One Year Later....Back in Huaraz

Marcel Proust says that the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. My third time back in Huaraz, I'm wearing contact lenses.

Thanks to an idea hatched by my friend Angie (who I met on a trail in Patagonia last year) and one last grant from Stanford, I am no longer just here to climb mountains. Angie and I are teaching creative writing workshops for teenage girls in two schools. In our first school, an NGO sponsors free meals for children that come down from the hills and cannot afford food. The girls we work with are from that group. At home, half of them speak Quechua. The other is a private school where a teacher hosts after-school programming for underprivileged kids. We'll be working with that group as well. School starts today.

It took us all of yesterday to plan our first hour of class and purchase materials. Hat down to all school teachers.

I'm settling in fine to Huaraz. On the bus from Lima, I got offered a free place to live for three months, equipped with my own bathroom, a panoramic view of the sunset over the mountains, a half-pitbull that sometimes poops in front of my door, and an internet connection. The house is on the city's busiest street corner and I have made close friends with my earplugs. All this in exchange for English conversation practice over breakfast.

I almost took a job as a barrista two nights a week in one of my favorite cafe/bars 13 Buhos (13 Owls), but my fear of set schedules intervened. Angie did take it.

And I spent my birthday at Hatun Machay, my favorite sport climbing destination in the world. Angie brought a cake, and we made quick friends with all the eccentric Argentines. My mom got me a book on mountaineering, which turns out to be the mountaineering bible. I'm waiting for luck to introduce me to a few capable mountaineers willing to drag me up mountains with them. Until then, I'll be playing guide to take us up some easier mountains. If the weather holds (which it might not, because of climate change), we plan to go up Vallunaraju this weekend.