My First Trek In Peru

There is a good reason why I didn´t update my blog for so long. About a week ago, I wrote a long long post which the computer gods didn´t want me to publish. After spending hours touching up the entry, everything suddenly disappeared and couldn´t be recovered. I have been running from place to place ever since. I am actually, quite ridiculously, more than a month behind at this point. So I will try and summarize Santa Cruz as much as possible.

After having done the Lagoon 69 trek, it was time to move on to a more serious trek that lasted 4 days. This was our first experience out in the mountains and it sure was memorable. For starters, there was a lot of logistics to take care of. Since we would be walking in high altitudes for 4 days straight, we could only carry a certain amount of stuff with us, the rest would have to go on donkeys brought along specifically for that purpose. Since the poor donkeys can only carry so much, each person was allowed to bring along about half a large backpack, which meant that we had to empty out both our bags and repack them so that we ended up with one to go on the trek and another to be left behind. Here´s a picture of said poor donkey:

For an observant Jew, however, the logistics don`t end here. I am, of course, referring to food. Our first task was trying to haggle with Carlos, our cheeky travel agent, to get down the price because we would be bringing our own food. A pause here to tell you about Carlos, who is quite a character. We did pretty much everything in Huaraz through him (for the sole reason that we were too lazy to go looking for another agent) and were ready to strangle him by the end of our stay there. It turns out he overcharged us for some things and was especially annoying with the food for Santa Cruz. He kept telling us he couldn´t reduce the price because ¨You know, I buy potatoes for group, I buy kilo, you don´t eat, I can´t buy half potato¨accompanied by a lot of funny hand gestures... So we went on the trip thinking we could use the potatoes and whatever other vegetables we could take from them. So there we were, the first night of camping, trying to get our share of the food, when the guide told us that he was told there were 5 people cooking for themselves and therefore he had brought less food than normal. CAAAAARLOOOOOOSS!!!! Sigh... A month later, now that we have calmed down from the incident, we always remember him for clapping his hands every time he saw us and saying ¨Hola, chicas¨ (hello, girls) and making really funny, Jim Carreyesque mimics with his eyes and mouth.

Anyway, back to the trek. We started off our trip on a collectivo which was stuffed ridiculously. We are talking 25 people in a 12 person minibus people. Sorry, that´s 25 people and a kitten.

We kept joking the whole way that the lady was probably taking the kitten home to feed it so she can eat it herself one day (as you will read very soon, we were the most PC people during this trip). When people slowly started piling out at the end of our collectivo ride , we also noticed a little boy who must have been squeezed somewhere amongst cholas (typical Andean looking women, to be addressed in more detail in a later post).

We were pleasantly surprised to meet some really nice Israeli people on the trek, one of whom happened to be a Sochnut shaliach in Jerusalem and 2 of whom we coincidentally met up with again a few weeks later.

Let´s give them names, shall we? Besides the two of us, the gang consisted of Chagai (the shaliach, standing on the right), Roni (his friend, standing at the left), Maya and Omrit. All but Roni were religious, hence the 5 people cooking for themselves.

Apart from us, there were only 2 other people on the trek, one American and one French guy. Being very mature, the boys had given them nicknames by the end of our first night-Shmulik and Benji. Obviously only used amongst ourselves to gossip about them. Yeah, so Israeli-it´s rude, but it´s also quite hilarious...

The first sight from the trek is that of another lagoon. Many of those around as I mentioned in my earlier post. Here´s a close up:

And a further picture:

Well, I´m being kicked out of yet another Internet cafe, so Santa Cruz will after all be spread over a few posts. Hasta luego! (until later)

The Kosher Eyes

As much as I would love to blog about the next item on our itinerary after lagoon 69-after all I`m still about 2 weeks behind-I quite enjoyed writing random observations in my last entry, so I think I`ll do a bit more of that and hopefully give you more of an idea of how this vacation is going.

The above creature, as I assume you will already have figured out, is a pig. I can almost hear you asking ¨what is it doing on this blog which only features kosher food??¨ Well, to that I would reply: ¨He is alive¨. :P The more important and interesting question here is why I took his picture. Well, it turns out I`m a really holy person and I wanted to share that with you.

