Huaraz, Ancash Region

Huaraz is the main town for those wanting to visit the "Cordillera Blanca", or the "White Range" of the northern Andes. Saying that the town sits at the bottom of a valley must be quickly followed in the same breath by saying that the city is at 10,000ft. That is, of course, if you can catch your breath. On the west side of town rises a non-snowy range, the "Cordillera Negra", while to the east rises the snowcapped Cordillera Blanca, with several peaks over 20,000ft. Huaraz is not large, not small, perhaps 125,000.

(slightly photoshopped, to show how it really looks,  too much varying depth and light for my camera skills!)

[In the early 70s, an earthquake crumbled a glacier wall and released a devastating flood, killing 25,000 people. Not sure what the population was back then, but the percentage is huge, no matter what. A taxi driver was 13 and remembers it "like yesterday", the day when so many classmates disappeared or lost every single mother/father/uncle/aunt.]

The terrain is beautiful. The high, snowy peaks poke up behind a wall of rock that makes up the range and clouds push and spill around them. Glacier-cut canyons hide small lakes, and water melts, trickles, then flows icily down through the valleys. This time of year, wet summer, the ravine floor is springy with turf and dotted by "alpine" flowers. The hillsides angling down from the rock are breezy with sharp sunlight or sharp rain, and weather can change in an hour. Locals bring their livestock up to graze or tend to small plots of potatoes, etc., nestled against the slopes. These deep-cut canyons are called "quebradas" and each is used by a collective of locals who take turns guarding the mouth against rustlers. Diana, our hostess at the Lazy Dog Inn, could tell me the number of families using each of the quebradas. Farther downhill, houses begin to appear, then villages, until eventually you drop all the way down to Huaraz with its obligatory Plaza de Armas and central church. Of course, north of town, one can get a less idyllic view of a big strip mine up in the Cordillera Negra.

To get to Huaraz from Lima, we took a "super-cama" bus, an overnight ride with seats that recline to 180-degrees. The Lima bus station at 11pm seems like some kind of off-world spaceport, but soon enough we were horizontal in our seats and arrived at 6am in Huaraz. The altitude there is significant, though it affects people differently: Jen almost unaffected, me just an occasional headache hardly worth mentioning, Carter sometimes uncomfortable, Paul not happy with it, Farnaz literally puked one day (running out to the grass from the sauna in nothing but a skimpy towel). The Lazy Dog Inn is 2000ft above Huaraz, putting it at 12,000ft, while our elevation when visiting the Llaca Glacier topped out at 15,000ft. That's the highest I've ever been. One day, Jen tried an uphill run from the local pueblo ("Marian") up to the Inn…a couple of times locals hollered out to her "Where you going?" and "Good luck!"

Staying at the Lazy Dog puts you within a couple of kilometers of the sheer walls of the range. I took a couple of walks up the road and, since this is low tourist season, we shared the terrain with just a handful of locals with their livestock or bags of harvest on their backs. The women mostly wear the traditional garb, including the hats specific to the Huaraz area. These hats have a folded fan of ornamental material on them and, apparently, the number of folds in the material reflects marital status and status as an elder. Many families may have a cow or a burro, their main wealth, but no grazing plot. Often the kids are tasked with taking the livestock uphill to the open grass. I came across a girl of roughly 9 years and her little brother; when they asked the typical question of gringo aliens "Tiene caramellos?" ("Do you have candy?") I had to say no. Up to that point, it had been hard for me to get pictures of the native dress in a comfortable way, so I asked if I could take her picture. "No," she said. But as I walked away she called after me, "But my brother doesn't mind." Nevertheless, she ran up to stand in the photo. Farnaz and Paul stayed for the whole week, and they had a couple of opportunities to be closer to the locals: first, they were invited along to a birthday party at a local woman's house (which had the typical cordoned-off area indoors to raise their guinea pigs), and second, they went to a little closing show at the preschool run by the proprietors of the Lazy Dog (just like a school show in the states, except here all the moms taking pictures with their cel phones are in tradition Andes attire).

The Lazy Dog is kind of a progressive hacienda, a compound with casitas and rooms for tourists, horses that will come munch on your houseplants if the barrier falls down, greenhouses and gardens, and the preschool. The couple in charge, Canadian expats, provide dinner and breakfast in the common room, great rooms with fireplaces and compost-toilets, and free advice on getting around the hills. There are not that many people, but still I became familiar with the other visitors, some of whom are volunteering at the preschool. Speaking of volunteers: we had the chance to go into Huaraz and have lunch with one of the local Peace Corps volunteers, J Lynne, who works on health programs there. Her apartment is just off the Plaza de Armas where a loud stage was set up, blasting music to a small crowd of people milling about. There are plenty of ladies in town wearing the local attire, but it felt very particular to turn a corner by the grandstand and come upon a 16yr-old in full traditional regalia, her "sunday-best", standing among the rowdies.

