Mountains Sports in Huaraz

After Cusco, I spent 3 days in Huaraz, Peru, a mountain-sport paradise surrounded by legions of mountains, many of which tower above 6000 meters (the tallest, Huascaran, tops out at 6746 meters).  On my first day, I did a full day of rockclimbing in the lovely countryside, followed by a relaxing steam in a natural sauna in a cave.

The second day, I hiked up to Laguna Columa, a glacial lake located high in the Cordilleras Blancas and among the best day-hikes I've ever done!  After an hour on a crowded minibus up a rocky road, I started by hiking through rural farmland enjoying the sites, sounds and smells of farm life, harassed only by overzealous dogs with an uncanny ability to discern an "extranjero" (foreigner).  More bark than bite, they inevitably cowed when I picked up a stone or stick to threaten them with.

The trail steadily snaked upwards to the entrance of the National Park, where it steeped considerably.  With the reduced oxygen at 4000 meters, it became a real workout to ascend.  

After clambering upwards for another hour, including sections pulling myself up cables over steep, slippery granite, I was rewarded with this spectacular view of Laguna Charup at 4450 meters.

Unfortunately, in the late afternoon no minibus was heading back down from the trailhead, so I ended up walking the extra 19 kilometers back to Huaraz.  Needless to say, I was a bit sore the next day!

Peru - Machu Picchu 5 years later

A friend joined me for a couple weeks of travel in Cuzco, Peru.  Although I've been here before (5 years ago), I was happy to return as it really is a spectacular place.  For the first few nights, we stayed in the Sacred Valley at an excellent bed-and-breakfast that I would absolutely recommend to anyone (www.greenhouseperu.com).  Here's a shot from the back yard, to give you sense of the amazing scenery:

As a budget traveler (aka cheapskate), I normally don't stay in places like this.  But my friend had suggested this place because it ranked as the 6th best bed and breakfast in the world by travellors on Trip Advisor.  Surprisingly, it was only $75/night for a double room, with breakfast included!  Plus one of the owners took great pleasure in creating one-of-a-kind gourmet dinners every night, while the other owner led mediation classes in the morning.  Although it was hard to leave the comforts of this hotel, we did manage to get out and see some of the sites in Sacred Valley.

Las Salinas de Maras is a salt "mine", where highly-salinated spring water emerging from the mountainside is corralled in a haphazard set of terraces where it is evaporated to leave the salt for harvesting.

We also visited the Moray agricultural terraces.  It is hypothesized that the Incas located these agricultural terraces in favorable microclimates in tiny valleys - as opposed to the wind-swept, semi-arid landscape in the surrounding region - in order to develop better crop varieties.  In other words, it was an ancient experimental farm.

I also spent one day rambling over the mountains (up to 4500 meters) and through the country-side around our hotel, and was rewarded with some outstanding views of the Sacred Valley.  Many of the highest mountains have permanent glaciers above 5000 meters, although they are melting fast with global warming.

Of course we also went to Maccu Picchu.  When we first arrived in the heavy early morning fog, it was slightly disconcerting to see a guide holding a large photo of Machu Picchu in front of a blank fog wall for his clients, in lieu of the actual view.

Thankfully, for us (and for his clients), the fog lifted later in the day.  I'm not a history or anthropology buff, but Macchu Picchu is one of those places that everyone would enjoy, even with the hoards of gawking tourists.  Deep in jungle-clad, mist-shrouded mountains, the site is an absolute wonder.  Built around 1450, and abandoned 100 years later, it was unknown to the world until 1911.  It is also one of the few ancient cities untouched by Spanish conquistadors in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

I hiked up thousands of precarious Incan stone steps to the top of Montana Machu Picchu, which looms over the ancient ruins.

From the peak, you get a strong sense of how isolated this ancient village was, situated amongst sheer, fog-shrouded mountains and deep valleys bisected by raging rivers.

Up close, you get a better sense of how well developed this ancient city was, and how painstaking it must have been to shape the stone by hand to fit so tightly together.

We spent the last few days relaxing in the ancient city of Cuzco.  Like most Peruvian cities, Cuzco is mostly drab and crowded with polluting vehicles, although as the capital of the Incan empire and an important colonial city, it has tremendous historical significance and consequently a number of good museums, archeological sites and old churches.  We were there for Semana Santa (Easter Week), and were able to join the throng following the Holy Procession as it wound through the historical center of the city.

We were also treated to a typical Peruvian meal prepared by Mama Zeta and her son, Martin, the owners of the apartment we rented. She took us on an early morning trip to the local market to purchase the ingredients.  It was quite a sensory experience: raw carcasses hanging next to overflowing sacs of colorful produce - with the correspondent odors - and of course the cacaphony of voices bargaining.

After a couple hours of preparation, we sat down to a delicious meal of stuffed hot peppers, roasted sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and crispy-fried pork.  I think I look slightly stunned in this picture because I was starving after watching Mama Zeta cook this wonderful meal.

Volunteering in Nicaragua

For my first week in Nicaragua, I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping to build a home for an elderly man.  Our team consisted of 9 Canadians from across the country, along with some local Nicaraguan staff for Habitat for Humanity.  The 63 year old man for whom we built the house had lived in a various shacks made of plastic, scraps, and branches for more than 50 years.  Here was his current "house"!

Inside this shack, he slept on thin, dirty mattress on a rickety frame made of branches and he cooked on a smouldering fire, with chickens and dogs running freely around on the fetid dirt floor.

The labour-based economy in Nicaragua became clear on the first day, when our team spent a few hours at the brick factory helping to manufacture a batch of adobe bricks, which we would later use to build the house.  Other than the hydraulic press that formed the bricks, the only other "technologies" available were shovels and rakes. All the tedious mixing of the clay, lime, cement and water was done on the ground, by hand.

That afternoon we travelled to the jobsite and began building the house.  With some construction experience, I was given the job of being an assistant "albanil" (bricklayer) for the week.  I was also given the nickname "chele" which I promptly misinterpreted to mean "boss" but soon found that it actually meant "blondie" or "whitie".  For that error in judgement, I was rightly ridiculed by other members of the team!

Carlos was the real boss, the local professional bricklayer who had been hired to run the jobsite and who had a special talent for making do with what was at hand.

He only had a little english and I only had a little spanish, but we managed to communicate with a combination of stilted language and hand signals.  It was a great learning experience, as well as a good exercise in patience, as I struggled to not make "suggestions" on how to do things better/differently.  Because labour is the most readily-available resource, there are not strong incentives to mechanize.  At the start, I had expected that we would easily finish the house, with our team of 9 volunteers, 3 habitat staff, and one professional.  After a few days, it became apparent that was not going to happen.  However, we did get the walls to about 75% of their finished height.  And we did spend an afternoon visiting some of the houses that had been constructed by previous teams, so I was able to get a sense of the positive impact Habitat was making.

My time spent with the Habitat team concluded with a few days of R&R in Grenada, where we visited one of the many active volcanoes in Nicaragua and took a fantastic boat tour through Las Isletas on beautiful Lago de Nicaragua (Lake Nicaragua).

I spent another few days in the surf town of San Juan del Sur, on the southwestern coast of Nicaragua, before crossing the border into Costa Rica.  I apologize that I don't have more/better pictures, but my camera decided to take an extended vacation from my vacation midway through my volunteer stint, so I only had my Iphone camera to work with after that.