Peru is a large country. As such, one spends a lot of time on the roads. A journey of 5 hours is considered short, which to the Turk in me is not such a wonder, but my Israeli identity and my Israeli travelling partner find this quite remarkable. Actually long journeys are a whole other issue that deserve another post, so I will try to get back to the pigs for now. When one travels around little villages near Huaraz and when one sits near the window of the bus, one apparently notices many of these animals along the way. The same cannot be said of the person sitting in the aisle. To be more specific-we spent a good 3-4 days on the roads, repeating the same scenario: Rikki would see a pig, get all excited and try to get me to see it as well. I would keep missing it. That is when we decided that I must have kosher eyes, the kind that blocks out unkosher animals... Sadly though, my kosher eyes proved to be only temporary and eventually I saw one and had to document it to mark the event...

Once my eyes were opened, there was no stopping them. I even saw a whole roasted pig in a market once, alongside chickens dangling upside down on ropes and huge, stinky blocks of cheese. Unfortunately I have no pictures of these lovely sights, for reasons I will disclose in a few more sentences. You see, in our endless searches for fruit and vegetables, someone at some point was kind enough to mention to us that every city in Peru has a market where one can easily find fresh produce! We promptly made our way to the market in Huaraz when we obtained this information. While we did indeed find what we had been looking for, that day also happened to be Shabbat so we could only look at the produce and sigh. It pains me to record here that just as we left the market, Rikki pointed out to me an upside down turtle that had been carved on the inside. :( We had heard of locals eating guinea pigs, but poor, cute little turtles??? I was not happy. After that day, somehow or other it always happened that we would arrive at the market just as it was about to close down, with only some miserable looking potatoes and corn left for sale, so no squeamish market photos for you. I can just hear your disappointed sighs. :P

We spent a few days in Huaraz astonished with the popularity of the Orthodox Union before we finally asked a cab driver what the sign stood for and it turns out it´s a sports team of some sort... Oh well, no kosher guinea pigs for us then. :P The truth is that we really are astonished by the stretch of the OU into this part of the world. We`ve found anything from Pringles, Philadelphia cream cheese to Schulz brand pretzels with the ubiquitous OU sign. Oh and that reminds me-whoever told me that I would lose weight on this trip clearly did not share my weakness for chocolates... Or try the new almond flavored Snickers... Yum.

We have a saying in Turkish ¨It´s a festival every day for the crazy¨. Not sure what the folks in Huaraz would say to that, considering that EVERY SINGLE DAY that we were there, there was some other celebration in the city. In the beginning I got all excited and started snapping photos, by the end of our stay it was all I could do not to roll my eyes when I saw another parade. The funny thing is, I´m not even sure what they were celebrating. Something to do with education one day. Something to do with a historic figure. I lost track after a while. Don´t make the mistake, though, of thinking that Peruvians are these exciting, jovial people (this is a point I´m dying to dwell on, but it will have to wait a few more posts).

This picture is here to help me express my frustration over why there aren´t more ¨people pictures¨ on my camera. It`s extremely difficult to snap a picture of a person who is looking directly into your eyes, unless you have managed to establish some sort of connection with them and you can get their approval. With our whirlwind itinerary, which, again, will be the subject of another post, it´s been almost impossible to establish such connections. Children are relatively easier to deal with in that sense. This cutie was just wandering around the streets of Huaraz one evening when we were agency shopping. Which brings me to....

Carlos, ¨our man in Huaraz¨! Note the feeling of movement in this picture, an effect produced by taking the photograph in the diagonal, a trick I learned at the photography workshop I attended right before I left Israel, courtesy of Mosaic (thanks guys!!). You will hear more about Carlos, hopefully, in my next entry. Until then...

