Perú I – The North

Still daydreaming about Galápagos, we got ourselves into an 18hr journey that took us to the peaceful, fishermen town of Huanchaco, in the north of Perú. The ride there was very interesting, with arid Andean hills on the left and pure desert and dunes extending to the very Pacific Ocean on the right. It was difficult to imagine older civilisations surviving in such dry conditions!

Whilst the main attractions close to Huanchaco are the pre-Incan ruins of Chan-Chan, Huasca del Sol and Huasca de la Luna, we found the town a relax gem with plenty of photography opportunities.

Amazing sunsets in Huanchaco

Being in low season really helped to create this feel, but so did the yummiest dessert we’ve had on this trip so far, the homemade cremoladas from our host Carlos. Half a sorbet, half a smoothie and with plenty of chunks of whatever fruit (and chocolate) you can imagine, it has definitely earned a spot in the top 3 of the dessert category. Check trip advisor, we’re not the only ones raving about it!

Huanchaco is also quite famous for its gentle surf, although locals sport a different type of board here, the Caballito de Totora (Totora’s little horse).

This watercraft is a canoe made of reed and it’s been used to fish for 3000 years! It’s just admirable that fishermen still use them, considering how much easier fishing would be with a modern boat. If you don’t fear the freezing peruvian current, the fishermen will take you out for a few soles.

The favourite catch there is the crab, and the dish of choice, the Cangrejo Reventado (blown up crab). They crash the crabs open so they release their yummy juices and scramble them with eggs and the superhealthy seaweed, hand-picked by locals at the shore. A real treat!

A local hand-picking seaweed

nyom nyom nyom

We loved Peruvian food (if you hadn’t realised already) and it met the expectations for its reputation, so we decided to stop in the local market of Trujillo, a bigger sized town nearby, to try the local almuerzos. Arroz con mariscos (rice with seafood) is probably the closest dish to paella we’ve ever tried. They served it to us after an unasked, unexpected but very welcome spicy ceviche…and we couldn’t finish it! It was so nice that we took the leftovers in a doggy bag so we could keep eating at the ruins, haha.

The ruins of Chan-Chan, declared world heritage site by UNESCO in 1986, were different to everything we had seen so far. While they’re not as impressive as the colossal Mayan temples, the fact that they were built with adobe (it’s the largest city made of adobe, 30,000 people lived there) and are surrounded by desert, gives them a very untouched feel.

The famous adobe walls in Chan-Chan

 

Sea motifs decorate most of the walls

 

Chan-Chan was a city built by the Chimus, a pre-incan civilisation that inhabited the north of Perú between 1100 and 1470aD, when they were conquered by the Incas. Every time a new king rose, the previous premises were abandoned and a different palace was built. Up to 40% of the space was destinated to storing tax collections in the form of ceramics, salt, textile and fish. Imagine the stink under a 35°C sun!

The tomb of the king.. his 2 closest wives were buried with him. The remaining 88 (yes, wives) were buried in smaller tombs around it.

 

However, corridors, walls and holes were designed to bring the sea breezes into these sections of the palace and keep stuff cool.

Our guide was quite lazy and when he realised we were speaking both in English and Spanish I was asked to work as a translator during the tour… I managed to get the tour for free in exchange, so it worked out quite well!

Hipster chimus…designing with pixels before it was cool.

Following the tradition, we became friends with another dog, this time a Peruvian dog! This breed is quite special, they look wrinkly and old because they’re almost hairless and their body temperature is 40°C..apparently they were used as hot water bags and to help cure diseases.

This is a real hot dog

In the afternoon we moved to Huasca de la Luna and Huasca del Sol. These ruins belong to the Moche culture, who inhabited the area between 200 and 700 aD, and were used for ceremonies (including human sacrifices after a ball game – quite similar to the Mayans), and administrative purposes respectively.

The moche god Aiapaec – adored and feared, he was known as the beheader

Huasca del Sol remains mostly unexplored due to the lack of funds but you can easily tell that there’s a huge temple waiting to be discovered under this hill.

Huasca de la Luna was really cool to walk through. In this case, when a new king rose, instead of moving to a whole new palace, they filled the old one with adobe and built another one ontop. This practice kept going for 5 generations of kings, so it was really cool to see the colourful, well preserved walls from previous dynasties uncovered after so many years.

The different levels have been excavated and emptied and are visible now

In contrast to Chan-Chan, the building rose for 5 levels instead of being flat, so it was great to witness such different styles separated by just a few kilometers.

The wall of myths in Huasca de la Luna

Outer walls of Huasca de la Luna

By the way, the mode of transport of choice was the colectivo. Its drivers and “ayudantes” (assistants) are really stressed in the north of Perú as they have to complete their laps in a certain time. To make sure they achieve it, the assistant has to sprint to different checkpoints scattered in the route to get a stamp on the time card within the time limit. Missing the time or the checkpoint means losing the earnings of the entire lap. Riding on them was quite an adventure in itself!