At the Inn on the first day, I discovered that I was already familiar with a family visiting there…they are affiliated with the embassy and were, in fact, the "welcome" family that invited Jen over for dinner her first week in the country. They are funny sorts, friendly enough, but one of their teenage daughters seems a taciturn, unhappy sort (perhaps because she was dragged to Peru and, soon, will be dragged to Equitorial Guinea, for the large part of her teenage years). This family went up to the Llaca Glacier on the same day Jen and Carter and I did; they even ended up hiking back with us.

The hike to Llaca is not so far as the crow flies, but we opted to pay for a car to drive us up the abysmal road so we'd only have to hike the downhill. Since Carter was joining Jen and I, it seemed prudent. Even so, as it would turn out, it was asking too much of Carter. One note on all the SUVs driving around on smooth pavement in U.S. cities: up in this area they seem to handle their rocky roads and flash floods with nothing more than frontwheel drive Toyota station wagons. The taxi dropped us off at the end of the road from which we could see the base of the glacier. We decided we wanted to touch it and set out scrambling that way. The end of the glacier is a little spooky, the slate-blue ice melting and dripping and periodically rocks or gravel roll down it's face. It feels like something moving. But, of course, these days it is losing more than it is moving. Another visitor mentioned being there a year prior and that the glacier had lost an acre since then. By the time we were done with the glacier, we had expended 2 unintentional hours, so we started the hike back to the Inn. At first it was lovely, the green valley below the glacier being so pretty, with rock walls rising up on either side and a stream the same color as the glacier twisting through it. We even saw the andean squirrel-bunny (the Viscacha), a large rabbit with a squirrel-like tail. By the bottom of this section, before the steep downhill, two things happened. First, we met up with and joined the embassy family we knew and, second, it began to hail. So hail, then rain, then hiking in the middle of a cloud. It would have been adventurous, but by the last hour of the 4 hour hike, Carter was literally miserable with fatigue and altitude-discomfort. Jen and I swapped carrying him for probably the last 2 hours.

The day after this, I took a hike with Paul up the other nearby quebrada, Cojup. But this time, just setting out from the Inn and turning back upon hitting the bridge at the canyon mouth. Jen went in the morning to see the preschool, Carter had a mellow morning letting Wayne, one of the proprietors, go through a very explicit introduction to horsemanship (leading, brushing, feeding, etc.). Farnaz happily donated time planting in the greenhouses and, later, Jen went on her uphill "run" from the pueblo. We hung out around the fireplace until it was time for Carter, Jen and I to go into Huaraz and catch the 11pm overnight bus back to Lima. Just before daylight, I was awoken on the bus by a car honking…and from the smell, I knew I was back in Lima.

(from Google)

Punta Sal / Tumbes Mangroves

Punta Sal is a beach a couple of hours south of the border with Ecuador, over 1 hour south of a town called Tumbes and over 3 hours north of Mariza's hometown of Piura.






The house house we rented sits right on the beach, with basic, airy rooms around an open terrace facing the Pacific. In the morning, the sky is filled with frigate birds coming in from the sea (perhaps using the giant cel tower up on the hill as a landmark?). The waves are skimmed by flocks of pelicans and the sand is alive with hockey-puck sized red crabs that skitter around, rolling the sand into thousands of little balls the size of peas. When approached, the crabs dart down into holes they have tunneled in the sand. The water in front of the house is rocky, but 5 minutes up the beach is nice area. The water is warm and pleasing and, unlike the many other tropical beaches, here are actually waves, perfectly calibrated to be fun but not threatening to our kids. This part of the beach is in front of the Punta Sal Hotel where they seem unconcerned that we might be sitting at one of their umbrellas or coming in to the bar or restaurant.



Carter and Julito immediately jumped into their frenetic, happy beach relationship. Keeping them immersed in enough sun block was a struggle for they seemed to have no limits to how long they could roll in the waves. There was sand to build with, snails to dig up, once a dead puffer fish even washed up. Julio found a plastic bottle at the water line that was an ecosystem unto itself, with barnacles, anemones, even a small crab. The house has a "jacuzzi" (not technically, having no heater and no need for one); so the boys had plenty of options for water play. By evening, slightly burnt and with puffy eyes, the two would dwindle down like candles until someone would take pity on them and put them to bed.


