The Adventures of Andrew Maurer

Dad picked me up at 5am sharp and we headed out to the airport. I was a bit nervous about being overweight with my baggage (see list on previous post). I put the densist goods in my carry-on bag. Upon weighing them at the airport, the large bag came to 23.5kg (limit of 23kg, but the attendent let it through). My carry-on bag came to 16kg – a huge amount of weight considering it’s a 30L daybag. This was 16kg of food – 2kg of quinoa, 1kg of lentils, 1kg of oats, etc etc. I was worried that the stitching would break when I picked it up by the hang-strap. Dad and I had coffee at Starbucks while waiting for the plane. I wore my hiking boots onto the plane because they wouldn’t fit in my day bag. Though I took them off on the plane to let my feet air and appologized to the person sitting beside me.

On the leg from Toronto to Lima I was seated beside a women who spoke french and spanish, but no english. She identified as una persona regiliosa, which at first I thought just meant she was Christian, but later figured out that she was a nun. I clued in when she started talking about her “hermanas” (sisters). We talked for 3 or 4 hours of the 8 hour flight. I was happy being able to converse in Spanish.

I arrived in Lima just past midnight expecting a man from the hostel to be there waiting, holding a sign with my name on it. The man wasn’t there, so after talking to a few people, someone else called the hostel and drove me. I was gripping the door handle tightly as the driver sped and swerved through traffic, never signalling. Through the next few days I realized that there aren’t many rules for driving in Peru. Stop signs don’t mean much and there’s constant honking.

I spent the next day walking around Miraflores, the area where my hostel, Hostel Kokopelli was. I then took a collectivo for S1.50 ($0.50) 30 minutes to city center and walked around the plaza de armas and some museums. I was pretty excited about seeing the museum of the central bank of Peru.

Alex arrived the next day and we walked around Miraflores with another Canadian he had met on the plane, Rachel. She forgot her camera battery and charger so she got a cheap camera at a store not too far away. We had a cheap lunch of S7.50 ($2.50) including a mystery apple beverage. We saw the waitress go into the bag and stick a pitcher into a big open bucket filled with this beverage. Rachel was a bit sketched out. Lunch was good.

We then dropped Rachel off at her hotel, walked around a bit, and got tickets to Huaraz for S64 ($25). We then went for dinner and splurged on the meriscos menu S20 ($7). We got appetizers of white fish ceviche and then we had some seafood entrees with another mystery beverage. The waitress was very nice and explained the beverage as some sort of non-alcoholic beer-like wheat beverage with lemon. It was very good – we went through two pitchers.

We met Rachel and her hotel-mate Sandra at the bar in our hostel and had Pisco Sours – a beverage including egg white, lime juice, and some sort of liquor. They weren’t bad.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, had the free breakfast of egg, bacon, buttered toast, and freshly blended pineapple and papaya juice. We then took a taxi to and got on the Cruz Del Sur bus to Huaraz.

I have one minute of internet left, so I’ll finish later. We’re in Huaraz right now at Caroline’s Lodging, planning to do an acclimatization hike tomorrow. Alex and I are both pretty excited about starting hiking and climbing.