Andy in the Andes

I´m in Huarez, Peru. It´s 10 hours north of Lima, about an hour inland from the coast. Pretty much in the middle of the country. And in the middle of the Andes mountains, at an altitude of 3400m or so. High. I flew to Lima from Cusco, then took an overnight bus here - arriving at the standard 5:30am.
As I walked up to the bus station in Lima, in a dark shady part of town, I almost physically bumped into my volunteer friends from Pisco - Conor and Cat! Crazy. That was after randomly bumping into my friends Jack and Kate in line for Wayna Picchu at Machu Picchu, and after randomly bumping into my French trekking friend Jonathon (who kindly gave me his cold that SOB, my nose is running and I can´t catch it) on the streets of Cusco as I was hailing a cab to the airport, and after randomly bumping into my friend Ellen in Aquas Calientes, who was sitting in a restaurant, saw me walk by and shouted my name. I tell ya - I know they call it the gringo trail, but still.

I went mountain biking and rock climbing today. It was great. I was looking around, asking myself - Self? Are you having a good time? It´s hard to tell sometimes, sometimes when you travel you feel lonely, wondering what you´re doing there, yearning for the comforts of home.

And just as a sidenote, comforts include: toilet paper in the bathroom, drinking water that isn´t yellow, drinks sold in stores (including beer) that are actually refrigerated instead of being just dusty, showers that shower you with water at a temperature higher than 42 degrees - you know, the usual.

But as I looked around at the snow capped mountains, breathing in fresh mountain air, in a different hemisphere -- the answer was an undeniable ýes´.

There are things that take getting used to, the pollution, the poverty - but that´s just the way it is.

Anyway, I signed up for a 4 day trek through the Andes mountains, leaving tomorrow at 5:45am. They sure do like to start things early around here. The hike goes up to a height of 4800m, which -- is high.

The highest mountain in the Andes (Huascaran) is very near here, at an absurd height of 6700 meters. Or 20 something thousand feet. Yards, meters, centimeters, feet. You do the math.

The temperature at night reaches lows of -6 or -7 Celsius, which -- is cold. I don´t have my handy Celsius-Fahrenheit convertor handy, but I do know that 0 Celsius is 32 Fahrenheit. So.... -7 is cold.
I booked it through a shop in town. A very nice man, and a nice wife who speaks English. They recommended a restaurant in town, for the fish.
They said if I wasn´t ready for Ceviche just yet (I told them I was saving my Ceviche self for the coast) that I could try the fish nuggets. Great!
In my haste I forgot to ask them what the Spanish name for the fish nuggets was. That would´ve been handy information.

I get to the restaurant, and as usual it´s a free-for-all. Monkeys throwing darts at a darkboard.
Who knows what anything is. I ordered Chita-Frita or something like that, assuming that Frita means fried and that the fish nuggets should be fried. It was just a guess.

Well, what actually appeared 20 minutes later was a poor fish that appeared to have been dunked in a fryer for 20 minutes. Head and all. Poor fish.

How am I supposed to eat something with a face still on it? Dammit. I felt like Jack Kerouac in Big Sur. It really bothered me actually. Made me want to be a vegetarian. I think if I actually saw what happened in slaughterhouses I would be a vegetarian.

Walking around town yesterday, they had black mesh bags full of something furry. I looked closer and realized it was a bunch of guinea pigs, huddled together in fear, in a small black mesh bag, waiting to be sold, killed, and eaten. Nice.

Anyway, I´m out of time! I´ll be back Wednesday. I still need to report on Machu Picchu, but the short report is that it is amazing. A marvel. A work of art. Indescribable.