Happy Easter!

HAPPY EASTER!!!

We would like to take this time to wish a very happy easter to one and all... but especially our dear Elle Bell! Elle is so special, that our friend from the animal kingdom decided to sing a special song for our special girl!

Lunahuana

After getting our kicks in the big city of Lima, Lydia and I were ready to go a little off the grid and head south to the town of Lunahuana. Why does one go to Lunahuana, you ask? There are three answers to this question: 1 - pisco (South America´s 40 proof wine); 2 - wine (although we later found out that this wasn´t a reason to stay in Lunahuana); and the 3rd answer is ADVENTURE!

Lunahuana is about 3 hours south of Lima. It´s nestled in between deserted mountains, with a great river barreling down through its core. It somewhat reminded us of a post-apocalyptic version of Gold River (Lydia´s home town). Further to our post-apocalyptic Gold River metaphor, our hostel in Lunahuana had a bird shed, just like in Lydia´s parents yard!

Let's not kid ourselves, however.... Lydia and I were not in Lunahuana for bird watching.... we were there for PISCO! What better way to try this potent grape hooch than to go on a tasting tour. For a ripe old price of about $10, Lydia and I spent the day getting driven around in a hired car, going from bodega (Spanish for small vineyard) to bodega, taking shot after shot of pisco and wine. As an added bonus of Lunahuana, they are also known for chocolate coated pecans. The bodegas were nice enough to not only dish out shot after shot of free booze (don´t worry, we also bought a couple of bottles to make up for their expenses), but there always seemed to be lovely ladies shelling out chocolate pecans as well (pun intended)!

Honey is another commodity of Lunahuana. At one of the bodegas we visited, we were shown a hive where the honey is produced. This picture is really cool in that it shows the royal guard of the hive protecting the all-mighty queen. The hive was 100 times what is depicted here, with only 1 queen, so you can appreciate just how cool this is!

After a couple of piscos, I tend to pick-up Lydia a lot. Don´t ask me why.

One of the granjeros teaching us about his pisco puro.

Unfortunately, going hand in hand with venturing off the beaten track in a developing nation is food poisoning. After a night of sampling pisco and food, and making friends with a 70 year old ex-Italian Mafioso (who had a 20 year old fiance and admitted to carrying a gun in his Hummer, and who kept buying us drinks and inviting us to swim in his hotel pool the next day), I found myself to be a wee bit incapacitated for about 3 days. Luckily, our hotel had about 6 different HBO channels, so we were able to easily pass this time watching TV with Licky. We also didn't particularly want to venture outside, since we didn't want to run into the Mafioso again and be forced to drink 10 more pisco sours!

In our last day of Lunahuana, we made use of Lunahuana´s final commodity: adventure. Tour companies in Lunahuana offer all sorts of rafting, horseback riding, and atv adventures. We decided to take them up on a white water rafting trip, and had an absolute blast doing so. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to email us the pictures of our rafting adventure never came through, so you are just going to have to imagine just how great it was!

Leaving Lunahuana was a bit of an adventure, as we intended to head towards the town of Pisco (the namesake of the deadly beverage); however, our bus driver had other ideas, and forgot to let us off in Pisco, and instead took us an extra hour south to Ica. As it turned out, this worked out for us as we were able to spend more time in the bordering town Huacachina (probably the most fun and unique town I have ever been to). Also, from what we heard, Pisco has had a lot of trouble since it went through a devastating earthquake in 2007, which practically destroyed the entire city, so it may have been for the best that we gave it a miss.

Although our Lunahuana experience took a bit of a hit with food poisoning and shitty wine, Lunahuana made up for it with good, cheap pisco, and wicked-fun rafting! Would we go back.... probably not, but the small town definitely had its moments!

Lima

We left Huaraz in a bit of a rush, as a new friend, who is an aspiring photographer, offered us a last-minute free ride. Tyrone and I were pretty excited about heading to the coast and being warm again, but were a little leery of the "big city", as Lima has anywhere between 10 and 15 million inhabitants, according to locals. Luckily, we were greeted by an amazing sunset just outside of the city's borders upon our arrival!

