Viaje Número 1 - Huaraz

So, since I last wrote I went on a trip this past weekend to Trujillo, a city on the coast north of Lima. Before I talk about my trip to Trujillo, however, I am going to backtrack a little bit and talk about my amazing trip to Huaraz that we took two weekends ago. I traveled to Huaraz with some of the Holy Cross girls (Megan and Jen), two girls who live in my house, and another exchange student from Germany.

Huaraz is a beautiful city surrounded by nature, and it has beautiful lakes, mountains, and glaciers to visit. Since we took the bus overnight on Thursday, we got there by Friday morning. On Friday we took a bus tour so that we could let our bodies adjust to the high altitude, and we saw the beautiful cristal-blue-green Lake Llanganuko as well as the towns of Caraz, Carhuaz, and Yungay. Caraz is famous for its fresh ice creams, Carhuaz is famous for its famous caramel-like sweet manjar blanco (both of which we tried), and Yungay is the site of a horrific earthquake that launched an avalanche in the 1970´s. The avalanche killed about 22,000 people, and it was eery to be at visiting the site on September 11th.

Lago Llanganuko

On Saturday we left for a two day trek into the mountains. When we started the trek we took a taxi to the top of a hill in a small village, where all the village-people speak the native Quechua and dress in traditional clothing. We met our guide and the two other guides who would be following us with the donkeys and our cooking/camping supplies. We left for the trek and went walking through the mountains for the day. We stopped for lunch along the way next to a stream and then continued climbing up the hills getting closer and closer to the Urus Mountain. When we reached the mountain we reached two lagoons with bright green water, which were so pretty!

En camino durante el trek con los burros y el guía

La laguna urus

We set up our tents and campsite next to the first lagoon and then went walking around the other. Our guide Leodardo ended up taking some of us up the mountain so that we could get a clearer view of both lagoons. After I stopped to rest on a rock halfway up the mountain, Leanardo disappeared climbing with a few of the other girls. They ended up climbing literally to the top of the mountain, and had the most amazing views of the opposite side of the mountain range. Despite the amazing experience that some of the girls had, we were left a little skeptical of our guide´s abilities because he pushed those girls to their physical limit and left the rest of us behind, not returning until after the sun had set! Despite the interesting events of the day and the fact that some of the girls got sick during the night of camping due to altitude sickness, we managed to survive the night to wake up to a new day of trekking.

Las chicas, listas a subir

On Sunday we started out backtracking our initial path and then we started a new one until we came across a beautiful waterfall hidden in the woods, called Cascada de Agua Blanca. It was such a beautiful piece of nature and we got to climb a tree close to the water to take pictures. After a strenuous climb back to the village where we started, we were finally done our trek and were proud of ourselves for doing it! When we got back to Huaraz, we had time to relax a little and have dinner before our 8 hour bus ride home overnight. We made it back just in time for me to stop back at home before my 8am class on Monday!

La Cascada

Anyways, overall it was a really fun trip. I got a little more in tune with my adventurous nature side, and I saw some absolutely breathtaking views! I will write more soon about Trujillo, the second weekend adventure.

Hasta luego!

Divirtiendo, Trabajando, Viajando - La Vida Diaria

Wow! Time has certainly flown by since I last wrote. The week after the marathon was pretty calm, just the usual classes and activities. I really am enjoying all of my classes. Ecology is fun, and we´ve started our practicum/lab sessions where we´ve been walking around the campus observing ecosystems and birds. Photography is a lot of work, but it´s really fun and I get to strengthen my old passion for photo. I really enjoy the class Peruvian Social Reality because it is so interesting to get an analysis of the sociology of Peru along with an overview of recent history and politics. For that class, we have a group project that we will be working on throughout the year.

For the group project, my group and I chose to study the topic of commercial centers in Lima. We are going to compare two malls in two different areas of the city. One is in a nice, wealthy part of town while the other is in the middle of a fairly poor section of the city in the northern part. We went that Sunday to the northern mall to start getting ideas for the project and to start noting differences. The two malls we had to choose between in this area were very interesting because they were very fancy and had a bunch of nice stores, but as soon as you looked next to the mall you could see the hills on the ourskirts of Lima that house some of Lima´s greatest poverty.