Juanita's services come with the house, she sweeps away the unrelenting sand and helped Mariza with meals. Juanita was tense the first couple days as we dealt with the owners because the refrigerator wasn't functioning properly. I think she thought she would be blamed; but it all worked out in the end…though we did lose a few sensitive items to spoilage before the new fridge showed up. There is not internet, so we went over to the hotel a few times for the wireless. Jen was also ringleader a couple of times, leading the kids to the hotel pool. Time on the terraza is relaxing, with games of Bananagrams or Mexican Train. Jennifer, Julio, Maureen and Julito all left on Monday, returning to Lima.

As they left, Farnaz, Paul, Carter and I departed in the other direction, taking a taxi 1.5 hours north through Tumbes to the mangrove swamps. The ecosystem is remarkable as two large rivers flow into the Gulf of Guayaquil, pouring fresh water on either side of the mouth of the mangrove area. The tides push and pull the waters, creating an 80% salt water mix for the mangrove area. We arranged for a boat at Puerto Pizzaro (so named because it is this area that Pizzaro used as his landing point for the conquest of Peru). While boarding our boat, a man on the dock made a point of telling us, even illustrating with a pen on his hand, that we had chosen well, arriving just in time for highest tide of the year. The boat motored out past some little shacks set up to serve families that come to spend the day, though the tide meant there was very little left of the usual sandy beach. We saw a couple of birds on the way (e.g. a very colorful kingfisher), but we didn't go far before reaching a patch of mangrove that thousands of birds agree upon as the place to nest. The boat sidled right up to the branches as the sound and smell washed over us. Pelicans in the hundreds, frigate birds in the hundreds, but also several other types. It was not just Farnaz, the true bird lover of the group, who was impressed. There were ibises, which the boatman called "crabbers" (and indeed, their long curved bills would be perfect for pulling little red crabs out of their sand holes). There were several kinds of heron (striated, tri-colored, little blue, yellow-crowned), none showing any fear of our proximity. We could have stolen little green or blue eggs if we wanted to. We had paid a little bit extra to also see the crocodiles, not really knowing what to expect. We pulled up at a landing and feared the worst; it appeared to be a horrible little zoo cynically set up for tourists. But no, it's actually a breeding program that rears and releases crocodiles into the river Tumbes. Carter and Paul took turns holding a juvenile, while Farnaz was more interested in the fact that off to the side was a new bird to add to her life list. The sun was setting and we had a pretty little ride back to the dock where our taxi man was waiting.





Prologue: Getting to Punta Sal (and yes, I know prologues usually go first)
The week prior to our beach vacation I managed to get all backed up on a project, forcing myself to stay up all night. I never worry too much about the 3 or 4 times per year that this happens, it seems a small price to pay for the converse privilege I enjoy…being able to mold my hours to my liking. This all-nighter, however, my eyes started to give out around 4am, literally blurring over with goop. I pushed on through, with the result being that for a week my eye gooped themselves every night, and only a week later were not glued shut upon awakening. In fact, I got a sore throat, my nose developed strange pimples, and my whole body seemed to rebel; perhaps rightfully so.

We left on Friday afternoon, needing 2 taxis to get all of us to the airport. Jen, Carter and I, Farnaz and Paul, and Mariza. Julio, Maureen and Julito were already up at the rental house in Punta Sal. The flight was uneventful, but when we arrived at the Piura airport we discovered 2 different vans waiting for us. Jennifer had misunderstood a text from Maureen, hence the double-booking. All our luggage was already up on one, so we apologized profusely to the other guys and gave them some compensation. They complained and we compensated them further. So it was not received well when one of the other guys, the chosen ones, complained that the flight was an hour later than he thought. This was all foreshadowing for the odyssey yet to come.

Piura is not the closest airport, being more than 3 hours away, but it was considerably cheaper than going through the closer town of Tumbes. We needed to buy groceries in Piura, which made our driver grumpy (even though it was part of the contract), and he refused to take Jen on a small errand while the rest of us loaded up on food and drink. It was dark, so we go none of the scenery as we drove north in the dark, arriving in Punta Sal around 12:45am. We were not yet at the house, however, and through a combination of factors, it took 45 minutes of confusion before we found the place. The driver looked at my map and said "OK" but it didn't seem right. By the end, I was sure that my grasp of where to go was better than his and I found myself giving him direct orders. Finally, after asking many people, we were on the right road and in front of the final security gate. When no vigilante came to our calls, I clambered up the embankment and the wall, yelling "Señor!" over and over into the night. A groggy guy eventually let us in; meanwhile, my voice was just about gone and my patience totally gone. The sound of rolling waves as we unloaded the van promised better things for the next day.

Epilogue: Getting Back to Piura
For Jennifer, Julio, Maureen and Julito, another bizarre taxi experience during their return to Piura. The dispatchers had made a scheduling error and were trying to have our folks switch vans midstream. Maureen, in a rage, literally sequestered the driver's cel phone so the dispatchers could not talk to him until they all reached the airport).