Lima is full of beautiful old buildings, churches, and parks. We were pleasantly surprised by how clean the city was and how many people took advantage of the many green spaces dotted around Mira Flores (one of the nicest areas of the city).

Our second day in Lima, we found a nice grocery store (the first that carried the same foods as back home!) and bought ourself a gourmet picnic. We were told that the ocean wasn't too far away and ventured west with our lunch. Again, we were very pleasantly surprised at how beautiful Lima is, as there are miles upon miles of paths along the bluffs over-looking the ocean and long stretches of beach below. We ate our lunch on one of many park benches, whilst joggers and dog-walkers strolled by us, watching the many surfers in the waves along the shore.

After our lunch, we took a walk along the paths towards a new mall that was raved about by all the locals. Along the way, we found many parks and monuments.

We even came across the "Parque de Amour", which was even more evident after encountering this giant statue!

Finally, we arrived at the Larco Mar mall, which is an amazing building 3 stories high, and built right into the cliff-face, over-looking the beach below! All of the restaurants were built on the outside of the mall, with patios that have the most amazing ocean views! We didn't do much shopping, as the stores were pretty expensive relative to other Peruvian shops, but the mall was pretty amazing due to its views and amazing structure. We ordered ocean-side chocolate frappes, below.

I believe this is the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Armas.

We later ventured to our 100th or so museum and found Tyrone's identical twin in bronze!!

...and a painting of a siamese jaguar prostate exam.

Since we were in a humorous mood, we decided to find a restaurant that serves "cuy", a kind of guinea pig that is a delicacy to some in these parts. It is common to be presented with entire body parts (as opposed to a fillet or drumstick) when eating cuy, and Tyrone encountered a rather un-tasty little arm, complete with claws, sticking out of his deep-friend mound of pet. Luckily, neither of us enjoyed the taste of cuy, as it reminded us of fish with the texture of sticky, fatty chicken, so we will now do our part to save the local guinea pigs by being anti-cuy-atarians!

The locals also told us about a large water-park in town that we had to visit before we ventured further south. Peruvians know how to design their fountains, as every one we have encountered is designed beautifully with different light displays. This park was full of maybe 20 different amazing fountains of various shapes, colours, and sizes! I am sampling some techni-colour tea, below :)

...and posing again...

Can you spot Tyrone in the water maze?

We stood in line for 15 minutes just to walk through this 100-foot long water tunnel... which was actually kind-of worth it.

...and then I posed some more!

One funny thing about Peru is that we have encountered a friendly resident kitty pretty much wherever we have gone! This one lived in our hotel and was named "Gatto en Bottas" or "Puss in Boots"... which was odd, since he wasn't even orange... but he took a liking to Tyrone and requested snuggles whenever we came home or sat in the lobby to use WiFi!

We both really enjoyed all of the sights and activities that Lima has to offer, and probably would have stayed a bit longer if it was in our budget (the hostals and food were a bit pricier than other places we had visited, but were still quite reasonable). Also, the people were amazingly friendly, with random people offering to walk us to hostals, bus stations, and taxis, just to make sure we got there safe and were set off in the right direction! There were a lot of people around, but it had a smaller-town feel, which we both enjoyed. In conclusion, Lima is a great place to visit!

Happy Birthday Elle Bell!

We would like to wish the most special birthday wishes to a most special girl.... our god baby Elle Rutherford! We wish we could be there to celebrate your big FIRST birthday, but this will have to do!





We love you Elle and miss you so much!





Tyrone & Lydia

Huaraz

After three weeks on the noisy beach in Huanchako, we decided to head a bit farther south and inland to the picturesque town of Huaraz for some peace and quiet. We made our way from sea-level to 3,700 meters elevation in a matter of 13 hours on a night-bus, and after a bumpy and windy cab ride up the side of a mountain, we landed at around 8 am at our freezing cold, glacier-surrounded hostel. Luckily, the owners were away on vacation and the place was pretty much empty when we arrived, so we were able to strike a pretty good deal with the volunteer staff on one of the best rooms in the place!





