Peru: Choque, Lima, Huaraz, Huanchaco, Iquitos

Hello all,

Just back from Manu a few hours, our (highly persuasive) friend JP talked us into trekking Choquekirao, Inca ruins that havent yet become the Machu Picchu circus.

There are no trains or buses to Choque. It´s just you and your donkeys.

Chicklet & Number 2:

The scenery is much the same as Machu; dramatic canyon, massive river cutting through the bottom & snowy peaks where we camped with the local kids & taught our arreiro how to play the cardgame, shithead. He didn´t lose a single time. . .

On day 2 we were already exploring the upper ruins, a terrace covered in white stone llamas.

We saw maybe 5 other people there in the afternoon. Even the official attendant had disappeared while we were still playing on the ruins & drinking wine watching the sunset.

The day before returning to Cachao, 27km that felt mostly uphill, the site was entirely ours again.

What do you do when you come back to Cusco from an exhausting trek? Shop for hats and hand puppets at the market of course.

Lima kind of sucks all the happy juice out of your soul. It´s sprawling, reliably gray in climate & building materials and has way too many US products for sale to feel like you´re somewhere exotic.

Huaraz to the northeast sits in the middle of the highest mountains in Peru. We spent a couple weeks there doing progressively longer treks.

One overnight trek rained on us with a freezing sleet until just after we had set up the tent, but the morning was clear and then we realised we were surrounded by glaciars, green lakes and high peaks.

The Alpamayo base camp trek took us 6 days and crossed 6 passes between 4400 & 4900m. Although its in the Huscaran "National Park" it is covered in cows, pigs, horses & donkeys, therefore the ground is covered in shit, which means our water supply was really dodgy.

From the Quechua villages of Cashapampa to Pomabamba we were armed with a frighteningly basic map, a truckload of diamox & ibuprofin, Darryls 2 kg copy of Shantaram and maybe enough iodine tablets kill all the giardia in Peru.

The trek went well. We didnt acquire diarrhea, altitude sickness or get trampled by livestock in the night. To celebrate these small victories in Pomabamba we drank a lot of beer, ate the ubiquitous pollo con papas fritas & took showers with the locals in the town hot springs.

Our last day Huaraz we spent ice climbing up a 13 meter wall with the lovely Gwen and Nicolas who we met on Alpamayo.

It was vertical until you reached a few meters from the top.

One overnight bus later and we were eating ceviche & surfing in Huanchaco, a small town next to Trujillo. We spent a couple days there, procrastinating before going to Chacapoyas, the start of our potentially arduous journey to Iquitos by river.

Chachapoyas is near the overgrown, pre-Inca Kuelap ruins, which, in cynical moments we refer to as the round not rectangular ruins.

Yurimaguas is a jungly 2 hours from Terapoto, and from there we caught a chicken boat to Lagunas, slinging up hammocks and spending 10 hours answering questions from the inquisitive & charming 11 year old, Juliana.

From Lagunas we journeyed in to the Pacaya Samiria reserve for three days in a dugout canoe.

Our guide Lucio caught the fish we would have for breakfast with his pointy trident during our nighttime caiman spotting trips.

Unfortunately, we heard gunshots while in the reserve and noticed they still use gil nets to fish, but nevertheless there was still a fair bit of wildlife around.

Back on the boat, Iquitos still two days away, there was little else do but read and wonder when the next meal would be ready.

We saw pink river dolphins and tiny villages on stilts whose only communication with the world comes and goes by river boat.

Around Iquitos you can wander the Belen markets where there´s a thriving trade in illegal jungle animals, bananas, liquid versions of love, luck and everything else. Darryl bought a bottle of siete raices-an alcohol made from the bark of seven trees, which has yet to bring us anything but hangovers.

Upriver the Pilpintihuasi butterfly farm/animal sanctuary rescues casualties from the illegal trade. The monkeys & sloths are free to come and go & forage in the hair of whomever they please.

The jaguar, tapir, boas and anteater are kept in spacious enclosures-presumably more for their safety than the safety of others.

The Amazon river, where the Peruvians say it begins.

Little red poison dart frog that only lives in the white sand dune forests of the Allpahuayo reserve.

Iquitos is only accesible by air or river but is 370,000 inhabitants rich nonetheless. We took the air option back to Lima spending 2 slightly less soul sucking days at the national museum-which had really good exhibitions on traditional masks, Shining Path & the potato.

This is us 20 hours of bus time post Lima, 30 minutes post getting ripped off 4 soles, crumpled & sleepy but deliriously happy to be through the horror that is the Tumbes-Ecuador border crossing.

Love, j&d