Light Unto The Nations

Yeah, not so much. We´ve been having a real dilemma with our identity here. Nothing to do with antisemitism. More like, are we proud to be one of the thousands of our countrymen occupying all of South America and getting reactions of ¨Oooh, Israelis, shalom shalom, sababa. jerusalen? haifa? petach tikvah?¨ Did we really travel so far from our little country to be covered on all sides by Israelis, to the point that we long to hear some English being spoken? On the one hand, there´s great value to the familiarity, the convenience of the information exchange. On the other hand, there´s the recurring feeling of walking along the same path that millions before us have walked on and not really feeling like we´re having an authentic vacation. I would say this is the biggest challenge of my vacation in Peru so far. Yes, all the planning and organizing and logistics is tedious, but it´s so much more exhausting trying to enjoy the vacation without feeling so touristy. With the time restrictions and destinations planned on our itinerary, it seems almost impossible to escape the crowds, so I guess we´ll have to get used to not being very original...

The above picture (yes, those are lamas and not horses) is near the ¨Bayit Hayehudi¨ where we had our first Shabbat. We met a whole bunch of really nice Israelis there, religious and secular. We had a lovely experience, not to mention really nice food. A tiny teeny piece of home away from home.

While we`re on the subject of food-I forgot to mention in my last post the first ¨food crisis¨ we had on our trip to Chavin. We had bought 6 eggs the night before and boiled 3 of them for the trip. Rikki put them in the fridge and I took them out in the morning. Well, what happens when the right hand doesn`t speak to the left? Yesss, we sat down for our lunch and lo and behold I had brought along the raw eggs instead of the cooked! Not wanting to starve, we ordered a salad at the restaurant everyone else was eating at, I said, very explicitly ¨only cucumbers and tomatoes, nothing else please¨and we received on our plates 3 pieces of tomatoes and cucumbers each, together with boiled potatoes, corn and some other stuff I can`t remember...

Kosher food, as expected, has been a constant challenge. Rikki, bless her, keeps surprising me every day by producing another piece of food from Israel, hidden deep in the recesses of her backpack, which seems to be bottomless. So far she took out: couscous, ptitim, chocolates, oatmeal bars, candy, cabanos and cans of tuna... We`re constantly scavenging for vegetables, which don`t seem to be a staple around here. I must mention though that the lemons, while tiny, are very good!!

After Shabbat, we went on a 1 day hike to a place called Lagoon 69. Apparently there are many lagoons in this area of Peru and they have numbered them and this one happens to be the 69th one. We were told this was a relatively easy hike so we decided to do it on our own and headed out at a relatively early hour on the Sunday. Not entirely surprisingly, we met an Israeli couple along the way to the hike and ended up doing the whole thing together.

The scenery was gorgeous, with pretty waterfalls along the way:

and funny looking plants:

It wasn`t long before we started walking towards a snow capped mountain:

This is where things started getting tricky. Suddenly our lungs decided they were not going to make this easy for us... For about the 3 hours that we climbed towards the lagoon, the amount of oxygen in our bodies seemed to be constantly depleted. We kept stopping every 5 minutes to rest and soon the scenery just became a big blur for me at some point. Our friends, who seemed to have no such problems, made it to the top relatively quickly and assured us that this was due to our being in high areas for the first time. A few breathless and highly uncomfortable treks later, I am forced to conclude that while the amount of time spent in a high area is important, some people just seem to deal with heights better and I`m not one of them. But more on that in a later post.

After the gruelling climb up, I couldn´t believe my eyes when I saw the first drop of water in the distance. Look carefully and you will see it:

Here`s a closer picture of the lagoon-note our friends who had been sitting there and waiting for us for the better part of an hour :)

We spent a fair amount of time throwing rocks in the water and had a lot of fun, the 10 year olds that we are... Then I came up with the idea of throwing sand with little rocks in it. And yes, the wind did happen to blow in the wrong direction and the sand did happen to get into our friends`eyes at some point. But isn´t this beautiful sight worth it?

Yeah, travelling miles away to the other end of the world did not take the idiot out of me. :)

Next post-our 4 day Santa Cruz trek-and that will bring us to the end of our 1st week in Peru...

You Take My Breath Away....

