Local stuff

Back to school & the biggest plant in the world, according to my teacher.
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I´m still in the Cordillera Blanca, and most of the time stillin Huaraz. The day before Halloween, this crazy Wyomite called Scooter (real name Cyrus) dropped into the hostel. My age, he had recently split with his Norwegian wife,ditched his 80hour a week banking job and was looking for adventure and a motorbike. They kind of go hand in hand, however most of the bikes down here will give you a little too much adventure. Anyway, he´s good to hang with being mostly ignorant of language or cultural barriers. So with me in tow we found a rooster fighting venue (Mum,Sis i do not agree with animal cruelty),where the head honcho took us for an inspection of the main contenders out back, some the size of dogs. We returned ringside got a couple of beers and tentatively waited for the action. The whole thing was freakish, the announcer was a child no more than 6 in an oversized betting jacket and large bell. He looked pretty knarled though. 2 guys emerged with their birds, gently carressing and nuzzling them before attaching 4 inch razor blades to their tallons. The fight was messy and fairly swift, i won´t go into detail suffice to say we left headed in the direction of the fireworks that had been going off all day... it was fiesta time in Huaraz (Day of the Living). We found stands erected at the top of town, with hordes of locals waiting, drinking, eating and generally milling exepectantly. We were the only gringos around and when i asked what the crack was, we found out there was to be a bull fight or 2. Oh great another moral-cultural dilema. The party was really going,in Huaraz there are no shortage of musicians, bands and lone percussionists. We joined the fun for about 30 mins before the matter was taken from our hands- we suddenly remembered our pre booked massages back at the hostel (all these massages are necessary with all the out door stuff, honest).

Monsoon season in Huaraz, i guess you had to be there!
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The day of halloween i hooked up with 30 Peruvian school children to visit a local glacier (Pastoruri). I was some kind of celebrity and my face will take precedence over the glacier in 30 Peruvians photo albums. On the way we stopped to see the largest plant in the world (photo to follow), 20 metres of it. We got to the glacier and on the 40 min walk to get up and on to the thing,with some ice scrambling involved, i was some kind of pied piper for all these amazingly friendly 15/16 yr olds. Found a shimmering ice cave (photo to follow) then had a snowball fight and went sledging on bin bags all over 5Kms up. A blizzard hastened our retreat where i realised most of the kids hadn´t made it up to the glacier because of the altitude and the climb involved - not all Peruvians are tough! The kids and their teacher pestered me into going to a Halloween party that evening. I met back up wih Scooter and a 6ft 5i Israeli (the 1st i´ve met here with a good sense of humour, there are a lot of serious Israeli pricks here) back in Huaraz and we decided to make a brief appearance at the party. We found the disco, but sadly i could not find my class among the sea of 5ft 5i peru kids singing and dancing in absolute unison. We hastily exited in fits of laughter to find a gringo bar party round the corner where we met loads of volunteers and peruvians all dresssed up having a great time. We partied til the next day.

...the head honcho took us for an inspection of the main contenders out back, some the size of dogs.

A Chinchilla in the wild which according to google is critically endangered, just call me David A.
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Yungay - did an amazing trek in the snow between the 2 biggest mountains in Peru, ending at Laguna 69. The lake was continually fed by glacial melt from waterfalls above. The cloud was fairly thick so we couldn´t see the peaks that encirlced the luminous blue lake. I will post a photo later which may show some of the brilliance of the place.

I was supposed to be in Nasca (in the desert) by now, but all the fun and cold finally made me a little sick. I will now get to Nasca on Wednesday for some hot desert air and then to Cusco for the weekend as next week i will be staying with a Peruvian family while improving my Spanish.