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)