OK fine, it´s a lame title, but seriously, Huaraz literally takes your breath away at a neat 3,090 meters above sea level. You´ve occasionally witnessed the little ear popping phenomenon on a flight and you´ve climbed a few little mountains. You´ve read about altitude sickness in travel books and scoffed at all the apparent exaggeration. Then, just to be on the safe side, you´ve dished out the money for the little pills, all the while thinking you probably won´t need them since you´re pretty invincible. It´s time to come down to earth when you suddenly land somewhere so high and even going up 15 steps to your hostel room leaves you panting.

It took us about 2 days to overcome the nausea, headache and zombie feeling after arriving at Huaraz. This is a little city in the north of Peru which sits at the bottom of a gorgeous part of the Andes. The snow capped mountain range on one side of the valley is called the Cordillera Blanca and the range on the other side Cordillera Negra, ie the black mountain range, named thus due to the lack of snow on the mountain peaks. Huaraz itself isn´t particularly charming, but the multitude of treks and trips around it more than make up for this.

Deciding to play it safe on the first day, we pick a ¨cultural¨ trip, namely a visit to the archeological ruins of Chavin. It starts off with a visit to one of the many beautiful lagoons in this mountainous area, called Querococha. It`s literally right by the highway, as can be seen in the picture. Tourists beware-authentic Peruvian women clad in traditional clothes are ready to have their pictures taken with you for a fee, the little lamb in their arms making this opportunity all the more irresistible!

Seriously, does anybody ever buy this ridiculously obvious ploy?? And what a boring job that must be-stand on the side of the road and pounce on unsuspecting tourists the minute they step out of the bus. This is only the first of many other depressing jobs we will encounter during our trip. One cute moment of the visit to the lagoon was the following attempt to join our group right before we left:

I promise, no one staged that one!

The ruins at Chavin are apparently remnants of a temple from Pre Inka times. I found it difficult to understand the guide and she had appalling English so I didn´t retain too much information from the trip. Apparenly it was a very important place for its time and dignitaries from all over came annually to offer offerings and participate at other religious ceremonies. One interesting mystery proved to be not too mysterious after all-there were ridiculously high stairs leading to some underground tunnels and sleeping quarters, but the doors leading to them were so short that even I had to kneel to get in. I was beginning to imagine some very weirdly proportioned ancient people when the guide pointed out that the doors were made only recently, for visitors to the site.

I was a lot more interested in the little village by the ruins-the nearest we`ve come to seeing authentic Peru so far:

Seeing as it was right before Shabbat and we were still a little dizzy, we decided to leave all hiking related activities to the following week. After a brief few hours of resistance I gave in to ¨peer¨ pressure and signed up for a wall climbing trip on Friday. Here is a picture of me looking all cool:

It does not reflect my feelings for the whole experience!! It was a breeze going down the wall, but I had a really rough time climbing it back up. Granted it was not particularly high and the guide was standing at the bottom holding the security rope, but that didn´t mean that I suddenly grew an extra few inches, which is all I needed. You see, there ARE places among the rocks where you are supposed to place your hands and feet, but what about short people who cannot reach these little nooks without completely overexerting themselves??? My arms were killing me by the time I made it halfway up and at some point it even felt like I couldn´t finish the climb cause I just couldn´t reach the next nook and kept falling back to the previous one when I tried. Way to go on a vacation to take a break from hard work!

Thinking I had no other choice (since we have to go back to Huaraz from the top of the wall where we came from, right? right???) I somehow made it to the top, when the guide at the bottom of the wall declared ¨OK, I´m pulling you down¨! What???? Turns out we were supposed to climb up and down the wall until we get bored and get back to Huaraz from the BOTTOM of the wall. So, really, there was no need to finish the climb... The day wasn´t completely wihout its merits though. I managed to have a whole conversation in Spanish with our guide Luis while Rikki (the tall and experienced, grrr) had her turn. He told me about his jealous Swiss girlfriend who left him to go back home and about how difficult it is for a guide to find love. He waxed poetic about the power of the heart and complained bitterly about tourists not keeping up on their promise to write to him. Oh I was happy to listen to him, anything to pass the time so my arms could rest... Needless to say, my 2nd attempt to climb was much less enthusiastic. :)

One last picture before I end this post-not sure which trip this is from, but it`s cool-the image formed by the mountains is like the map of Peru, or so the Peruvians like to believe...