Our Favorite Place

So we arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador and grabbed our supposedly super duper royal class Ormeno bus to Lima, Peru.  Though people had wrote amazing things about the bus online, we knew things weren´t that right when the bus stewardess (or whatever you call them) asked Gilad, actually no, TOLD Gilad to give her pen, and then give her a dollar, and then to take out the trash...and after all that woke him up at 4:30 AM for a little early morning arguing.  The truth is for a 24 hour bus it wasn´t that bad, but the company is definitely not as good as it used to be, and there a hell of a lot better in Peru. Definitely don´t bring your kids on the bus since the last movie of the night was Scarface and the first of the morning was The Killers of Death.

We wanted to go to Huaraz, Peru and do some trekking after amazing stories from other travelers, and luckily met another Israeli on the bus who was looking to do the same thing who helped us convince the bus driver to drop us off at an unofficial stop on the way where we could catch a bus to Huaraz.

Are we at the tree yet?

We caught a local bus to Huaraz, and were given once again the royal class seats...this time they were the steps near the driver since the rest of the bus was full.  After an hour stop for lunch, we continued up the mountain in our overheating bus.  We got the important role of telling the guy working with the driver when to pour water all over the radiator so the bus wouldn´t explode.  This kept us quite busy since it happened about every 5 seconds.  We eventually made it to Huaraz and after a wrong turn down a steep hill, a tiring walk back up the steep hill (Huaraz is at like 3100 meters), a full hostal, we checked in to Miss Helen´s.  All we have to say is, NEVER go here.  The bed was made out of bricks, the toilet seat was missing, and the shower would drip a little, then stop, then start again...meaning with both the hot and the cold on you were in for an uncomfortable experience.

After replenishing our energies with some really good pizza at BB Pizza, we checked out of Miss Hell´s, I mean Helen´s, to find a great and cheaper hostal 5 seconds away called La Cabana.  This place was awesome and the owner was really nice.

We spent a few days acclimating to the altitude, and almost went on a down hill bike ride, but changed our minds when we heard about the steep hill - rabinous dog combo.  We signed up for the Santa Cruz tour which is a 4 day trek through the Blanca mountain range.

The trek was absolutely amazing and really cheap being that your bags were carried for you, the tent was put up and taken down for you, and the meals were awesome and cooked for you.  It was us, 7 more Israelis, and 1 Canadian (poor guy), but seriously was an awesome group and we all had a great time.  There was of course one momeny of panic when we arrived at the camp site after a full day of hiking to be told that our sleeping bag was left at the office and that the guide did not bring any extra sleeping bags.  Luckily our friend Tal had an extra sleeping bag that she let us use since 4250 meters can get quite chilly.  This was a way better option than sharing a sleeping bag, being that the sleeping bags were too tight for Gilad´s left side to share with his right.

It was an amazing experience hiking through the snow covered mountains, though  not as easy as the people in the office made it seem.  The difficulty could have been a little psychological being that our guide would often grossily underestimate the distances and times between places (i.e. 5 minutes sometimes meant 5 hours, and right at that tree could sometimes mean right at that tree that is 5 hours away).  He was especially crazy on the second day when he took us to a lagoon that was totally out of the way of our campsite, which only two of nine people made it (yes, Sarit being one of the two).  His reason for not telling us how far the lagoon really was was that then we wouldn´t go to it, and our response was ¨damn right sucka!¨ Anyway we made it through and celebrated the finale of our trek with the rest of the group at our favorite creperie, Patrick´s.  It was a really good time, especially since right before we found out our sleeping bag wasn´t sent out on one of the other 9 day hikes and were able to retrieve it with a small refund too.

3 nights sleeping in the freezing cold in sleeping bags wasn´t enough pain for us, so we decided to head off to Huacachina, our next destination that night and try to catch some shut eye on the bus.