As well as feeling tired, I am also a little bummed to be back in noisy, polluted, stressful Lima. I really had the best of times in Huaraz, it was so beautiful and reminded me how much I love being surrounded by mountains and fresh air. We did so much in the past few days that it's going to be hard to write down everything, so I'll just start with some of the highlights, and hopefully the photos will help convey how amazing it was.
Huaraz is at about 3000metres of altitude, I don't think I have ever stayed anywhere that high so I wasn't sure how well I would cope. I had been warned about altitude sickness and how anyone can get it, regardless of age or fitness. We had therefore planned to take it easy the first day, in order to acclimatize a little to the lack of oxygen - walking up the hostel stairs got me so out of breath, I felt like I had just ran a semi-marathon. We also bought Coca leaves at the market, which you are apparently supposed to munch on/make tea out of them, as a preventive measure to avoid altitude sickness (I'm going to try and bring some back to Montreal...!)
Views from the Hostal terrasse
After strolling around the town during our first day there, the second day we took a day tour to Chavin de Huantar, an archeological site about 3hours away from Huaraz. At first I wasn't too keen on the idea of a guided tour as it's the most touristy thing out there, but turns out we were the only foreigners on the bus, everyone else was Peruvian. On the way to Chavin we stopped off at a Laguna, which was absolutely stunning (see photos!!!), and enjoyed a running commentary from the guide about the Inkas and their rituals and whatnot. The archeological site itself was really interesting, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it's got it's own museum too which we visited.
Chavin de Huantar
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