After this dose of culture and heat we headed to Huaraz on an overnight bus. We loved a bus company called “Linea” because they played the gags from “Just for laughs” on their TV’s, so much fun! Huaraz is a hiking destination nestled in Cordillera Blanca and our first test at altitude.

Trout farm in Huaraz

The town itself is quite boring – except for a trout farm by the river – unless you’re into clubbing, so we got ourselves into the first hike to Laguna 69, a stunning, turquoise hidden lagoon at 4,450m.

Laguna de Llanganuco at the beginning of the hike

Huascarán mountain, over 6,700 metres – south side

Huascarán – north side

To all those dirty minds, the name comes from the lack of imagination in Perú, they just numbered the different lagoons instead of giving them names.

The hike to the laguna took us a good 4hrs and lots of coca leaf chewing (more on the coca leaves soon! It deserves a post by itself!).

We made it!

After this exhausting hike, we went for another day trip to Chavín de Huantar, with a stopover at the picturesque Lake Querococha.

Chavín de Huantar is an archeological site with temples built around 1200BC and used until 400-500 BC from the pre-incan Chavín culture, once a pilgrimage destination and now quite popular among experience seekers.

Chavín de Huantar ruins

A hallucinogenic drink is prepared with the cactus called San Pedro, offerings are made to the Pachamama and several day courses meant to find and connect your inner chacras are held there. While we respect all these practices, we didn’t have the time and money to undertake them but, we took the tour and learnt a lot about their architecture, culture and customs.

The state of conservation is far from ideal (they don’t receive any help from the government while it pockets all the proceedings), but walking through the maze-like corridors where they performed the sacrifices was really cool.

The most important piece in the ruins is the Lanzón Gallery, located at the very center of the corridors, contained a sculpture of the Lanzón, which is assumed to be a supreme deity of Chavín de Huantar. The figure is anthropomorphic, with a feline head and human body and this is where they poured the blood from the sacrificed.

El lanzón, still hidden in the middle of the maze of corridors

It’s quite interesting to see that Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Chavins, etc, they always designed their temples to be aligned with the moon cycles and sun solstices and equinocces. While they prayed to different gods, the reference to the mother earth (Pachamama) is common and still respected by all, despite the efforts from the Spanish to establish catholicism by force and fear.

The only cabeza clava still standing in its original place – they represented mythical creatures from the Chavín culture

Local assembly in Huantar town

An example to this is the first sip of any beverage (especially alcoholic) being tipped to the ground, a flower or a tree, giving back to earth a little that we took from it. Might look stupid to throw your whisky away…but we find it a nice tradition!

After some exciting days around Huaraz we took the longest bus ride yet, 9 hours to Lima, where we spent 8hrs visiting the coast (Miraflores suburb), and then 21hrs more to Cusco, our next destination!

Miraflores cliffs – Lima

Parque del amor in Miraflores

Until then, mucho amor from Sal & Xavi.

PS: we booked our flights to Barcelona, arriving on the 24th of March, wohooo!!!

Ecuador I – The Mainland

We loved Colombia but man, how nice was it to get back to a country with shorter bus rides! So after a painless border crossing and just about a couple of hours south, Mike, Ana, Sal & I reached our first destination in Ecuador: Otavalo.

Welcome to Ecuador!

Otavalo is a charming, ideal-size town, big enough to resupply toiletries and small enough to walk across it in less than half an hour. Otavalo is also home to the indigenous group of the kichwas, famous for their commercial and textile abilities.

The main highlight in town is its artisanal market in Plaza de los Ponchos, the biggest of its kind in South America. Vendors from the entire region gather in a huge plaza to sell all sorts of weavings, wooden carvings, jewellery,… it’s a paradise for hippies! We actually loved the hammocks (bargain for $15), but we had to leave them behind…as we’ve had to do with many souvenirs from other countries…to keep the backpack weight under control.

Market stalls triple on Wednesdays and Saturdays

However, I couldn’t say no to an Andean beanie ($3) that has been keeping me warm at altitude since! What I needed the most though, a pair of casual shoes to change into after wearing stinky hiking boots all day, proved impossible to find. A normal size like 12/EUR 46 has no place in Central and most of South America (maybe size 10/43 if lucky)… and get ready to be laughed at if you ask for it. Do you need the shoes for a clown costume, sir?

Colourful “aguayos” – the all purpose piece of cloth in Latin America

To finish off with the markets, we had most of our meals in the food markets. Ecuadorian’s national dish, laquingacho, is a combination of fried mash potato balls, mote (corn), avocado, chorizo or beef and a fried egg on top. Simple yet delicious!

Local ladies preparing affordable and delicious almuerzos

Laquingacho

I also made some friends improvising a basketball game with a paperball and my t-shirt neck as a hoop… hours of fun!

The day after we put on our cold-night-aired hiking boots and headed to the Cuicocha crater lake for a beautiful 4 hour hike around it. The beanie came handy as we started to explore the Cordillera de los Andes!

