After Huaraz, we took another night bus to Trujillo, where
we stayed with another couch surfing host. He had a huge house, and Christina
and I got a little cabin-like room on the roof that overlooked the neighborhood.
It was beautiful, and I know I felt sort of royal.
On the first day we visited Chan Chan, the desert ruins that
were all made out of adobe bricks. For that reason, they haven’t held up
anything like Machu Picchu, but one of the areas had been restored and was very
impressive. The next day we visited Huaca de la luna, a temple that was built
by the moche people, a race of peoples older than the Incas. What impressed me
most about those ruins was the presence of the original paint and color that
had been painted hundreds of years ago.
Christmas eve day we went to a beautiful and remote beach.
The water was cold, so Christina and I opted for digging for sand crabs
(muymuy), and walking along the beach. That night we found out that our host
had no plan of celebrating Christmas, so we decided we might as well move on.
The next morning, we shared a piece of chocolate, bought our overpriced holiday
bus tickets, and headed back to Lima. Our
treat was that we were on the ritzy bus (Cruz del Sur), got decent bus food,
got to chose our own movies, and had wifi on the bus.
We planned to stay with a couch surfing host that we had already
stayed with, and he came and picked us up from the bus stop. Like normal, his
amazing family was cooking up a storm to make us some Peruvian cuisine that we
didn’t eat until 12:00 at night. The next day was Christina’s birthday, and we
met up with one of our friends from Tingo Maria and his sister. We all went to the quaint beach town of
Barranco, which I could spend a decent amount of time in if need be. After a few shared drinks of Pisco (the
national Peruvian alcohol) sours, we made our happy way to a beer tasting
restaurant, and had ourselves some Sierra Andino, pale, amber, and dark ale. Then
we made our way back to our host’s house, were his mother was cooking another
HUGE meal for Christina’s birthday. The specialty: Cuy (Guinea Pig). Yes I ate
it, it was actually pretty good.
The next day was our killer 24 bus ride from Lima to Cusco.
It was not as bad as I thought it would be, but the bus also played movies (not
good ones) nonstop, so that helped with distracting from the really long
journey. In Cusco we stayed with another couch surfing host for a few days, and
spend new years with them as well. We all went to a many of the free ruins, and
paid about 7 dollars to trot around on some horses through a rain, hail,
thunder, and lightning storm, que divertido.
Because we couldn’t get tickets to Huayna Pichhu, a little
mountain that overlooks Machu Picchu, for another couple of days, we decided to
head to Puno and Lake Titicaca. Puno was really cold, and because we didn’t figure
out the island visiting schedule until too late, we spend two days in Puno
trying to fill time without much to do. The main attraction in Lake Titicaca is
to visit some of the various islands sprinkled throughout the enormous lake. We
visited the Islands of Uros, which are the floating islands that are made from
reeds.
By now, the entire culture of the people of Uros is
dependent on tourism, and they receive boats and boats of people every single
day. We all crowd off, get an explanation of how the islands word, go into one
of the houses where we can try on their clothes if you want, and then they lead
you to their craft table where you are supposed to buy something. It was very interesting, and I am not sure how
I felt about being a boated-in tourist. Never the less, it was certainly a
unique experience to meet people living the way they have lived for a long
time.
The next day we boated 3 hours to spend a bit of time on the
beautiful island of Taquile that looked like it was in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The best part was when the rest of our tour group ate at the super expensive restaurant
(we brought food…you taught me well parents), we asked the kitchen if we could
help them with anything. We ending up clearing tables, scraping plates, and the
serving our tour group their lunches! It was the best, and then at the end we
got free food.
Our last day in Puno, we went to the reserve headquarters to
see if we would visit their lands, and do a bit of bird watching. The
government organization was SERNAMP, the same people we stayed with while in
Tingo Maria. Unfortunately, they happened to have a mandatory meeting, and
could not take us out to the reserve which was only accessible by car and then
by motorcycle. We were so bummed, but when we told the Puno SERNAMP that we were
two American girls that were studying Biology and Spanish in Costa Rica, had a
special interest in birds, and had already stayed at another park, I thought
they were going to cry with sadness they could not take us out to show off
their wonderful reserve.
Instead, they gave us lots of bird pamphlets, and requests
for us to come back another time. When we were halfway down the road, one of the
men came running after us, and he ended up giving us a copy of his book in the
birds of Lake Titicaca for free! We bought another one from a book store so we
could both have one, and then spent the day walking the shore of Lake Titicaca
doing some identifyin. Here is our list.
1.
Andean goose (seen in Huaraz)
2.
Yellow-billed pintail
3.
Puna Teal
4.
Speckled Teal
5.
Ruddy Duck
6.
Chilean Flamingo (seen in Huaraz)
7.
Little blue heron (seen Tortuguero, Costa Rica)
8.
Puna Ibis
9.
Plumbeaus rail
10.
Common moorhen
11.
Andean coot
12.
Black-necked stilt
13.
Lesser yellow legs (pretty sure)
14.
Andean gull
15.
Rock dove
16.
Eared dove
17.
Black winged group dove
18.
Sparkling violet-eared
19.
Andean Flicker
20.
Bar winged cinclodes
21.
Chiguanco
22.
Rufus collared sparrow
23.
Yellow winged blackbirds.
It was a big day!
But hey! We made it to the top of Cerro Chirripó! This second time
we bought tickets in advanced, I took my ecology final a day early, and bused
to the trailhead to check in at the ranger station in San Gerardo. We didn’t
want to pay to stay in a hostel and we had to get back home to study for
finales, so we left San Ramón Friday morning at 6:30 am, got our tickets,
rested for a few hours in a restaurant, and started hiking that night at 8:30
pm.
The best part was that my good friend and hiking partner Sam
turned 20 on our way up to the top of Chirripó. I brought a slice of cake to
the top, and some other hikers sang “feliz cumpleaños” when they found out it was
her birthday. Because we had a bus to catch, we headed back down the mountain
as fast as our knees would let us, and at one point Sam resorted to walking
backwards down the hill to give them a break. We made it just in time, took the
three different buses necessary to get back home, and ate dinner with our
families.
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