Huaraz & Caraz (July 9 & 10, 2006)

We arrived in Huaraz (3091m) promptly at 6:00am, and of course everything was still closed. We wanted to buy a topographical map here for our trek as well as some camp stove fuel before heading to Caraz, a smaller town two hours away and closer to the trailhead. Huaraz has a beautiful setting, being surrounded by the Cordillera Blanca, the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru’s three most spectacular mountain ranges, and the second-highest mountain ranges in the world (after the Himalayas). In this area there are 200 peaks that are over 5000m high, with 30 of them being over 6000m high. Dominating the skyline is Huascaran, Peru’s highest peak at 6730m, with several other peaks that are not much lower. What a beautiful view! We wandered to the Plaza de Armas and enjoyed the scenery for a while (fending off hostel touts of course), and then went in search of somewhere to have some tea. We found a bakery that was just opening so we sat and had a couple of treats and tea until around 8:45 at which point we headed to the Café Andino that was supposed to open at 9:00. The Café sells maps and has a good library with books of the area as well. The food looked so good there that we had a second breakfast! We chatted with a Canadian/Danish couple who had moved to the area five months ago (he works in the mining industry, she teaches English) and they raved about how fabulous the area was.

With our topo map in hand, we finally tore ourselves away from the Café Andino balcony (which had a great view of the mountains btw), and went in search of our next item – white gas for our camp stove. This was much easier to find than in Copacabana and the first Ferreteria we found had it in stock (that is a hardware store, not a store that sells ferrets). Beside the hardware store was a cheap CD and DVD store, so we stopped in there to look for the Peruvian music that our friend Louis in Cuzco had recommended to us. They had two of the three he had listed, and we really liked one of them so we bought it (for $1!). Happy with our purchases, we went to catch a collectivo (shared taxi) to take us to Caraz. We didn’t have to wait long, shared the taxi with only two other people, and the driver said it would only take one hour rather than the 2 hours that it said in our guidebook. We soon learned why it would only take an hour – the guy drove like a madman! We made it to Caraz alive, exactly one hour later, and enjoyed the fantastic scenery of glacier-capped mountains that went whizzing by.

Caraz is a much smaller version of Huaraz (minus the nice café), and is a little lower at 2285m). It is also surrounded by mountains, although we can’t see as much of the snow-capped ones from here – just a couple peeking out from behind some smaller mountains. A couple of minutes after the collectivo deposited us at the main Plaza, a nice Californian guy came up and asked if he could help us find something, since he had been there a while. We had found a couple of hostels online last night and we asked him if he knew where they were; he didn’t, but recommended the one he was staying at which was just a block away. We figured we would check it out. It was basic, but the price was right – only 20 soles for the two of us! We were liking this town already…as we had hoped, prices in Peru are much cheaper once you get north of Lima and away from the super-popular touristy areas. Food turned out to be much cheaper as well, which is great for our budget (we have already exceeded our Peru budget and still have ten more days here!).

We had originally planned to start our trek tomorrow, but since we spent an extra day in Lima and figured that maybe we should acclimatize again after being at sea level for a few days, we decided to rest a day in Caraz and start our trek on Tuesday. This meant that we didn’t have to rush around getting ready today, and spent the afternoon watching the World Cup finals (Italy won in penalty kicks, even though France played a better game), wandering around the Sunday market and the town, and writing in our journals. We had our cheapest meal so far in Peru at a Chinese place ($5 for both of us – wahoo!). We were both tired from the lack of sleep on the bus last night, so we went to bed even earlier than usual.

:: July 10 ::

We both actually managed to sleep in this morning, and I slept until 8:30, which is an amazing feat for me. We knew we didn’t have much to do today, so we were lazy and didn’t leave for breakfast until around 10:00. We bought our last-minute trekking supplies, walked around the town a lot, and had some ice cream. I finally finished getting caught up in my journal, tried to update the website, but the computers were screwed up (so I could only update the photos and not the journal entries), and we re-packed our bags. Lincoln worked on entering the waypoints for our trek into his GPS, just to make sure we won’t get lost.

All-in-all, a very relaxing day. Caraz is a very laid-back town, the residents are all very friendly, and nobody bothers us to buy anything or eat at their restaurant. I think that we and the American couple staying at our hostel are the only tourists staying in town! We have seen some tour buses arrive with people who snapped a couple of pictures of the main square and then left. Such a big difference from the main touristy areas south of Lima!