We spent our first day sleeping off the horribly long bus ride and adjusting to the altitude, but on our second morning, we were able to venture on one of the many trails mapped out around the hostel. We followed a trail along an open aqueduct up and over towards a glacier-fed river. Below you can see the aqueduct to the right and the glacier poking up between the two mountains off in the distance.






We were absolutely surrounded by the most breath-taking sights wherever we walked!

And then on the second evening, we had a beautiful sunset.

So beautiful, this was taken with our simple little point and shoot camera by Tyrone!

This is the side of our hostel on the same night. It is surrounded by a moat-like pond that harbours trout, which are then caught and fed to hungry travellers in the restaurant. We tried it once and it was actually pretty tasty! The volunteer staff was expected to cook for guests, but according to them they ¨didn't want people to pay for rubbish¨, so they hired a local chef in to cook gourmet meals every lunch and dinner! We had some of the best soups we had ever tasted.

On our third or fourth day in Huaraz, it was pretty cold and rainy, so it was found out by the volunteer staff that I am pretty good with a mixing bowl and oven. Entonces, I ended up making not one, but TWO batches of cookies because they were so good! I spent about 4 hours baking over 100 chocolate oatmeal raisin cookies for everyone at the hostel to share.

We finally got out that afternoon for a walk before I was asked to make a third batch of cookies! It must have been stick-bug mating season up in the Peruvian mountains, because we litterally stumbled upon hundreds of them. This group of bugs were just trying to keep each other warm... I swear...

There were two different kinds of stick bugs - the little one below looking most like a stick.

There were quite a few traditional thatch-roof homes in the area... I hope there is a chimney on the other side, as it gets quite cold at night in the mountains!

Tyrone couldn't resist climbing pretty much everything... but luckily, this made a great shot!

On our second to last day in Huaraz, we decided to take the long trail up and around one of the mountains to a little glacier lake. It was a beautiful and warm day, and along the way we ran into many locals, including these two cattle herders, below.

These two little boys and their puppy were in charge of herding the baby cattle!

Including this sweet little calf who reminded us of Norman from ¨City Slickers¨!

We just barely awoke this sleepy husky as we passed by his farm. Tyrone and I are hoping to get a husky one day... and Tyrone wants to name him ¨White Fang¨...

We took another path that was somewhat simpler, but much longer, to the other side of the snow-capped mountain, below.

About 2/3 the way up to the lake, we stopped and had a snack in front of the waterfall.

After about 4 hours of climbing (including a very steep section requiring us to pull ourselves up with ropes) and 800 m added to our altitude, we finally made it to the glacier lake on the other side of the mountain!!!

We had packed a picnic lunch and ate it whilst admiring the ice-blue lake below and glaciers above.

A sign proving just how high we climbed!! It is pretty hard to breathe when hiking nearly 4500 m above sea level - the air is pretty thin up there!

Last, but not least, here is a video taken once we settled down at the top of the lake:

Huaraz is one of the most beautiful places we have both ever been! Also, one of the mountains in the area is apparently the ¨Paramount Pictures¨ mountain that you see during the opening credits of their movies!! It was hard to leave, but we had a new friend offer us a free ride with him to Lima, so we left paradise and headed off to the largest city in Peru!

Huanchaco

What started as a 3 day beach fix turned into 3 weeks of ´chilling´ in the Peruvian town of Huanchaco (just outside of Trujillo, Peru). The beach bum life consisting of: food, yoga, chilling, more food, more chilling, surfing, sleeping, and repeating ended up being our routine in Huanchaco. This lifestyle became too difficult to give up, so we just kept staying and staying and staying!

Hostel view 1.

Part of what made it so hard to leave Huanchaco was the fact that our Hostel was located right on the beach and it provided us with amazing nightly sunsets (pictured above). As an added bonus, this hostel also had a bar, fridge, and the first bath tub in all our South American travels (not a bad way to spend $30)!

Hostel view 2.