Besides schoolwork I've been having a lot of fun in Lima as well as traveling. The weekend following the marathon was fun, and we attended a Peruvian national soccer team game and later went out to celebrate our friend Carlos's birthday. Although all of our Peruvian friends gave us trouble for wanting to go to the national team's game and assured us that they would certainly lose, Peru won for the first time in over a year! What luck we bring! We were all decked out is our Peru shirts with our "te amo Peru" headbands. Meredith, Meg, and I were also very excited when we saw our picture in the newpaper from the marathon! We were sitting in the grass stretching after the race, and our picture ended up in that week's newpaper in a section about the marathon! Señora and Dante (my Peruvian parents) joked with us that we are now famous!

Las mejores hinchas en el partido del Peru!

El partido

The following week was pretty usual in terms of school, as every week is getting a little more busy with work. Although I wasn´t feeling all that well later on in the week, we had been planning a weekend trip and I still decided to go on it. We traveled to the beautiful city of Huaraz, taking an 8-hour overnight busride north of Lima through the Andes mountains. I will write more about the trip to Huaraz in the following days and I'll make sure to post some pictures of the beautiful nature too! I will also write more later about my volunteer experience, as I have continued to volunteer in both the children's hospital on Fridays and the orphanage for children with HIV on Thursdays.

The week afer Huaraz, last week, was pretty busy with schoolwork and other activities. We spent this past weekend in Lima, and it was very fun as usual. On Saturday I spent the day in Miraflores with my friends Guillermo, my friend from school who I help with English homework sometimes, and Ana Maria, the Finish girl living in my house. I had to take two rolls of film for my photography class and I got some interesting shots of street vendors, the parks along the ocean, and of course of my two models! On Saturday night, the girls and I met up with Guillermo and some of his friends from high school to celebrate one of his friend's birthday.

On Sunday morning, Meredith and I had to wake up very early to go to La Isla San Lorenzo, a small island not far from Callao - the district just north of Lima on the coast. My Peruvian friend Karen from Photography class knew that I am taking an Ecology course here and invited me to go on the trip with her. It was a field trip for her Ecology and Communication course, and we met up with the other students and her professor. The island was so cool and we took a boat for about a half hour to get to it and then we rode around it to observe all the nature on it. It reminded me of Las Islas Ballestas in Paracas - there were seals, penguins, little caves, and tons of birds.

At first we got excited when we saw a few seals swimming nearby, but when the boat turned a corner we approached a separate island that was completely covered with seals!! I couldn't believe my eyes - there were probably about ten thousand seals all sitting on the island! The odor was pretty strong as we approached the island we could hear all of them making noises. Then, the man driving the boat asked us who wanted to jump in the water! Meredith and I were a little hesitant at first but after some enthusiastic encouraging from Karen we put on the wet suits and jumped in! We were literally swimming in the middle of the ocean in a huge colony of seals! We couldn't get too close to the seals because they get scared if humans approach aggressively, but one of them appeared right next to me out of nowhere and it was so cool to be swimming among the seals.

La colonia de los lobos!!

Karen, Meredith, y yo con nuestros wetsuits, listas a nadar!

Millones de lobos en la isla!

After our amazing trip around the islands, Karen took Meredith and I to a little outdoor food festival for lunch. Every weekend they set up a bunch of tables under tents and chefs come to cook the traditional Peruvian dishes. It was so yummy and so cheap! We each bought one plate and shared them between all of us, and in total we tried ceviche, arroz con pollo, and lomo saltado - all of which were wonderful! I was so glad that Karen was nice enough to invite us to come with her for such a fun experience visiting the island. I have been unbelievably fortunate to have met such amazingly friendly and kind people in my time here so far.

This week has been another busy one with schoolwork as well. We are going to travel for a mini-trip this weekend to a city in the northern coast of Peru called Trujillo. It is the festival of the beginning of spring this weekend, so it should be fun to see the celebration. I will leave on Friday by bus through the night and return on Sunday through the night as well. This week was a little rough for me because I got some news from home that we had to put my dog to sleep which was quite sad for me to hear. It was pretty difficult to get the news abroad, but we had been expecting it for a while since she suffered from cancer.

Well, that is all for now since I need to finish up some homework for my classes tomorrow. I will post something soon about Huaraz along with an update about my volunteer work.

Nos vemos,

Michelle