So we took the 9 hour bus journey from Loja in Ecuador, through more stunning mountain scenery across the Peruvian border into the city of Piura, where we were meeting up with Leanne again the following day. Piura itself has little to hold the attention of most visitors, so we just stopped a couple of nights before getting on another 9 hour bus journey down the Pan American to the Peruvian city of Trujillo.
Looking out the bus window on the long journey through a small portion of the northern section of Peru, largely following the coastline, first impressions were of large expanses of vast emptiness, combined with intermittent sections of very tall, very badly built brick walls…
We decided to base ourselves just outside of Trujillo in a little surf/fishing village called Huanchaco - a unique surf/fishing village as a result of the handmade reed boats the local fishermen use - called ‘Caballitos de totora’ which they kneel on, paddle out, catch the fish & surf the waves back in to shore again. 
We were expecting Peru to be significantly more expensive than many of the countries we have visited so far as it is a much more established tourist destination due to the like of Machu Picchu etc - but we were surprised to find it to be one of the cheapest places we had been so far (at least in Huanchaco). We had a really nice hostel that was £3 each a night, we could eat a really good 2 course meal including drink for £1.20 each, & a 2 hour surf lesson including all the gear hire was only £7.We spent about 4 days here, a few days of which spent surfing, Leanne had a few more surf lessons & made some really good progress, managing to stand up on the board several times. We met some really nice locals here that took us to the local reggae party at a cool beach club, & we made friends with Leanne’s surf instructor, who was really keen to come to England to work so he could earn some good money & further his surf business in Peru. He had some spurious looking job application supposedly from a hotel in London, claiming that they would pay his air fair, arrange his UK immigration visa & pay him the princely sum of around £1500 a year for a job in the hotel under a minimum contract of 3 years. The UK visa email contact details that were given were against a yahoo.co.uk address - which was clearly fake. Unfortunately it looked like he was being lined up to be the victim of immigrant worker exploitation via some illegal organisation in the UK - something that was pretty much confirmed when my sister made some enquiries about it in the UK. A real shame, as he was a really genuine bloke that just wanted to be able to afford a better standard of living.
After a really good few days here we jumped on yet another 10 hour night bus - heading for the Cordillera Blanca mountain range & the main base town of Huaraz. How things have changed in a relatively short space of time when it comes to bus journeys - from the chicken buses of Central America, we are now treated with some of the best buses we have ever been on. We bought the first class tickets (£12 for a 10 hour journey) & it was like being on a private jet - huge leather sofa seats that pretty much fully recline to be like a bed, a meal & drink served to you before take off/departure - suspension that actually works & drivers that don’t appear to be completely suicidal - all in all a very pleasant journey!
The Cordillera Blanca area is the part of the Andes where the mountains are consistently at their highest - although the highest single mountain in the Andes is on the Argentinean/Chilean border, with 33 mountains above 5000 metres, 16 of which are above 6000 metres - the Cordillera Blanca is the second highest mountain range in the world, second only to the Himalayas. The region (or more precisely the Cordillera Huayhash, just down the valley) was brought to wider public attention by Joe Simpson’s tale of his near fatal climbing expedition in the documentary film & book ‘Touching The Void.’
After a day of getting used to the altitude the 3 of us set out on a hike into the mountains, up to the Laguna Churup at 4,450m. This was due to be our ’acclimatisation’ hike in preparation for one of the multi day hike options on offer here. The hike turned out to be a pretty tough 8 hour route, the 4-5 hours of which to the Laguna were all solidly up hill, & the final 30 mins or so was a scramble up the side of a waterfall - which pushed Leanne’s fear of heights to the limit, & whilst she safely made it up & down the route, it was enough to convince her that this sort of activity wasn’t really for her & made plans to leave the mountains for Lima a couple of days later.
The Cordillera Blanca area is the part of the Andes where the mountains are consistently at their highest - although the highest single mountain in the Andes is on the Argentinean/Chilean border, with 33 mountains above 5000 metres, 16 of which are above 6000 metres - the Cordillera Blanca is the second highest mountain range in the world, second only to the Himalayas. The region (or more precisely the Cordillera Huayhash, just down the valley) was brought to wider public attention by Joe Simpson’s tale of his near fatal climbing expedition in the documentary film & book ‘Touching The Void.’After a day of getting used to the altitude the 3 of us set out on a hike into the mountains, up to the Laguna Churup at 4,450m. This was due to be our ’acclimatisation’ hike in preparation for one of the multi day hike options on offer here. The hike turned out to be a pretty tough 8 hour route, the 4-5 hours of which to the Laguna were all solidly up hill, & the final 30 mins or so was a scramble up the side of a waterfall - which pushed Leanne’s fear of heights to the limit, & whilst she safely made it up & down the route, it was enough to convince her that this sort of activity wasn’t really for her & made plans to leave the mountains for Lima a couple of days later.
However not before Claire & Leanne took a trip the following day out to the archaeological site of Chavin, built between 1200 and 800 BC. The site contains a maze of underground tunnels, ducts and chambers and is considered a huge feat of engineering, particularly as its some 3000 years old. The bus trip to the site was equally as impressive as was the location for the site. The new museum, built only last year, has some great examples of pottery, huge stone deity heads and carvings. Most of the site is still undergoing excavation as in 1970 a landslide following an earthquake, covered the entire site in mud.
