RAPPELLING AND BUNGEE JUMPING...DAY 5

We had two more days left in Huaraz and with nothing to do. We had done the three most popular Huaraz tours. We decided to see about doing any other activity we could find, so we went to the main strip, Av. Luzuriaga. It was around eight in the morning and we went into quite a few offices. We finally found this one place that offered bungee jumping and rappelling for S/80 each I think. It was quite expensive because it was just the two of us. If we had had more people, it would have been much cheaper per person. We continued looking around to see if we could find it any cheaper, keeping in mind that we had to call that S/80 place by 10 o'clock if we still wanted to go. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any other place that offered both activities so we returned to our room. We decided we were just going to go on the S/80 tour and began packing our change of clothes because the man had told us we were going to get really wet. I called the agency to reserve the activities and the man asked us to be back in the office by 11 o'clock because he needed to call the guide and have him get the equipment ready.

At 10:45, we headed back to the office and the man in charge, began explaining what we were going to do. He asked us if we had open toed sandals for the rappelling activity because we were going to get our sneakers wet. Once again, we didn't have the right stuff for the activity, so he asked us to try to find some sandals or bring another pair of shoes. My guide told me he possibly had some sandals I could borrow but not for Daniel since his feet were ginormous. He told us where we could go to try to find sandals for him. We must have looked in all the shoe stores in Huaraz for his stupid sandals! None of them had his size.... stupid tall people with big feet! We're a country full of short people (a great deal of the population is so please don't be offended fellow Peruvians) so it's hard to find anything bigger than a size 10 here. We headed back to the office. Daniel was just going to have to get his feet nice and wet. From there they informed us that our guide had to go do another tour and they gave us a new guide. We followed him to a bus stop and he paid for our bus ride to this one place on the side of the road. When we got off, he had us follow him uphill on this path that isn't very noticeable from the street. We were going to rappel first. Since neither of us had experience in this sort of thing, he told us we were going to do three descents. The first one would be as a practice run with no water involved and the other two were going to be down a waterfall. Our guide went down first to show us how to do it and less than a minute later, he was back up to where he had left us. We were amazed he had made it up there so quickly. Neither of us had too much trouble going down. I was actually a little afraid of doing this activity because I have small, weak arms but I did just fine.

PASTORURI GLACIER TOUR...DAY 4

As the previous few days, we had to get up early for our tour. Since we had time to walk around that morning before the tour, I decided to find another little breakfast cart to eat at. I found this one man who had a cart that looked cleaner than the elderly woman we had been going to. What made it even better is that his drinks were only S/.50 and his quaker tasted much better to me. We had breakfast and then went over to the tour agency office to wait for our bus. The bus that arrived was the smallest bus we had been in yet. It was still bigger than a combi so it was ok. Our main attraction was going to be el Nevado Pastoruri (el neh-VAH-doo pahs-toh-RU-ree) but we were going to see other things along the way. I'm not sure if this is the correct translation but I think nevado means snow peak. The Andean Mountain Range is famous because it's a tropical mountain range. Pastoruri used to be an enormous glacier but due to global warming, it's rapidly losing its body mass. It's estimated it will disappear within 10-15 years :((

Chozas

Along the way, we saw some interesting chozas (CHO-sahs: huts). Our first stop was Pumapampa (puma-PAHN-pah). It's a spring full of oxidized water. Everything was nice and orange and we could see some snow covered mountain peaks in the distance. I'm not sure how far away it is from Huaraz but I think it took us about half an hour to reach it. When you walk close to the water, there's this sort of well where you can see the water bubbling. As always, we spent about 15 minutes there, maybe even less. Our guide went on to tell us that the area had once been underwater because marine fossils had been found there.

Pumapampa

We continued on our journey until we got to the Puya Raimondi (POOH-yah rai-MON-dee)  field. We had about 15 minutes to walk around and take pictures. Puya Raimondi is a plant that only grows at altitudes of 3,800 to 4,800 meters above sea level (12,450- 15,748 feet) in the Peruvian Andes. Its lifespan is between 40 to 100 years. It can grow to be anywhere from 6 to 15 meters tall (19-50 feet) when fully erect, no pun intended :P and the round porcupine thing can be a couple of meters tall as well. It was discovered by an Italian scientist in the 1820s and named after him a little over a century later. The plant releases between 8 to 12 million seeds when it blooms, which is after about three decades. The Puya is now an endangered species. This is due to many factors: climate change, herders starting fires for farming land, a lot of Puya communities are isolated from each other causing inbreeding to occur therefore making them susceptible to diseases, insects, etc. Peruvian officials say they're taking the necessary measures to protect the endangered plant but all of us in Peru know the poor plant is going to die out because if they're doing anything at all, it isn't much.