Another reason why it was so easy for us to stay in Huanchaco was that we gained another addition to our traveling family. His name is Licky Skittles. He´s a blue dinosaur that I managed to win in an animal crane in Huanchaco. Licky decided to join us for the rest of our trip, so you might catch him in some of our photographs. This one is of Lydia and Licky enjoying the beach together.



The beaches of Huanchaco were fairly nice. There was fine white sand and continuously crashing waves that were great for viewing and surfing; however, on the downside, Huanchaco´s beaches were filled with trash from the countless unscrupulous visitors to the beach. It is such a frustrating issue, due to the fact that it could be so easily solved with an education campaign coupled with the enforcement of fines, but instead, ignorance leaves the beaches much less desirable than they should be.


Contributing to the garbage problem in Huanchaco are the beachside snack vendors, who are present in astonishing numbers. With such numbers, they fight for a competitive advantage in selling their tasty treats. Some use bubbles, some use kazoos, and some (pictured below) take a more creative approach to selling candy:

Transvestite mentos salesemen... er... saleswomen... er... salespersons can be found on the beaches of Huanchaco wearing wigs and appropriately placed balloons. It´s quite entertaining!

Huanchaco also has to be the festival capital of the universe. It seemed like every other day Huanchacans would be celebrating something! Even when there wasn´t anything to celebrate, the people would park their cars on the beach, open their doors and windows, blast their music, and dance till the break of dawn!

A popular dance during all the Huanchacian festivals is the Marinera (not to be confused with the spaghetti sauce). The Marinera dance is common all over Peru; however, each different region has its own take on the dance. In northern Peru, it´s about quick steps, cowboy hats, and dress twirling (see below).

At another random Huanchaco festival, the people put on a beachside play about the warring natives of the region. Unfortunately, it seemed that whichever force I cheered for ended up being vanquished :(

Amongst all the warring tribes, a woman in silver paint would romp around striking various poses.

By changing the exposure rate of my camera, we were able to make this woman look very god-like!

Hail the conquering heroes!

This festival came by our hotel window one night. I believe it was for one of their sacred virgens, as they carted a virgen statue around with them wherever they went, then put on various demonstrations of offerings for her.

Amongst the offerings was Marinera dancing of course.

Lydia liked this festival so much that she offered her soul to the virgen, with the help of this devil character;)

The honoured guest! Notice the scared dove on the left shoulder of the virgen. We think he was tied to the statue, where he had to endure hours upon hours of fireworks! Poor little guy!

The coolest offerings given at this particular festival (asside from Lydia´s soul) were these giant firework statues. The Huanchacians started constructing these structures during the day, only to have them destroyed (most entertainingly) during the evening. I have never witnessed such an awe inspiring display of firey badassedness! Watch the video and enjoy!

One of the ways Lydia and I liked to pass the time at the beach was by making hand-pebble statues. Pictured above is Lydia´s gold medal winning seagull thinking of a clam. Great work Lydia!

Looking at the sunset from our hotel room whilst a tranny mentos salesthing pesters a nice couple.

The Huanchaco/Trujillo area also has some decent ruins in the area. Pictured above and below are the Chan Chan ruins. A large complex of sand structures in the desert about 15 minutes out of Huanchaco.

The evidence of one slight misshap I had during our surfing at Huanchaco is pictured above. During surf practice, I was standing in the water with my board, and all of a sudden some sea creature (I believe it was either a baracuda, shark, or kraken) decided to latch onto my big toe. In a half a second I was able to kick it off, but it scared the bejesus out of me. After this time, I didn´t spend too much time dily dallying in the ocean (good motivation to stay on the board)!

We didn´t visit the Trujillo area too much during our visit in this area, but one section of Trujillo that we did enjoy was this public garden.

A neat tree found in the Trujillo public garden.

Public garden question #1: Does anyone else think that this collection of plants looks like a bird?

Public garden question #2: Does this Cactus look happy to you?

This picture is of Licky Skittles enjoying our final sunset in Huanchaco. After our time at the beach was through, we headed straight up into the Andies and the beautiful town of Huaraz.