I needed a better name for this great day’s post than ‘to Huaco’ so dredged a bit for this. The day’s track
A detail, does it never end
And here’s an elevation chart, since I’ve found this feature on my GPS and because it looks cool
After a day to explore Huaraz some more and a day to try to get blog posts out I decide to head towards Lima and get some major things done (more later) before heading back into the mountains. Looking at the map we assume we’ll be heading downhill most of the day which turns out to be wrong, so we leave underdressed and spend the first half day freezing, too lazy to stop, unpack and grab another layer.
We head off across plains
Desolate in a good way
The closest we get to these southern mountains before heading west
Past a high cold lake
We follow the beginnings of a river, not prepared for the significance at this point
In the small valley we pass a few homes and a strange multi-pool construction of some kind. We pass a more complex one downstream and never figure them out
Then, heading down the valley beside the small river, there are old walls, sometimes between huge boulders at corners
A strange and beautiful sight, as the valley steepens
Down a bit, a couple of abandoned dwellings
It’s a beautiful setting
There are a few interesting plants up here. Very large and old woody Lupins. This guy must be decades old
A large cactus in bloom. In subzero temperatures or thereabouts. Seriously cold
Tough, small groundcover, SA Roulia or something like it
And this really exotic thing growing in the Lupin foliage. It took me a while to figure out – it’s a Passiflora, way up here above 13,000 feet. I nearly fell over when it came to me. A slight ‘maybe’ attached to that though, but I’m pretty sure
It’s occurred to me that as we head further away from the tropics the plant life will get more interesting, although SA isn’t as rich in native flowering plants as Asia or Europe.
More ancient walls
Then it steepens more and we go down a series of switchbacks, with more walls
I stop at a cluster of buildings, hoping for a lunch stop. But nope, just homes by the road. 
Out come these kids and their mom
They just stare. The mom’s not pleased with the camera so off I go with a smile from the tiny little girl
Down further, a pretty stream
Later, a reasonable sized town. But still no lunch spot
A couple of thousand feet further down and things were greening up
And another strange reservoir with various stages, like the one at the top of the valley, this one under construction. No idea
The valley narrows
A checkpoint at a town
And we’re populated again
At a big pullout there’s this jacked-up car with a metal spool of cable replacing a back wheel
The cable goes under the fence, over this pulley
To this cable-car
Which goes maybe 1000 feet across the valley to that small field
They’re harvesting duraznos, smaller than a peach, sweeter and softer than an apricot
Once the cable-car is full on the other side of the valley, dad jumps in, puts the car (loaded with big rocks) in gear and gasses it while his eldest son uses a stick to make sure the cable winds on evenly
The cable-car crosses the valley and arrives full of boxes, which the ladies have prepared on the other side. They unpack it
Stack it
Give the Canadian who says he hasn’t had lunch 5 to eat
And send the cable-car back to the other side
It takes them a week. Grandparents, parents and kids. They’re the Florian family and they’re from Tingo, just down the road and it was fun to be involved for an hour. Tingo’s on this plateau
Then the valley tightens up and dries out
Huge basalt cliffs
And finally down to the bottom which was a wide lush oasis for about 30 miles
The guy wouldn’t let me ride across this bridge, so I walked
To this old pueblo
Back on the road it was beginning to look a bit like Joshua Tree
Before widening out into a massive large-scale agricultural plain
Then it was a race into Huacho before dark.
A long post, but lots of pics and not-dead-slow internet.
