Time to dust off the ol´blog for an update. Since I´m so far behind, I´m going to do this in 2-3 posts. Luckily I keep a detailed journal of my own so it should be pretty accurate. I´m currently in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
6/23-7/1 - After Arequipa, I made my way to Huaraz which is southern/central Peru. Its known for its picturesque mountain settings and great hiking. Basically everyone who came through the hostel I worked at recommended it, so I said my goodbyes to my Ariquipeñan crew and hit the road. My original plan was to do the Santa Cruz trek which is pretty touristy and not too challenging. Its about 3-4 days depending on how fast you want to go and I was feeling under the weather at the time, so it seemed like all I was up for on my own. Well, when you have no plans, they tend to change and Huaraz was no exception.
On my first full day in Huaraz, a Belgian (David) and another American (Cody) approached me at the hostel with an offer to go on a 9-day trek though the Huayhuash Cordillera. They were pretty cool guys. Both a bit older than me and turned out to be much better hikers. If you look for rankings of most beautiful hikes in the world, this is up there with the Himalayas. They had found an amazing deal to do the hike with a guide and an arriero (donkey man), but they needed a third person. I mulled it over for a bit and later that day told them I was in. I was sick, but it was one of those offers you can´t refuse.
We left the next day for a pueblito where the hike starts. The first day was a bit rocky because there had been a party the night before and all the arrieros in town were too hung over to work. We ended up leaving late and it cut a day off of our hike. For me, this hike had some of the most physically challenging days of my life. My month as a hostel bartender didn´t exactly leave me in the best shape and I didn´t give myself enough time to acclamate to the altitude so I was constantly the weak link. Plus, we were camping at such high altitudes that we woke up to ice on our tent every morning. On the 5th day, we hiked 22k and crossed two passes that were over 5,000 meters. The effort was all worth it when you got to the tops of the passes though. The
views even topped what I saw on the Inca trail.
Although being in the mountains for 8 days, away from civilization was visually stunning, physically rewarding, and mentally cleansing, it didn´t have the impact that on me that the hike to Machu Picchu did. Part of it was the lack of my friends being there, but Machu Picchu has a definite spiritual pull thats like nothing I´ve ever experienced. After the fresh air and physical activity I was ready for my journey Iquitos.
7/2-7/10 From Huaraz, I needed to get to Pucallpa, a small port city where you can catch a cargo boat to Iquitos (4-5 days). All the guide books suggest using Yurimaguas (3-4 days) en route to Iquitos. It is a shorter boat ride, but I was ¨closer¨ to Pucallpa so I decided I would go there. This was my first real experience with how little physical proximity and length of time it gets to get somewhere have to do with each other. I had to hop from small town to small town hoping to finally make it to Pucallpa. For the first time I was really off the gringo trail and got a lot of wide-eyed looks and ¨Whoa! Gringo!¨ from the campesinos. Finally I got to Pucallpa, bought a hammock which would be my bed for the next 6 days!
The boat ride ended up being somewhat of a nightmare. I got onto a boat on Sunday afternoon which was not scheduled to take off until Monday morning. The captain said I could sleep on the boat so I decided to save my spot, save money on a hostel, and get used to living on a boat and spent Sunday night on the Henry II. Well, the boat didn´t leave in the morning...or the afternoon...or at night. I spent my 4th of July on a boat with 100s of restless Peruvians and their crying babies sweating my ass off and thinking about why I didn´t listen to the guide book. Around 6 pm, they told us that there was contraband in the cargo which had suspended our departure for that day.
On Tuesday, we finally took off. The wind from the movement cooled it off a little, but when you´re packed into a cargo ship making your way in the Amazon its not too comfortable. When I say packed, I mean my knees were touching the guy next to me. Also, I can´t say enough about the crying babies and negligent parents. It was horrible.
It wasn´t all bad though. I made a couple buddies so my belongings were always safe and had ample time to read, write, and people watch. Out of maybe 200 people on the boat, I was the only one with a book! Literally, the only one. I talked about this with some of the older guys on the boat and they described to me the awful/non-existant state of the Peruvian public education system. Some of the responsibility of education has to fall on families though. Parents could use that time on the boat to read to their kids instead of letting them run wild. It really made me appreciate the teachers, family, and friends that always encouraged me to expand my mind through reading, travelling, turning off the TV, or whatever it takes to get your brain active. Yes, poor education can be blamed largely on economic/government problems, but I met people with much less money who were more educated than the people I came across on that boat ride and it was due to their family(I´ll get to them in part 2).
The craziest night on the boat was started when we ran aground. Since it was the dry season, the water was a bit low. It was about midnight and the boat lurched to a stop, people started screaming, and the lights came on. Everone had calmed down and when I heard, ¨PAPI!¨ from right behind me and a girl started having a seizure. Everyone gathered around and yelled advice like ¨Put keys in her mouth!¨ which sounded insane. Thankfully, there were no keys, but her family dealt with the situation and she was fine. After 45 minutes or so, the boat got moving again and we went to sleep.
Although the food that was included in the price of the ticket was pretty bad, there was a constant stream of people from each village that we would stop in that would come on board and sell their various products. Some of my favorites were:
Juanes - rice, egg, and chicken in a banana leaf
Humeda - really salty but delicious smoked fish
Aguaje - A fruit, but they take the juice and make it into a popsicle
Various homemade baked goods
Popcorn
After 6 grueling days on the boat, we arrived in Iquitos. I´ll pick up here tomorrow or maybe later today if I´m feeling ambitious.
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