I on the other hand spent the day mountain biking with a local guide, famed with pioneering mountain biking in Peru. It turned out to be just he & I, & proceeded to have a pretty amazing day biking. Julio grew up in the area & has basically spent his whole life finding new routes & working out how to link them together. These trails are not your average tourist routes that many of the companies in the area offer - they are largely unknown to anyone other than Julio - so much so that even the other guide that he employs doesn’t actually know them yet. We drove up another 1000 metres or so from Huaraz to about 4100m where we began to ride. Because of the height you start at, the possibilities for long flowing down hills were great, & we rode some really nice trails for an hour pretty much solidly downhill without having to barely pedal at all. We carried on for another few hours after this, climbing & descending, riding through small local mountain communities - getting some weird looks from the locals who clearly couldn’t quite fathom out what the hell we were doing, riding bikes down the trails they use for navigating themselves around the mountain side. It was such a good day that I was determined to spend at least 1 more day riding with Julio before we left the Cordillera Blanca.
I on the other hand spent the day mountain biking with a local guide, famed with pioneering mountain biking in Peru. It turned out to be just he & I, & proceeded to have a pretty amazing day biking. Julio grew up in the area & has basically spent his whole life finding new routes & working out how to link them together. These trails are not your average tourist routes that many of the companies in the area offer - they are largely unknown to anyone other than Julio - so much so that even the other guide that he employs doesn’t actually know them yet. We drove up another 1000 metres or so from Huaraz to about 4100m where we began to ride. Because of the height you start at, the possibilities for long flowing down hills were great, & we rode some really nice trails for an hour pretty much solidly downhill without having to barely pedal at all. We carried on for another few hours after this, climbing & descending, riding through small local mountain communities - getting some weird looks from the locals who clearly couldn’t quite fathom out what the hell we were doing, riding bikes down the trails they use for navigating themselves around the mountain side. It was such a good day that I was determined to spend at least 1 more day riding with Julio before we left the Cordillera Blanca. The following day we said Adios to Leanne again temporarily as she headed to Lima to hook up with the Irish girls she spent time with in Ecuador, & take up some Spanish lessons & hopefully some more surf lessons, having well & truly caught the surf bug.
Claire & I spent the day planning & arranging our 4 day trek through the Santa Cruz valley. We were picked up at 6am the following morning by our guide & the rest of our group (a couple from Brazil and a guy from Finland), & headed off to the Huascaran National Park (Huascaran being the name of the highest mountain in the area & the whole of Peru at 6,768m) for the start of the trek. We arrived in the town of Yungay for an early breakfast. The original site of the town of Yungay was completely buried in 1970, when an earthquake dislodged a huge part of the glacier on the surrounding mountains, creating an avalanche & landslide that buried 18,000 people alive. The Peruvian government subsequently prohibited any excavation of the site & declared it a national cemetery. The new town of Yungay has been reconstructed right next to the old site. 
The scenery around here is absolutely stunning - the unique thing about this part of the Andes is that you are still right in the middle of the Tropics, so the snow line doesn’t even begin until around the 5000 metre mark (weird when you consider that Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe is 4,800m & the peak is snow covered year round…) & there are all manner of tropical plants, lush vegetation & Cactus up to around 4000m.
The hike itself took us through some beautiful glacial valleys, past jade green glacial lakes, over a high pass called the Punta Union at 4760m, all with beautiful views of the snow capped peaks of the Cordillera Blanca around us. The first 2 days were quite demanding with a 5 hour climb on day one to the first campsite and then a steep 4 hour climb to the pass on day 2. The latter 2 days however involve a more gentle descent to the town of Cashapampa, where the trail ends. Each day we only carried a day pack with food, water, layers, camera etc in and all the camping equipment and food was sent ahead on donkeys - something that provided a bit of drama, as after the first night camping the donkeys went AWOL, & the guys spent the next few hours scouring the area for our donkeys - they obviously didn‘t fancy the prospect of lugging all our gear up the mountain that day - can‘t say I blame them really… They eventually found the donkeys after employing the Andean version of Ethel from Eastenders, & reading the Coca tea leaves to find out where they were. Fortunately it worked somehow & we were back on track.
This is definitely a better way to camp, after a long day walking (average 7-8 hours) we arrived each night at the camp site to have the tent put up, coffee on to boil and dinner being prepared. Our donkey man, Eugenio and his son, Jean Pierre (only 7), pretty much ran past us each day to get ahead to ensure it was all set up for when we arrived…. They can pretty much do the entire 50km+ route in about 10 hours so what they must think of us tourist taking 4 days I am not sure!
Back in Huaraz, we meet for some beers with the others in the group and opt for a day off the next day. Not wanting to seem idol, Paul then books up another day mountain biking in the Cordillera Negra, which is the mountain range on the opposite side of the valley to the Cordillera Blanca - the main difference being the Cordillera Blanca are snow capped mountains, whereas the Cordillera Negra are not - though still exceed 5000m. After 40 km of downhill trails he comes back a little battered and bruised after a couple of minor mishaps….. thinking this is more than enough exercise for a few days, we jump on a bus & head to Lima to catch up with Leanne again.
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