The Adventures of Andrew Maurer

The bus was a big touristy looking double decker bus. We were thrilled to see such varied landscapes – countrysides, deserts, the impoverished outskirts of Lima. We weren’t so thrilled openning Alex’s bag to find that his laptop had been swapped with a Cruz Del Sur pillow. It’s a huge blow – not only is there the lost value of the laptop, but it will now be much more difficult to process and upload photos to the internet. We’ll have to find hostels with computers and we won’t be able to edit the photos since we don’t expect hostel computers to have photo editing software installed.

What happened was that a man got on the bus like everyone else and was behind us. He helped Alex get his daybag up onto the luggage racks above our heads. We sat down. Ten minutes later, we saw the man leave the bus, still in Lima. We later found out that he claimed to have forgot something important in Lima. 30 minutes later Alex went to get his bag and found that the laptop was gone and there was a Cruz Del Sur pillow in its place.

We arrived in Huaraz and there was a security guard who checked every passenger’s bag for the laptop as they disembarked. We had told the worker on the bus and he had called ahead to the bus station and reported the theft. No luck. Teo from Caroline’s lodging then picked us up and drove us to and helped translate first at the normal police department and then at the tourist police department. The policeman said that if we really wanted (as if he were really inconvenienced) that we could get a police report, but we would have to wait until the bank opened on monday to buy some sort of special official paper for S4 ($1.33). He said that he couldn’t help us further because he claims it is the responsibility of Lima’s police department. He then told us that if we were to go to Lima’s police department that they would claim it is the responsibility of Huaraz’s police department. I couldn’t believe he was saying this. I asked him, so.. “la policia de Peru no funciona?”. “si”.

We went to Caroline’s hostel and were happy to unpack our bags. I hadn’t wanted to unpack my big bag in Lima since I figured it would be near impossible to get everything back in. We then went for dinner – I had 1/4 chicken with fried rice, salad and fries and Alex had the special with some sort of noodles, rice, and meat. It was quite the test for me to have another chicken dinner (we were served chicken pasta for lunch on the bus). This was because as we were leaving Lima we saw a filthy pickup truck loaded with probably 100 chickens – dead… de-feathered… slimy.. and ready to be taken to restaurants for preparation. It tasted fine – it even came with some spicy salsa.

The next day we followed the GPS track to Wilkaiwan. As we left Huaraz at 7:30am, the people in the streets were already getting ready. We each bought 5 fresh and piping hot buns for S1 each ($0.33). It was a relativelty short hike, bringing us from Huaraz at 3100m to a high point at 3600m. Including stops, detours, and lunch at a restaurant when we got back to Huaraz it was about 6 hours. We were happy to get back and have hot showers.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go for a hike with a high point over 4000m. We may begin the Santa Cruz trek the following day (3-4 days).

Note: The following photos don’t look very good since they were imported by Picassa and were somehow “auto-enhanced”. I’m not sure what the palabra is for auto-enhance, so I’m not sure how to turn it off. I’m hoping to figure it out. It’s too bad I’m such a cheapskate and don’t want to pay more than S1 ($0.33) for internet. It’s more the principle of charging your own clients for internet when they’re already paying S35 per night.

Dad picked me up at 5am sharp and we headed out to the airport. I was a bit nervous about being overweight with my baggage (see list on previous post). I put the densist goods in my carry-on bag. Upon weighing them at the airport, the large bag came to 23.5kg (limit of 23kg, but the attendent let it through). My carry-on bag came to 16kg – a huge amount of weight considering it’s a 30L daybag. This was 16kg of food – 2kg of quinoa, 1kg of lentils, 1kg of oats, etc etc. I was worried that the stitching would break when I picked it up by the hang-strap. Dad and I had coffee at Starbucks while waiting for the plane. I wore my hiking boots onto the plane because they wouldn’t fit in my day bag. Though I took them off on the plane to let my feet air and appologized to the person sitting beside me.

On the leg from Toronto to Lima I was seated beside a women who spoke french and spanish, but no english. She identified as una persona regiliosa, which at first I thought just meant she was Christian, but later figured out that she was a nun. I clued in when she started talking about her “hermanas” (sisters). We talked for 3 or 4 hours of the 8 hour flight. I was happy being able to converse in Spanish.

I arrived in Lima just past midnight expecting a man from the hostel to be there waiting, holding a sign with my name on it. The man wasn’t there, so after talking to a few people, someone else called the hostel and drove me. I was gripping the door handle tightly as the driver sped and swerved through traffic, never signalling. Through the next few days I realized that there aren’t many rules for driving in Peru. Stop signs don’t mean much and there’s constant honking.

I spent the next day walking around Miraflores, the area where my hostel, Hostel Kokopelli was. I then took a collectivo for S1.50 ($0.50) 30 minutes to city center and walked around the plaza de armas and some museums. I was pretty excited about seeing the museum of the central bank of Peru.

Alex arrived the next day and we walked around Miraflores with another Canadian he had met on the plane, Rachel. She forgot her camera battery and charger so she got a cheap camera at a store not too far away. We had a cheap lunch of S7.50 ($2.50) including a mystery apple beverage. We saw the waitress go into the bag and stick a pitcher into a big open bucket filled with this beverage. Rachel was a bit sketched out. Lunch was good.

We then dropped Rachel off at her hotel, walked around a bit, and got tickets to Huaraz for S64 ($25). We then went for dinner and splurged on the meriscos menu S20 ($7). We got appetizers of white fish ceviche and then we had some seafood entrees with another mystery beverage. The waitress was very nice and explained the beverage as some sort of non-alcoholic beer-like wheat beverage with lemon. It was very good – we went through two pitchers.

We met Rachel and her hotel-mate Sandra at the bar in our hostel and had Pisco Sours – a beverage including egg white, lime juice, and some sort of liquor. They weren’t bad.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, had the free breakfast of egg, bacon, buttered toast, and freshly blended pineapple and papaya juice. We then took a taxi to and got on the Cruz Del Sur bus to Huaraz.

I have one minute of internet left, so I’ll finish later. We’re in Huaraz right now at Caroline’s Lodging, planning to do an acclimatization hike tomorrow. Alex and I are both pretty excited about starting hiking and climbing.

It’s been an all nighter this night, cleaning up the house for my 3 month absence and getting packed. I’m hoping for no trouble at check-in due to exceeding weight restrictions. Here is my poorly formatted gear list (copying and pasting from excel didn’t work so well). I’m excited to now have a Peru category on the sidebar on the right.