Living Atop Mt. Hood (Or in Huaraz, Perú)

10 whole days without a post! Yikes! Well, my sincerest apologies. I also read through my last post and made lots of spelling/grammar corrections! So sorry about that as well. Maybe I was tired. Or maybe I was battling these foreign keyboards. Or a mix. Annnnnways....I will try my best to be better this time around.

Two Saturdays ago, on the 19th of March, we arrived by bus to Huaraz, Peru. We headed this direction to meet up with our friend Kyle, who is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Marcara, a little town just outside of Huaraz.

I learned a lot about life in the Peace Corps from Kyle and the dozens of other volunteers in Ancash, some as far as 10-12 hours into the mountains away from the town of Huaraz. During our first couple days acclimatizing, we helped Kyle with one of his projects which was painting a world map on a wall outside (a common Peace Corps project) at the Marcara middle/high school. I love maps anyway, and this project was way cool! I want to do one with my own kids so they know their geography. I didn´t take a picture unfortunately, but Kyle said he will post the final product when finished.


This picture really doesn´t do the views justice. We had lots of cloud cover most of the time, so if you want to see better, jaw-dropping pictures, google image Cordillera Blanca :)


Huaraz is just over 10,000 feet above sea level, so it was like living atop Mt. Hood in Oregon. It is located in the region of Ancash and the town itself has over 100,000 people. It is in the valley between the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra mountain ranges which are part of the Andes. Huaraz is a mecca for climbers and trekkers as there are dozens of lakes, the Pastoruri Glacier, a four-day Santa Cruz trek, and over 16 peaks above 18,000 feet with the tallest being Huascarán at 22,200 feet! Every direction you look, there are huge mountains. It was gorgeous but hard to describe. (Again, google image it, because there are some amazing pictures out there.) We were there for the last little bit of rainy season, so we unfortunately had lots of cloud cover most of the time, and rain every afternoon/evening.

The computers here are pretty slow and so I´ve been having a hard time getting pictures uploaded. Thanks for your patience! Tomorrow, I will share some from a soccer game, then our adventures to Chavín de Huantar (pre-Incan ruins), Lakes Llaganuco and Sixty-Nine, as well as other observations on food and transportation. I promise!