The spectacular Cordillera Blanca

We are hitting the Cordillera Blanca in the raining season and had to make it a short visit, but everything about it was very scenic: the bus ride in through the Cañon del Pato, the day hike up the Cerro San Juan and beyond, the visit to the glacier lakes of Llanganuco, and bus ride out through the cordillera. Raining season means high cloud coverage, i.e. hidden peaks. However, when there is some clearing, all the peaks have snow. The weather forecast would include snow line, e.g. 4200m.

It´s faster to ride a burro up Cerro San Juan, but we prefer our own two feet.


A brief glimpse of a snow-capped peak.


Sun-Ling recovers from a close encounter with a cactus on the way up Cerro San Juan.

Looking down on to the city of Caraz and Huaylas Canyon where we started the day´s hike.


Going up beyond Cerro San Juan, we were surprised to see the mountain flatten with farms, fields, and a small village.


Now we are beyond and out of sight of Cerro San Juan and Caraz. Below is the small village. And we´re still headed up.


We turn around here, after a tasty lunch, with a peak at the narrow entrance to Canyon Paron in the distance.


And the wind began to howl on the way down, with some rain, but I stopped to take one last photo.


The next day we take a day trip to Yungay and the LLanganuco region.

Into the canyon and on to the natural, glacier-fed lakes of LLanganuco in Huascaran National Park.


Lake Chinancocha.


Walking around the shore of Lake Chinancocha.


Looking back down Lake Chinancocha to its natural dam.


Looking back from the second lake, Lake Orconcocha, to Lake Chinancocha in the distance.


Leaving Caraz and the Cordillera Blanca for Lima, there were still plenty of great views of snow-capped mountains, green valleys, and natural lakes out the bus window.




And finally, to see all the photos of the trip in and out of the Cordillera Blanca, click here.

Cañon del Pato

The general strike in the Huaraz area was over, so after a day in Casma we set out for the Cordillera Blanca, the second highest mountain range in the world, by heading up the Cañon del Pato in a bus.

The highlights of the bus ride included spotting a Duke Energy Power Plant in Huallanca and passing through a series of 39 one-lane tunnels high above the river below. Oh, and not to mention that the road is unpaved. See video below.

Long second hurdle

Northern coastal Peru was my second hurdle of the trip. Chiclayo and Trujillo are supposed to be run by gangsters. Bag snatchers frequent Chiclayo bus terminals. When John and I walked out of the Chiclayo bus terminal, all our senses were at high alert. What we saw were sparse main drags, deserted smaller lanes, streets more littered than usual, and more storefronts closed than open. This was only 5:30pm, not even dark. For a city of 500,000 people, it looked very suspicious. Alarm bells were going off like Christmas lights in our heads. We felt very uneasy, but the guesthouse we settled down in was rather friendly. The next day we made visits to a couple of archeological sites outside the city. Upon returning to our guesthouse, we were exchanging pleasantries with the proprietors, I glanced over at the calender and noticed that the day before was marked red. It was a national holiday for the Immaculate Conception, which explained all our suspicions. It was a good laugh all around.

Trujillo turned out to be uneventful as well, except when we started to inquire about onward moves, we learned that there had been road blocks and unrest at our next destination. It had been going to for six days. After Nepal we totally understand the gravity of a general stirke and started to plot alternate routes and monitoring the situation on the web. We decided to detour to Casma even though it means we would have to transfer through the most unsavory city of all Peru, Chimbote, twice. The same day we learned that the conflict was ending. We pushed ahead with our detour.

Due to our poor timing, in order to go to the most unsavory town, we had to get on a bus with the most dangerous bus company "America Express" whose bus caused a head-on collision that left 38 people dead back in February 2010 while attempting an illegal pass. We landed in the most vulnerable seats, the front row on the upper deck. The view was fantastic. The bus cruised along at a "snail's pace" according to John.

When our bus safely reached Chimbote, the most threatening act we witnessed was someone throwing a bucket of water from a third flour terrace, barely missing a bicyclist. From the same bus terminal we made a transfer to Casma, Ciudad Del Eterno Sol, and tasty Cremoladas (think Slurpee, but with real fruit).

Two days later we passed through Chimbote for the second and last time. Unfortunately for us we were "enveloped in the stench of dead fish" for 90 minutes as we waited at the bus terminal for our onward bus to Caraz.

We don't look too concerned in our front row seats as we pull out of Trullijo on an America Express bus bound for Chimbote.

No head-on collision with this big truck as we head down the Pan-American Highway to Chimbote.


One of the many irrigated asparagus fields.


Welcome to Caraz, the City of Eternal Sunshine.


Cremoladas.

Down the coastal road

My first impressions of the Northern Peruvian dessert are mixed. The coast from Chiclayo south with it's beach towns and awesome weather is a dry sandy string of pre-Inca ruins with good to great museums, ugly trash dumps, industrial drip irrigated mega-farms, and colonial towns with pleasant city centers.

The very awesome El Museo Tumbas Reales del Señor de Sipán in Lambayeque, Peru. [No photos allowed inside the museum.]


Reed boats, fútbol, and fishing pier at Huanchaco Beach, just north of Trujillo.


Trash dump somewhere on the Pan-American Highway between Chiclayo and Trujillo. The truck is on a side road, not the Pan-American.


Irrigated fields.


Heading South on the Pan-American Highway with some irrigated fields in the distance.


The pre-Inca ruins at Tucume, Peru. All those rain-furrowed hills are pyramids.


Ruins of Chan Chan. Near Trujillo. Art Deco?


Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon) outside Trujillo.


Cathedral - Plaza de Armas - Chiclayo


Cathedral - Plaza de Armas - Trujillo

Musings on quality of life and development

Being Chinese, food is of particular importance to me. Being around all the scrumptious food in Cajamarca really made me think and rethink. I used to feel sorry for people in developing countries because of their lack of "cargo" (see Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel). Now I feel sorry for myself because of my lack of access to abundance of "real" food. Furthermore, I envy climates where temperature control is irrelevant and plants flourish.

What makes a good life? Maybe Starbucks is only a consolation for the poor souls that do not have coffee trees, pastured cows, and sugar cane plants in their neighborhood. Maybe all "cargoes" are really consolations. What does development mean besides clean water, good roads, education, health care...? If China can be used as a cautionary tale for development, what are the trade-offs regarding autonomy, environment, family ties...? On the other hand I am grateful on behalf of the developing world for Chinese manufactured compact florescent bulbs, clothing for the masses, and affordable vehicles. It's so complicated..