Holding onto Huaraz

Our arrival in Huaraz, Peru not only began our longest stationary stint in South America, but also signalled the beginning of the end of our hispanophone adventures. The three weeks spent in this Andean trekking hotspot would be our last destination in the southern hemisphere, and our first (almost entirely) non-graduate-school-related travel experience of the trip. Despite the early onset of we're-almost-home syndrome, we wanted to make the last hurrah of South America count.

So...first things first, we wasted no time in confirming the existence of fine French press coffee in Huaraz. Cafe Andino - whose mismatched armchairs, tofu fajitas, and gorgeous mountain views put me in mind of Boulder, Colorado - quickly became a haven for us on rainy, homesick, or stressful days.



Stormy view of Huaraz from Cafe Andino

Next, we dove into our second volunteer experience of the trip: offering up our tutoring services to an organization called Seeds of Hope. As it turns out, the at-risk students Seeds supports would have been much better served had our intentions to learn Spanish progressed a little bit further. We had thought we might be giving English lessons or leading farm vocabulary games, but when presented with our first geography worksheet and asked to explain it to expectant middle-schoolers, we realized our linguistic (not to mention mathematical) preparation had been a little lacking. Give professora a second to remember how to find the lowest common denominator...and then give professora a moment to look up "common" and "denominator" in the English-Spanish dictionary. Luckily, our students are willing to teach as well, and between answering questions about my bicycle and what street Shakira lives on, tutoring has given us a chance to practice our basic conversation skills.


During this indescribably long day, we attempted an origami lesson. Approximately half the children mastered the paper crane in the first half hour and proceeded to produce, seemingly without fatigue, an alarmingly large flock of colored birds. The other half tacitly gave up on the "learning" part of the exercise and instead used an innocent-sounding "ayudame, profe" to recruit one of their gullible professors to manufacture cranes for them for the next two hours.

Finally, we enjoyed one of the best possible highlights of a long spell abroad: a visitor from home. My very own tocaya (name twin), Lauren Berka, used her Thanksgiving break from graduate school to come visit us in Huaraz and and thus gave us an excuse to treat ourselves to the best the city has to offer. In the series below (my apologies for the explosion of photos), you can see us sampling Andean brews, tackling the Laguna 69 trek, attempting a Peruvian Thanksgiving dinner, and wandering the mountains outside of town.

Laguna 69



Breaking my personal altitude record at 15,090 ft (plus two)



Approaching the Llanganuco Lakes

Thanksgiving dinner with Lauren and the other Seeds volunteers



The Cordrillera Blanca outside of Huaraz



It's always difficult to stave off the first tinges of itchy feet as you reach the end of a journey. But a visit from a good friend, gorgeous mountains, and a multitude of unknown Spanish verb tenses have helped anchor us in Huaraz. I hope that when I write to tell you how our trip wraps up, I will be able to say that I savoured my last tastes of Peru and South America.