'd be fine.
Every leg of the journey seemed long. We walked for about 7 hours a day and yet never quite managed to get to our intended campsite. The first day we started at 4000m, and began to climb. We camped at the bottom of a valley - we should have stopped higher up but couldn’t face the final 600-metre slog. The next day we did the 600 meters plus the pass at the top, starting the day at 4300m and climbing to around 5000m. We intended to camp down in the next valley, but at 5pm we decided it would be dangerous to go any farther as we were all knackered. We pitched on a flat piece of land quite high, about 4600m. The altitude accounted for the temperature, which was bloody freezing! Even wrapped up in my sleeping bag, inner liner and thermals I was cold and you can't realistically ask someone to ‘spoon’ you when you haven’t really known them that long. Not even when the tent has ice on the inside as well as the outside. I was asleep by 8pm and awake again by 4am.
The final day we walked down through a long valley to the village of Llupa. We were psyching ourselves up for the long walk back to Huaraz as we thought we'd missed all the buses for the day. Luckily we met 4 other gringos in Llupa and between us we acquired a bus. It seems that 6 tired gringos makes for a worthwhile journey for a Peruvian bus driver. I was so glad we didn't have to walk all the way back and we were all happy to get into Huaraz and bed.
Yesterday I went on a climbing tour to the Temple of Time. Our small party consisted of our guide, Betriana, who didn't speak English and a Dutch guy Jerome, who, if he could speak Spanish certainly wasn’t letting on. Finally, along with myself, there was Luis, a Spanish guy incredibly amused to find himself in Peru practicing his Spanish with a Brit and, possibly, a Dutchman.
Everything went pretty OK although there was some confusion when I was at the top of a climb that I was leading. I found Betriana shouting in Spanish at me, Luis doing his best to translate but some words he didn't know like, quickdraw and screwgate got lost. Anyway I managed to convince them I was safe (even if it wasn't the way they'd do it) but after 10 minutes of arsing around with the wind howling past me they lowered me down. It didn't help that my tummy still isn't 100%. It comes and goes and yesterday I was feeling delicate, so I particularly didn't want to take a leader fall. I mentally shat myself and probably would've done so physically! The climb was generally cool though, the rocks completely different to Yorkshire grit. Still, I managed to get a handjam in there at the top and came home sufficiently grazed.
My main chore today has been putting up flyers in all the main Gringo haunts in Huaraz. I’m trying to get a group together to do the Huayhuash trek - a grueling 8 to 10 day hike depending on how speedy you are. Jerome has mentioned he might be up for it. I'm hoping to set off next Wednesday.
I now intend to spend the weekend chilling out. Yesterday there was a big fiesta in Huaraz celebrating the Peruvian Independence Day. Celebrations have been going on all week. I went out to watch a boulder competition in which Dave was the only gringo. Mel and I acted as cheerleaders. By God there are some bloody good climbers out here! Afterwards we headed to the bars and discotheques (note, not nightclubs – a nightclub over here is a brothel). As we staggered back at 4.00 am this morning, the party was still going on around us. Think I’ll sleep well regardless!
Hugs 'n' kicks,
Jen xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
