Hi all!!

Lima is an odd city, mainly because of its weather. The sea is so cold here that not enough moist is picked up by the air so it is basically a dry desert most of the year with clear blue skies and extremely high temperatures (35C at least). However, given our luck with weather conditions so far, we of course chose the wrong season to visit Lima and are now in the period characterized by ¨Scottish Mist¨. This means that the air picks up a bit more moist but not enough to let it rain, which results in continuously grey skies with no sunshine at all. Chilly and very depressing. So we chose to minimize our time in Lima and only visit the beautiful colonial city center for a couple of hours to leave for Huaraz the next morning. We took a bus from the Cruz del Sur company, which specializes in long distance luxury bus tours. And it was really luxurious and comfortable with lots of legroom and almost fully reclining seats. Perfect!! And pretty cheap at a cost of just over EUR25 for the both of us for an 8 hours drive.

As we mentioned before, Huaraz is located at a height of 3000 meters, close to the Cordillera Blanca, which is a very high mountain range well know for its white snow peaks. In fact, in Huaraz you can see more than 20 peaks of over 5000 meters, all covered with snow, making the view from the city pretty scenic. The town is THE center for outdoor sports such as rock climbing, mountain climbing, mountain biking, rafting, you name it. The first trip we booked was a rock climbing adventure in a place called Hatun Machay. We slept in a beautiful lodge at about a two hours drive from Huaraz, really located in the middle of nowhere. Hatun Machay is a so called ¨rock forest¨, consisting of a relatively small patch of land covered with spiky rock pillars which are ideal for rock climbing. Furthermore there are a lot of rock caves, which in the past (500 to 1000 years BC) where used by indigenous tribes for religious rituals. These are as of today un-excavated by archeologists and our guide told us that he regularly encounters human bones, fletch points and other ancient handicrafts which he sells in Huaraz. It is pretty amazing to realize that such an unspoilt place still exists in the world. Around the rock forest live a number of sheep herding tribes. These people live in very basic circumstances and almost void of any contact with the outside world. They make their money selling sheep wool, skin and dried meat (see below).

The outdoor climbing techniques are the same as for indoor climbing, a sport that we have been doing for the last couple of years. However, it had been some time ago that we last did some climbing and the rocks were very sharp. So it hurt us a lot and we really had to get used to the circumstances. But it was definitely worth it. One of the walls we mastered was more than 30 meters high, the highest we ever climbed and we both had some scary moments up there on the rocks. Fortunately we were very well secured and had a very experienced guide (although the picture below suggests otherwise, why isn't he holding the rope...), so we really enjoyed the adventure.

And guess what we decided to do after the rock climbing trip? What would smart people do after they miserably failed to climb high altitude mountains and realized that they would probably have to shape up a bit and get used to climbing with crampons etc before climbing a mountain again? They would indeed just do that. Not us of course... stubbornly and against better judgment we happily signed up for the climb of a mountain called Villanaraju, located at about two hours from Huaraz and about 5700 meters high. Luckily there was a tiny learning curve and we tried to maximize our odds of reaching the top by opting for one of the easier climbs, by hiring porters for all our climbing gear and by spending an extra day at 4200 meters in order to acclimatize better. When we arrived at base camp on day one, we immediately set off for an ice climbing trip. That gave us a chance to get used to the climbing gear (crampons, plastic boots, ice axes etc) and above that was just a lot of fun (see below)!!

The next day, in the early morning we started our climb to the Moreno base camp at 5200 meters. That is when we realized that we made a very good decision opting for porters to carry our gear up. We actually felt that the agency had misguided us by saying that it was an easy 2 hour walk to the base camp. In fact it was one of the steepest climbs we ever did, partly over slippery rock and there was no way we would have ever made it without our hired help (a guy of 60 that walked 3 times faster than we did with a 30kg backpack vs our 3-4kg daypacks.... go figure!!). We arrived in the Moreno camp after an 2.5 hour walk at around 1200am so we had the whole day to relax until our departure for the top at 0100am.

Unfortunately it started snowing pretty hard in the afternoon, so we were not sure if we were going to start the climb at all (one of us had to tap the snow from our tent every half hour to prevent our tent from collapsing). However, just around 0100am the weather cleared up and we got ready to go. We had reloaded our battery pretty much, so the start of the climb was going pretty well. In fact we left a couple of hardcore Alaskan trekkers far behind us, they had to give up in the end. As we got higher the energy level started dropping, the air got thinner and thinner and our speed of climbing was dropping dramatically. There were some scary moments as well where we had to walk over very small ridges or jump over glacier crevasses. Just when we started thinking about giving up, dawn came and the light came out filling us with new energy.

At the very end, we were really doing one step, resting for a few seconds, another step, resting for a few seconds. At a certain point, our guide, Edwin, told us that we came to a dangerous point so he would go ahead to secure us. The guy actually started running at 5600 meters and ran 100 meters in about 14 seconds. Our jaws dropped to the snow...he told us later that he could climb the mountain running in about 2 hours up and down. It took us about 7 hours until 8.00am but finally there we were...AT THE TOP!!!

Villanaraju is known for it beautiful view over the Cordillera Blanca when its clear, providing for some pretty scenic view. Of course when we got to the top, the skies were covered with clouds and there was no view at all. However, just reaching the top was more than worth it and we both felt exhilarated.

As we started going down, the weather cleared and the sun came out, providing for some nice pictures but also warming up the snow quite considerably and making it mushy.

It became incredibly hard to walk in the snow and especially Thomas would sometimes drop to his crotch in the snow, needing other people to dig him out with their ice picks (our guide was laughing his head off!). Very tiring. Mischa at a certain point lost her balance on a small ridge and started sliding towards a 500 meters drop off. Yikes!! Although secured by both Edwin and Thomas, it still scared the hell out of us. Getting more and more tired it took us until 1200am to make it back to the Moreno camp and we almost immediately had to get ready to walk down to base camp at 4200 meters (why??). However, we both hardly could walk anymore, our legs totally burned up, but we still had to go down another 1000 meters for our trip back to the hotel.... we both almost cried.

In the end we got down (don´t ask us how...), ruining our knees and were both totally exhausted but satisfied to have topped another peak. This is it!!! Never ever will we climb a mountain again!!! (... wait until you speak to us again in 6 months....).

We had no plans for the next two days and could not have done anything anyway give the muscle aches we both had. On the last day before heading back to Lima we went out with a great Dutch couple, Jorn and Floor, that we met the first day in Huaraz and that we bumped into again the day we got back from Huaraz. Lots of fun!! We played a game where you have to build a big tower with bricks until it falls down and the loser has to drink a very strong local drink called Pisco Coca. This combined with the local no1 drink Pisco Sour, a couple of beers and dancing in Tambo made for an unforgettable evening...and morning...oh my god (Jorn en Floor: het was echt helemaal top, tot ziens in Ushaia...zijn die Piscootjes bij jullie ook zo hard aangekomen....

The next day we took the famous Cruz del Sur bus back to Lima where we will depart on an organized 1 month trip through Peru and Bolivia. We hope to be back soon with another update.

Until then Hasta La Pasta!!!