Colectivos take you to the start of the walk and we were told that there would be many ready to pick us up afterwards. After the 4 hour walk and starving, there wasn’t a single soul at the parking lot…until a Canadian journalist, his Ecuadorian guide and driver came out of nowhere and offered us a ride to the bus stop. We’ll be thankful for eternity, what a nice group of guys and what an awesome job he had!

Don’t miss this hike in Otavalo!

Quito, the capital, was our next stop. The free walking tour is a must, as well as paying a couple of bucks to get to the top of the Basílica. It has amazing views of the busy city and thrilling ladders over gargoyles in the shape of all the fauna from Galápagos. Interestingly enough, there are several unfinished decorations on the facade. The reason for them is pure superstition, as there was a volcano eruption when they were about to finish this masterpiece, so they never dared to complete it.

Quito’s basílica

Red and blue footed boobies featured among the basílica’s gargoyles

Excellent views from the top of the steeple

The facade is compared to Notre Dame’s

On our way to cross the roof

Another church, San Francisco, makes it to the list of highlights in town… it’s a real shame that Spaniards had to build them directly above the indigenous cult buildings…

Iglesia de San Francisco

For an evening treat, we headed to La Ronda, the former red light district is now converted into a beautiful pedestrian street with little bars offering local specialties and live music.

A few kilometers north from Quito you can reach “La Mitad del Mundo” (The Middle of the World), a cool monument surrounded by tourist shops that is suppossed to be in latitude 0° 0′ 0”. Apparently they screwed up with the coordinates and the real middle of the world is a few kilometers in another direction…but hey, why spoil a story with the facts!

Officially crossing to the Southern Hemisphere

The 4 of us couldn’t believe our eyes when, waiting for our turn to take the pictures, a man started carving jamón ibérico right in front of us. The guy was launching a range of spanish cured meats in Ecuador…so Ana and I quickly became interested in the story…and the ham. Big
mistake from my side: don’t offer to take pictures when there’s jamón in between. I missed most of the slices to my fellow travellers.

Best snack of the trip!

Another relatively short bus (4hrs this time) took us to Latacunga, our starting point for the Quilotoa loop. This loop takes 3 days of hiking to complete and the beauty of it is that you spend every night in a different remote andean town.

The stunning Quilotoa crater lake

We could have stayed there for ages

The scenery was great too, from local markets, to more crater lakes, river crossings, valleys, lookouts,…you basically ascend and descend a different valley every day.

A church, a couple of adobe houses and a soccer field, your traditional Andean town

The local market in Zumbahua – hat vendor

We were also adopted by a dog on our last day, we kept each other’s company, runs and laughs for 3 hours or so, until we reached the next town, territory of some nasty dogs that scared our friend away.

Sigchos, the town at the end of the walk had some local delicacies being barbequed in the main plaza. We couldn’t say no for $0.20!

nyom nyom

Back to Latacunga and after a recovery night, we took another bus to Baños, a touristy town for gringos and locals alike, surrounded by active volcanoes and famous for its sugar cane candy, waterfalls and  hot springs = baños, rich in all sorts of minerals.

The sugar cane candy is hooked around this wooden stick several times to stretch it and cool it down

The hotsprings are located right next to a waterfall, so you can jump between 40C° to 15C°…and quickly back to 40 :)

After this deserved treatment, we rented mountain bikes for the next day, so we could cover the 50 odd kilometers of La Ruta de las Cascadas (The Waterfall Route). The mountain bikes aren’t necessary, any plain city bike would do the job as most of the way is downhill on a paved bike lane…however, I’m sure they rent more bikes this way. The disappointment in terms of the biking challenge was offset by the fury of some of the waterfalls and the great spots to swim. After that, no one in their sane mind would pedal 50kms uphill, so we paid a couple of bucks for a ride back home.

El Pailón del Diablo

Cascada del Rocio in Macay

While soccer is supposed to be the national sport, the only game we saw people play in almost every town was volleyball! Around 6pm, nets are set and teams of 3 challenge each other. Competitiveness is high, although it’s more about laughing at the other team’s mistakes.

We were lucky to be in Ecuador in October, as they celebrate lots of local fiestas. Apart from fireworks and a minimum of 2 processions per day, we witnessed some local games held at the market while we were having lunch. The 2 games that got the crowd roaring were the watermelon and cucumber races. Both disciplines were quite sexist, the first involved the local women pushing a watermelon for a lap around the market with a broom; and the latter was a relay of running holding a cucumber between the thighs.

The Cucumber Race

In the meantime, pork crackling and chicha were being served up to the locals.

The hotsprings and the waterfalls are the main inexpensive attractions but, if you’re into extreme sports, Baños is a great spot for rafting, paragliding, bungee, etc. We didn’t sign up for any of them because we were keeping the budget under control after taking the leap and deciding to visit the Galápagos, which we will cover on the next post, don’t miss it!

This is the most extreme activity we did in Banos

Love, Sal & Xavi