Chavin, Combis, Yungay and the Alpamayo trek

I have tried to sit down and write about Chavin several times now, but I always seem to get lost looking at other things on the web! I think at this point I need to pass it and just write about more recent things, Chavin is starting to hold up the rest of the blog!

We had a fine day out at Chavin! its a complex of ruins on the east side of the Cordillera Blanca (the other side from Huaraz). The ruins (according to my book) were built roughly around 800BC and represent the oldest know civilisation in South America! It is famous for its labyrinths of dark underground passages, underground river channels, fine carvings and spooky heads as you can see in the picture. If you want to know more read it on the web! elsewhere than here!! I like http://www.stanford.edu/~johnrick/chavin_wrap/chavin/index.html

Back to Huaraz for a couple of days and there was more rain so we made the hard decision not to climb another mountain, too much snow we thought. Instead we decided to try another trek, so without further ado we brought supplies and boarded a `combi´.

A combi is usually a Toyata Hiace not to different from a painter´s or plumber´s van that we see in Dublin however they are fitted out with seats. A good Peruvian driver and conductor will squeeze up to 24 people inside one of these. Its the conductors job to open and close the door, collect the fares, tell the driver when the last person has been squeezed in and its safe to move off again and most important to call out the onward destinations of the bus. This is done rapidly and repeatedly in an incomprehensible manner. The drivers job is to overtake the next combi in front so that they can get the next passengers further down the road. I find its best not to sit too near the front of these buses for fear you might see the large amount of terror inducing near misses that happen on the bad roads on a daily basis.

After a squashed journey in our combi we jump out at old Yungay to see the memorial gardens from the 1970 earthquake. The 1970 earthquake measured 7.9 to 8.0 on the Richter scale and devastated the region around Huaraz as well as other areas. One of the worst hit towns was Yungay where a massive avalanche from Huascaran Norte (a mountain above the town) picked up speed, rocks and mud all the way to Yungay. Travelling at an estimated 100 miles per hour, 80 million cubic meters of mud hit the town burying everything on theat dreadful Sunday afternoon, killing 17,000 of the towns 17,400 residents. Remnants of a combi bus can be seen half embedded in the ground and the main squares palm trees survived as shown in the photo, behind the destroyed cathedral. They rebuilt new Yungay in a less exposed location, a kilometer or so down the valley.

From Yungay, we caught another combi to Caraz, from here we took a collectivo (communal taxi) to a town called Cashapampa and its here that our hike started.

We loaded up our rucksacks and started walking! One of the selling points of this trek for us was that there was hot springs (not the type that burn your back while your lying in bed!) but the warm geothermal water type at both the start and the finish of the walk. Much to our disappointment, it turned out that the hot springs near Cashapampa had run out of water a couple of years back for some unknown reason. It took us several hours to walk to our campsite that evening. For part of the way a local girl on her way home from school guided us through the numerous trails and fertile farms. She pointed us in the right direction and disappeared down one of the many lush and leafy side paths. We arrived in Hualcayan and pitched the tent just in time for noodles and so our hiking routine began.

The campsite was located just outside Hualcayan, a town of approx 250 people, beside the football field and below some old pre-Inca ruins that were to our eyes little more than piles of old stones at this stage. We cooked our dinner under the careful attention of the local children who were intrigued with all the weird and wonderful equipment we had, not to mention the prospect of sweets. Their older brothers played football on the adjacent field while we were treated to a beautiful sunset. A little seven year old girl walked by silhouetted against the evening sky dragging an enormous submissive bull behind her, where is the camera when you need it.

The next day we got up early to try and avoid some of the hot sun. We spent the whole day hiking up a steep hill to Laguna Cullicocha from 3100m to 4600m. There was another fine sunset but we were wrecked from the days walk and observed it from inside the tent! Morning brought another beautiful clear day and we set off over two high passes and a long steep descent into the Osoruri valley. From here we hiked up past the Ruinas Pampas (some more old stones) and pitched our tent when we really couldn´t walk anymore. The hike, although shorter than our previous hike in the Cordillera Huayhuash, is certainly tougher. By the end of the third day we were both knackered. Our conversations were generally about food; what food we had, what food was left and what food we´d like to have! All this and we still have four days left!

The next day we enjoyed a lazy day, walking only an hour or two up the valley before camping under the North West face of Alpamayo. They call it the most beautiful mountain in the world. I´m not sure if I agree, however it keeps the tourists coming. We spent the afternoon talking about food with a German couple who, complete with their chef, five donkeys and two horses, had good stories of pancakes and eggs for breakfast. This we told them didn´t really match up to our porridge!

Morning brought two more high passes, one even had quite a bit of snow on it and lead us to a place called Huillca. We passed a group of botanists from Poland on a three week trip studying plants in the high Andes. We nicknamed these guys the bottomists as they spend nearly all the time with their bottoms in the air taking photos and scribbling notes of some type of moss or other! Huillca is situated in some fine pampa which we nicknamed the Serengeti Plains due to the amount of grazing animals. There are huge herds of llama, alpaca, sheep and even a few horses. The arrival of team Germany´s donkeys upset the natural order of things and caused havoc! Soon there were massive stampedes and I feared for the safety of our tent!

Early the next morning, as we took down our tent in the heavy frost, a poncho clad man appeared out of nowhere. He wondered if we had any spare socks, I looked down at his feet, he was wearing car tyre sandals with bulbous toes sticking out the end which were obviously freezing on this cold morning. Sue had a spare pair to give and he didn´t seem too worried about the health warning normally attached to Sue´s old socks! Another high pass and a long descent down to Jancapampa. No sooner than we had finished pitching our tent here, two small boys appeared running across the swampy pampa. They were clutching bottles of beer and coke and they knew we were craving both, their prices reflected our desire but we were delighted. They waited for us to finish our drinks so they can get their bottles back and I tried to teach them how to juggle.
That evening three teenagers on foot caught a horse with a lasso on the wide pampa. It took them about half an hour but it was a masterful display and great entertainment for us.

It was a long walk down to Pomabamba, our final destination, through a very traditional valley of old Quechua houses and farms. We joined up with an aqueduct which lead us into Pomabamba. We spent the afternoon here eating fried chicken, soaking in the town´s hot springs and playing table football on a street side stall much to the entertainment of the locals. Sue came out the overall champion which makes up for her desparate recent performances at cards and dice!

A night bus and a very bumpy road brought us back over the mountains to Huaraz.