A tour in Huaraz, weekend in Lima and a grim bus to Arequipa

It’s all been going a little crazily of late… we’ve spent about 36 hours on buses in the last five days, and have come further around Peru this week than we had since arriving in Quito.

Mostly thanks to the sheer size of Peru, damn impractical country, but also to our trek to Machu Picchu finally being confirmed, unfortunately after we’d bought bus tickets to Lima, so we’ve had to hurry up a bit…

Anyway. Our last couple of days in Huaraz were good. Finally giving up on our hostel, desperate for running water and increasingly frustrated, we packed our bags and split the joint.

Only to discover that, on Saturday morning of Independence Day weekend, there was nowhere for us to go. Until a random, oddly cheerful and generally fairly odd man assigned himself to our cause, parked us on a friend’s sofa, and scurried about town until we had two places to choose between.

One of which seemed devastatingly cheap until a carefully veiled conversation made it clear to us that the room was on offer as long as we toured with his agency. Which would actually have been fine, if we hadn’t been due to start someone else’s tour in about half an hour.

So we went for the other hostel he offered, its running water was gratefully received, and the tour we went with was alright; a lot of riding around in the back of a dusty van on some rather dodgy roads, but we did at least see some attractive parts of the Cordillera Blanca – a stunning lake high amidst the mountains, and more snow-clad peaks than you can shake a ski-pole at.

We walked around the lake a little, felt the altitude, then careened down the dirt tracks once more to Yungay, scene of Peru’s worst natural disaster (in 1970, the Ancash earthquake caused a devastating landslide that buried the town of Yungay and killed up to 70,000 people), and now a chilling memorial park.

So not quite the trekking we’d had in mind, but perhaps we’d been overly ambitious with that idea.

Then it was a surprisingly bearable bus ride (meals! Hollywood films in English! reclining seats!) to Lima, which was also unexpectedly pleasant when we first arrived (but admittedly after what we’d heard, expectations were low).

Later learned, of course, that that was thanks to our decision to restrict ourselves to the pleasant suburb of Miraflores, spacious and modern and home to the Larcomar open-air shopping complex, which was great for restaurants and scummy ocean views.

But of course we had to venture into central Lima at some point, where we found the Lima that lived up to the tales, a chaos of traffic and crowds, with occasional attractive parks caged behind locked gates as if trying to shut out the approaching decrepitude that infected the rest of the city. 

Anyway, we enjoyed Miraflores, and our hostel hosts were sweet; so hospitable we feared being late for our bus to Arequipa while they made us wait for our handmade going-away presents. (Friends House in Miraflores: we’d recommend it!)

Also feared being late due to a truly insane cab driver who, in turn, made us sing along to the Beatles. The bus, however, was delayed anyway – apparently for no reason other than being unfeasibly crap.

Every one of those 16 hours from Lima to Arequipa was grim. “Grim” being a word that was repeated many times that night, and really the only one that kept coming to mind (the stench of piss! the uncontrollable children! the really, really bad action movie with Dolph Lundgren speaking Spanish!). The only advice I’d give here is not to opt for the very cheapest bus ticket option.

Fortunately Arequipa was lovely; luminous white buildings with intricate stone carvings at every turn (sillar apparently, a pale volcanic rock used almost solely to create Arequipa).

Enough cafés and bookshops to keep me happy, though bustling enough to appear indifferent to all its tourists.

No denying that that’s what we were though, so we did what was expected of us and visited the convent of Santa Catalina, centuries old and built like a quaint Spanish city (deliberately: its little streets were named after the cities they emulated. Almost like a theme park, except for all the religious paraphernalia).

Populated by the daughters of image-conscious aristocracy, it was apparently quite the hedonistic hotspot in its day, until the Pope put his foot down in 1870, and the nuns were forced to give up their cosy houses and servants in favour of a more humble lifestyle.

(All of which we learned through a tour we poached. Accidentally! They should have made it clearer that we couldn’t just tag along. We didn’t even realise what criminals we were until much later, reading the back of our entrance ticket and discovering how little was actually included in the already high entrance fee…) 

Another 12 bus-hours later, and here we are in Cusco, mecca for the traveller to Peru, but impressively still a beautiful town.

At the moment still recovering from the lack of sleep last night (I gave up trying and watched the starry sky instead. I saw my first shooting star! And feel sorry for Londoners sometimes), and preparing for the Salkantay trek – we have stocked up on lots of soft alpaca clothing, and paid the tour agency extortionate amounts, so there’s no turning back now.

This time next week, we will have seen Machu Picchu, slept in the mountains for four nights, walked 58km, and will either be falling apart at the seams, or be stronger for it all.