Huaraz: Alpine Vistas, Avalanches, And Altitude Sickness.

We missed our bus from Lima because we didn't realize that Lima has two main bus stations and our bus was leaving from the one we weren't at. Our taxi driver, once he realized the mistake, did his best to get us across town before the bus left at 10:30, but there's no fighting Monday morning traffic in Lima. So we missed the bus by ten minutes. Next bus not until 8:00 that night.

Luckily, our taxi driver knew what to do. He took us to another bus company, Cavassa, that had a bus leaving at 1:30, and we were able to get on. The terminal was reasonably comfortable. The bus finally arrived, 15 minutes late, but hey, at least we were on our way.

We had been warned against taking any other bus line than Cruz del Sur, and we were pleased with our experiences with the company so far, but Cavassa seemed reputable, so we weren't really worried. That insouciance began to fade a bit as we noticed the attitude and behavior of the staff, who were, let's say, lacking in customer service skills. First we had to argue with them about leaving the curtains open so we could see the scenery along the way. Then they sat in the front row of the first class section, reclined their seats nearly into our laps, and watched movies for most of the trip.

These were fairly minor annoyances, and we probably wouldn't have been bothered by them, but then we started noticing that the bus kept stopping to pick up and let off passengers. We didn't think anything of this at first, but our fellow first class passengers, all locals, were clearly getting more annoyed at each stop.

Finally, as the bus got close to Huaraz and we were already 30 minutes overdue, two women staged a mini-revolt, storming the drivers' cabin and berating the staff for how slow the bus was. The problem was that Cavassa had sold the tickets as offering express service, but instead were making many extra stops to increase their take on the run. As a consequence, we were over an hour late, and the ladies were indignant. "No es un colectivo!" one woman kept shouting, referring to the small buses that stop at every other corner. "Es un expreso!"

The staff just shrugged and looked away.

Since we didn't arrive until well after dark, we had no idea of the geography of the place until we woke up the next morning and walked out on our balcony to be greeted by this view of Huascarán, at 22,000 feet the highest peak in the Cordillera Blanca.

Here's a zoom.

The city of Huaraz lies at 10,000 feet in a lush valley about 250 miles north of Lima. The valley is bordered on the northern side by the high peaks of the Cordillera Blanca and on the south by the lower, snowless mountains of the Cordillera Negra.

Once you get outside the major cities in Peru, you can see how most of the country lives. We saw many scenes that reminded us of our days in Vietnam, with women selling small piles of produce on the sidewalk and men sitting on boxes on the street watching the world go by.

If it wasn't for the local costumes and their Peruvian features, we could have been back on the dusty streets of Hanoi.

And speaking of local costumes, you've got to love those hats.

 Even the style of construction and the combination of unfinished and dilapidated buildings was reminiscent of Vietnam.

 Though I don't recall ever seeing a sheep living on a rooftop in Hanoi.

Our hotel was a gem the middle of the somewhat grimy city. It was practically empty when we arrived, and the last two nights we were there we were the only guests. In fact we were surprised at how few foreign tourists there were in Huaraz. Almost all those we did run into were Europeans. There is a lot of trekking available in the mountains here, and that's what most visitors come for. We also found that there were a lot of Peruvian tourists up from Lima. But considering the beauty of the geography and the abundance of the valley, we expected far more tourists than we saw.

 That's our room and balcony just above the puma.

We spent the next day safe in the heart of Jesus. The Heart of Jesus Tourist Service, that is.

We especially loved the stuffed cow on the dashboard.

We booked the tour through our hotel. No one thought to mention that the guide spoke only Spanish. The bus was filled with Peruvian tourists who enjoyed every minute of his banter. Unfortunately, most of it was lost on us. We found out later that all the tours are in Spanish only. There is simply not enough demand for tours in other languages. Still, we enjoyed the scenery.

First, we visited the village of Yungay, the site of a catastrophic avalanche on May 31, 1970. That afternoon, a 7.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Peru. The northern wall of Huascarán collapsed, unleashing a tsunami of rock, ice and snow that destroyed the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca. The avalanche started as a sliding mass of glacial ice and rock about 3,000 feet wide and a mile long. It covered the 11 miles to the village of Yungay in minutes, moving at an average speed of 175 to 200 miles per hour. No one had time to get out of the way. About 70,000 people died and 50,000 were injured, making this the most deadly avalanche in recorded history.

You can still see the scars on the mountain where the section broke loose. The plain where the old village of Yungay once stood is now a memorial park.

The tidal wave of debris rolled all the way through the village only to stop at the feet of the statue of Jesus standing at the top of a hillside cemetery.

Here's what it looked like in the aftermath.

 And here's what it looks like today.

The remains of a city bus.

This portion of an arch used to be part of the village church.

Next, we visited Huascarán National Park and took a boat ride on a glacial lake at 12,000 feet.

 The summit of Huascarán was shrouded in clouds.

A couple rain squalls accompanied by high winds, blew in, cutting short the boat ride. We huddled under a thatched canopy until they passed.

Back in town, we had a delicious local ale on a rooftop terrace with an incredible view of the surrounding peaks.

 We sat there for quite a while just watching the clouds move across the sky and mountains.

O had been feeling bad and coughing a lot since we reached Huaraz. We thought it was a recurrence of the allergic cough that she gets from time to time, so she took her allergy meds and we waited for her to get better.

Instead she got worse. She was sore from coughing so much, exhausted from lack of sleep, and constantly short of breath. At about 2 am, she suddenly thought about altitude sickess. After a few minutes of googling, she realized that she had all the symptoms and that severe altitude sickness can be fatal. She woke me up to tell me, and we quickly decided we had to cut short our stay in Huaraz and head for sea level.

The next morning, I walked down to the bus station and got them to change our ticket (it's amazing how much Spanish you can dredge up when you have to). By 11 am, we were on the bus, and by 3:00 we were back at sea level. O is still coughing, but not nearly as badly. She can breathe deeply and her energy is mostly back. Best of all, she's been able to sleep.

Now we have to rethink much of our trip to avoid high altitudes. I go to the Galapagos on Thursday. O was going to spend the week while I'm diving in Quito (9,000 feet); instead she'll stay on the coast in Guayaquil, then meet me in the Galapagos for a week.

We'll visit the Amazon headwaters since they are fairly low, and some of the lower Andean cities like Cuenca and Loja, but we need to stay under 8,000 feet.

Unfortunately, that means most of the places we wanted to visit in Bolivia are out. Instead, we'll probably go straight to Chile, where most of the places we want to visit, like the wine country, are at lower elevations.

Just going with the flow.

P.