So i arrive at my hostel in Lima after a long day on the plane from Guatemala City and dump my gear on my assigned bed in the 4 bed dorm, barely noticing a guy curled up in his sleeping bag. After a couple of hours of mindless TV i headed back upstairs around 11pm to find that my key wouldnt work, so i got the hostel dude up to have a look and he was mystified and went back downstairs - returning with an odd look on his face. It turned out my room-mate had had some problems on the streets of Lima and was a bit paranoid of pretty much everything and had gone awol.....after much huffing and puffing between us we managed to get the door open wide enough to find out that he had moved the bed around so it blocked both the shared toilet door and main door from opening, as well as using a mattress to cover up the window. The room-mate wasnt responding to any form of communication at all and clearly had gone into a catatonic state of fear.

After much humming and ha-ing, Luis (hostel guy) wanted me to bash down the toilet door which i politely declined to do as my amateur psychology suspected that probably the last thing a paranoid scared person would need is someone crashing in to the room, i was also wary of what might be waiting on the other side. Fortunately it turned out there was another bed free so i slept on that for the night, thinking that there was no safer place in the whole of Peru for my gear than in the fortress that my room had become. Come morning there was no change of affairs and my other room mate had ended up on the couch. More discussion ensued and we decided to take the hinges off one of the doors, once this was done we carefully moved the door aside to find a guy with big wide eyes staring like he was a rabbit caught in the headlights....deciding that the moment was nigh for action i slid past and grabbed my stuff and relocated it to my room. Upon returning from exploring Lima it turned out he had left - apparantly with embassy staff in tow, on reflection i feel really sorry for him as i can only imagine the kind of fear he was feeling to make him behave in such an irrational way.

My final days in Guatemala were spent in Antigua which i have to say was a wonderful footnote to my short time in Central America. Antigua was the Spanish capital of GUA for a while and is more like a smallish town in Spain that like anywhere else in the entire country. Cobbled roads, big main plaza and old colonial houses which are built around internal courtyards, many of which are now excellent restaurants and stylish hotels. The whole place is ridiculously picturesque with 3 volanoes ringing the valley where its located just to top it off. Whilst in Antigua i climbed the local active volcano, Pacaya, with lava spewing out and sulphourous smoke etc etc. I was hoping it would be a bit of a practice hike for Peru but turned out to be pretty straightforward. Also managed to get out on the town for a couple of "sayonara GUA" beers with some hostelites where i spent an inordinate amount of time talking to an Israeli girl about automatic weapons - the Uzi is a girls gun and it goes off if you drop it with the magazine in (something to do with the bolt action apparantly)

Lima itself is pretty much as they say - big, dirty and shrouded in fog for most of the day. The central area around the Plaza Mayor reminded me of a big European capital ie pleasant and historical, with pedestrianized roads and modern shops, but the short walk to the bus station to purchase an onward ticket brought things back into focus pretty rapidly.

Currently i am in Huaraz, which is located near the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Huayhash (Why-Wash) mountain ranges which are part of the Peruvian Andes approx 9hrs northeast from Lima by bus. Huaraz is a mountain town of 80,000 with a large Quecha population of which the women are the hardest to miss despite being 4 ft 11. They are usually decked out in a short brimmed stetson type of hat jauntily placed on the head at an angle of 30 degrees, not to mention the billowing knee length dress, colourful cardy and slip-on leather shoes. Huaraz is at 3100m, so i have been sipping Coca tea and generally taking it easy in order to acclimatize as easily as possible....

Which is important as the day after next i am about to be punished for my Guatemalan sins by doing a 7 day trek around the Huayhash range betwen 4000 and 5000m....the original plan was to train on the GUA volcanoes but as regular readers will know, the temptations of the Caribbean proved too much. The deep end has always been my preferred starting point, so no worries! The Why Wash is the range that Touching the Void occured on, but i plan to only be observing the void rather than touching.

Antigua 9/10
Lima 6.5/10

Current Mood: Underprepared
Music on My Mind: Up Around the Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival, actually pretty much anything by them...