The past few days (weeks?) have had so much going on that I would have to write pages and pages for each experience to do them proper justice. But... who would sit in front of a computer doing that when they´ve got Cuzco at their doorstep? As such, I have given up on doing proper justice and have now become an annotated lister.
The annotated list goes as follows.
1. Hatun Machai take 1: On impulse (i.e. I woke up at 6am and decided Today I Must Climb) I went to a place called Hatun Machai and fell in love instantly with the rock forest. I climbed a lot and decided I want to move to Huaraz for at least a few months.
2. Santa Cruz: While Justine was photographing the culture, I went and walked through the mountains on the Santa Cruz trek. I did not bring neosporin, which was a big mistake because it meant I could not help the man who lived in the mountains and had a badly infected hand from getting it mangled in machinery (it had swollen to no more than 5 times the size of his other hand). Instead I gave him all my remaining ibuprofin -- 4 pills. I later rebuilt my karma by helping a woman find her lost sheep. Then, I randomly ran into the same French people that we had camped with several weeks ago in Mancora (distance: 2 days busride). I camped with them on the trek. The Santa Cruz trek is a 4 day trek but I did it in 3 to be back for Justine´s birthday. The trip involved a lot of burros (although I did not have a burro)... I will later write a story about all the burros. I swam with iceburgs in a freezing alpine lake.
3. Justine´s Birthday: We went to a performance of some artists that Justine met earlier and then we went out dancing with them. Dancing with dancers is the best type of dancing. Also, we ate cake.
4. Vallunaraju: A big snowy mountain. Our new record is something over 5,700 meters! 2 day trip. At the summit, the colors of the sky are very different because the atmosphere is different. We were supposed to reach the summit at sunrise but because all of our watches magically stopped working in the night (what!?), we woke up late (2am instead of 12am) and got there around 7am. Of all the groups that set out for the summit that day, we were the only group that made it. Go us! And thank you to our gentle guide Rolando (aka "Mono" (translation: monkey)) for teaching us how to walk in those big mountaineering boots and how to put on crampons. Oh, and for guiding us to the summit.
5. Hatun Machai take 2: We went to Hatun Machai again because it was so amazing the first time. We were supposed to stay there Wednesday night and Thursday day, get back to Huaraz Thurs evening and take a bus to Lima Thursday night. Well, we had such an amazing time that we had a friend change our bus tickets and we didn´t take the bus to Lima until last night (Monday night). That friend was also supposed to email my family for me to let them know that I am out of contact with the world, but safe. I suspect that email might not have gone through (I blame it on all the vowels in our last name). One of our new friends has aerial fabrics and so we set them up from a climbing route and I did fabric. Justine climbed her first climbing route. I got on a 5.13!!! (but I didnt finish it). There was a bouldering competition... people came all the way from Lima to compete (Lima is far away). I won second place in the female category. I was basically climbing for 4 days straight and now the holes in my fingers also have holes in them. Tying my shoes hurts.
6. Huaraz to Cuzco: Before getting on a bus to Lima last night, we made the last minute decision to buy roundtrip plane tickets between Cuzco and Lima because we want to take full advantage of our few remaining days (we have what like 16 days left... not enough!!!) and because bus travel is fairly exhausting. Thus, we got off our bus in Lima, took a taxi to the airport, got on our plane, and are now happily in Cuzco.
Ciao!!
Ani
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