Huaraz is a small city nestled in below the Cordilla Blanca, the second highest mountain range in the world. With an altitude of a little over 10,000 feet, upon arriving in Huaraz it makes for a slight shortness of breath and takes some time to acclimate to the altitude, especially after being at sea level for the majority of or time in Peru.<\/p>\n
It was still dark and very chilly when our bus arrived at 5am. Thankfully, we were able to get a taxi to our hostel, and they let us get into our room right away instead of waiting for the early afternoon check-in time (which is the standard way hostels operate). The three of us crawled into bed and got a little shut eye for our first of only two days spent in Huaraz. It was also Paul’s birthday! When we woke up from a 4-hour nap we went down to the common area and were pleasantly surprised with a free breakfast of coffee, juice, fruit and some bread and jelly. We decided that since our time was so short we had to plan something for both days. Huaraz is known mostly for the mountains that surround it and for the wonderful outdoors one can explore while here. But there are also some ruins, and since Paul and I love to check those out, we all decided the birthday day would be spent going into the hills and finding a ruin that isn’t as well known or a commonly visited ruin by travelers. We found a collectivo van and paid about $.50 cents each to ride up into the small, haphazard villages on the outskirts of Huaraz before being dropped off in front of the Monumento Nacional Wilcahuain.<\/p>\n
The Monument of Wilcahuain consists of one large building, and a smaller structure off to the side, and like most of the other ruins, we’ve seen, is a tomb for the dead. With three different levels, one being underground, one at ground level, and the third on top, the structure looks like a big pile of rocks in the shape and size of a small two-story suburban house. Weeds and grass grow from some of the spaces in between the rocks, and when you look closely, a couple of rocks jutting out of the structure have been carved into the shape of human faces.<\/p>\n
Before entering the building, we walked through the small adjacent museum which housed some artifacts from the building and detailed its history. Wilcahuain was built by the Recuay culture around 100 BC to house mummified bodies. Each level has small rooms and each room housed up to 7 mummified bodies. The small rooms in each level have 7 rocks that, to us, looked as though they were hooks for where they would hang the mummified bodies up along the walls. The three of us came up with that conclusion from the museum readings we could decipher and from the Spanish speaking guide that we overheard giving a tour to the only other visitor at that time.<\/p>\n
We explored the entire building from bottom to top. The rooms and halls were dimly lit, and it felt very cool. Despite its loose appearance, the structure felt extremely solid, especially from the inside, where the walls were built from much larger rocks and fitted more tightly. A clever system of ventilation shafts in the walls allowed cool air to circulate, which was intended to keep the mummies from decomposing. The vents worked very well – you could hold your hand near them and feel the cool air moving through.<\/p>\n
The whole place had a very spooky feeling, but as we were exploring the third floor, completely alone in the silence and darkness, it felt profound, like you could feel the history of all those people who had passed through here, and imagine their bodies filling the rooms, awaiting their passage to the next life. We took a few photos before the creeps got the best of us and we went back out into the bright sunshine and green grass.<\/p>\n
After we had spent about an hour exploring the monument, we opted to walk back down the mountain that we had taken a collectivo up. As we walked down the curvy dirt road, we passed small farms, though a small quiet town where everyone we passed stared at us and a few school children bravely said “hello” in English, practicing what they must be learning in school. About halfway down we caught another collectivo to take us the rest of the way into Huaraz. Since it was Paul’s birthday, we planned on going out and having a nice dinner. We ended up at a small Italian place, had a great dinner and then headed back to our cozy hostel for an early night since Paul and Mel were heading out early the next morning for a hike into the Andes.<\/p>\n
Our day started early with a 5am alarm and a 6am bus ride that wove through villages and towns high into the Cordillera Blanca, the second highest mountain range in the world behind the Himalayas. After a quick stop for breakfast at a small outpost, we drove up into a large valley. Our bus stopped briefly to allow us to see a large, bright turqoise lake backdropped by a dramatic black and grey cliff rising hundreds of feet above us into the clouds.<\/p>\n
Following along winding gravel roads, we eventually arrived at the trailhead for the hike to Laguna 69, and quickly got moving. The beginning of the hike followed a winding river through a valley floor, through groves of small, twisted trees with bright red, paper-thin bark. All along the way, the valley walls rose quickly to meet the towering, glacier-covered mountains, over 20,000 feet in elevation, that seemed to hang right above our heads.<\/p>\n
The trees transitioned to bushes and then to high-alpine grasses as the trail climbed up to another valley, and then another, periodically crossing creeks and rivers via precariously-placed rocks and logs. Spectacular waterfalls came down from the walls on either side. We could feel the air getting thinner and thinner as we got into the final valley, passing a large pond that fed the waterfall below, then a fantastic, shining black cliff, and another small lake flanked by a massive mountain and glaciers.<\/p>\n
The final climb up to Laguna 69 was steep and Mel and I were both fighting to keep our breath in the thin air. We eventually came to the top and followed a short, flat trail above a creek before coming over the crest into view of the Laguna. The cloud cover passed over quickly, allowing moments of sunshine to illuminate the water in shades of light blue and turquoise. Behind the lake, several small waterfalls fell from the edges of huge, crumbling white glaciers on massive mountains. Occasionally we could hear chunks of the glaciers breaking and rumbling avalanches high above us.<\/p>\n
Since we were due back at our bus in a couple hours, we moved much more quickly on the way back, running along some sections. We both had a very euphoric feeling on the way back, probably owing as much to the oxygen-thin air and strenuous exercise as the fantastic scenery. We arrived back at the bus with a little time to spare and got back into Huaraz around 6pm, giving us just enough time to clean up and grab an excellent Chifa (chinese restaurant) dinner before catching an overnight bus back to Lima for an early morning flight to Cusco.<\/p>\n
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Huaraz is a small city nestled in below the Cordilla Blanca, the second highest mountain range in the world. With an altitude of a little over 10,000 feet, upon arriving in Huaraz it makes for a slight shortness of breath and takes some time to acclimate to the altitude, especially after being at sea level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[30,29],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6E2Wr-6B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constantsummer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}