It feels like we´ve been here ages, but in fact it´s only been a couple days. We´ve been pottering about this little town which is quite quirky. We´ve found ourselves staying in a hostel that is normally frequented by Israelis, however there are none staying at the moment because it´s low season. Strange, because I thought all the notices and posters on the walls were in Quechuan (the local Peruvian language), when in fact they were in Hewbrew! The lady who owns the hostel said that she started it 24 years ago and one of the first people that stayed was an Israeli, and since then, most of her guests have been Israelis. Nothing like word-of-mouth recommendation! We even looked in her guest book and on every other page there´s a European couple, other than that, they´re all Israeli. We´re with a Swiss couple and French girl, all of whom are really fun to be around.
Huaraz is on a fault line and has been hit with many natural disasters in the last 100 years. The two main types of disaster are earthquakes, and the second are aluviones which are when high glacial lakes burst their banks causing a wall of water to wipe out whole towns in the area. Huaraz has been rebuilt at least three times and so is not the most beautiful city, but Mother Nature certainly keeps you on your toes.
The surrounding countryside is high glacial mountains and is impressive because of the number of peaks over 6,000m. It´s really quite beautiful and yesterday, we went on a tour to visit one of the glaciers, where we were allowed to clamber all over it. It was melting at an incredible rate and at the base of the ice was a small cavern which allowed you to see under the glacier. There was lots of water and a beautiful bluish hue from the centre - very pretty. We climbed almost to the top of the glacier, which was a breathless 5,200m and very tough. Getting down was much more fun, especially as we were sitting on our plastic bags. Unfortunately, I span out of control and bashed my head on some ice, just before being saved by Stu. Nothing worse then falling over on the ski slope though, and no lasting damamamage.
As part of our tour (more like package tour), we also visited a few local touristic sites, which were a touch amusing. The first stop was a pond of effervescent water - all naturally carbonated! The little pond was surrounded by a couple of traditionally dressed women with llamas wearing sunglasses and wigs. There were also the obligatory small child with a lamb wanting you to take their photo. The lamb was called Picachu and very cute, but not worthy of a photo. The 15 Peruvian teenagers on a school trip from Lima seemed tolike this though and enjoyed both the llamas in fancy dress and the carbonated water.
The next stop was the ´lake of many colours´, which was in fact a small pond, no bigger than my front room and generally a dirty brown colour, rather then the well publicised seven colours. We then saw plants that only flower every one hundred years, and unfortunately they weren´t flowering! Anyway, it was still a fun trip and we enjoyed our time on the glacier.
Huaraz is on a fault line and has been hit with many natural disasters in the last 100 years. The two main types of disaster are earthquakes, and the second are aluviones which are when high glacial lakes burst their banks causing a wall of water to wipe out whole towns in the area. Huaraz has been rebuilt at least three times and so is not the most beautiful city, but Mother Nature certainly keeps you on your toes.
The surrounding countryside is high glacial mountains and is impressive because of the number of peaks over 6,000m. It´s really quite beautiful and yesterday, we went on a tour to visit one of the glaciers, where we were allowed to clamber all over it. It was melting at an incredible rate and at the base of the ice was a small cavern which allowed you to see under the glacier. There was lots of water and a beautiful bluish hue from the centre - very pretty. We climbed almost to the top of the glacier, which was a breathless 5,200m and very tough. Getting down was much more fun, especially as we were sitting on our plastic bags. Unfortunately, I span out of control and bashed my head on some ice, just before being saved by Stu. Nothing worse then falling over on the ski slope though, and no lasting damamamage.As part of our tour (more like package tour), we also visited a few local touristic sites, which were a touch amusing. The first stop was a pond of effervescent water - all naturally carbonated! The little pond was surrounded by a couple of traditionally dressed women with llamas wearing sunglasses and wigs. There were also the obligatory small child with a lamb wanting you to take their photo. The lamb was called Picachu and very cute, but not worthy of a photo. The 15 Peruvian teenagers on a school trip from Lima seemed tolike this though and enjoyed both the llamas in fancy dress and the carbonated water.
The next stop was the ´lake of many colours´, which was in fact a small pond, no bigger than my front room and generally a dirty brown colour, rather then the well publicised seven colours. We then saw plants that only flower every one hundred years, and unfortunately they weren´t flowering! Anyway, it was still a fun trip and we enjoyed our time on the glacier. 
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