¿Lady?

After repeatedly seeing photographs in National Geographic of the Cordillera Blanca Mountains in Perú, I was determined to find my way there. It is not close to anything. Particularly, Ecuador. After approximately twenty four hours of bus travel, we finally found ourselves on the brief seven hour bus ride to Huaraz. Of course, after an hour the bus driver pulled into a non-town and declared lunch. This has been an irritatingly frequent theme on our journey. The entire bus was asleep and the driver started shouting - get up! Lunchtime! Leave the bus! We finally did as we were commanded to do and sat down for our first Peruvian meal in what appeared to be someone´s living room. A tiny woman came out and asked us if we wanted el menú. This seemed like a logical thing to ask for, so we said yes. Apparently menú in Peru doesn´t mean menu, but the daily meal. Of chicken foot soup. For the record, menú means menu in all of the other countries we have been to.

Jack flew into Lima and we demanded that he immediately find an overnight bus to meet us in Huaraz, the base town for trekking in the area. He brought with him the following things: the inability to speak Spanish, one headlamp with dead batteries, several requested clif bars, which he consumed on the plane, a sleeping bag, which he left at our hostel during our trekking expedition, and the inability to instantly adjust to high altitude. He was, overall, a real drain on all parties.

The year 23 got off to a rough start. I spent the day waiting for Jack´s recovery, while basking in high altitude sunshine, reading the New Yorker food issue he provided, watching a birthday slash human rights parade and gazing up at the mountains we would soon be wandering through. The next day, we embarked on the Santa Cruz trek, which is four days through the Cordillera Blancas. We had a guide, Abel and a dutch companion, Thea, who was referred to as Lady for the entire trek. ´Lady? Do you want bread with avocado?´The Coridllera Blancas are rather hideous. At one point Abel asked us if we wanted to do a side excursion, where we could see a turquoise lake fed by an enormous glacier, framed to
the left




by the Paramount Pictures logo and to the right by a mountain voted the most beautiful in the world, by some guys in Munich.



We have moved along through Lima and embarrassingly enough, flew to Cusco. We decided that it was the best bus to flight time ratio of all. One hour and 20 minutes of flying versus twenty seven hours ofbusing . What do you think? Here, we narrowly avoid being hit my miniature cars as we wander through old alleys past original Inca stonework housing hipster cafes. Jack has purchased at least seventeen winter hats. Our Thanksgiving dinner involved Alpaca, potatoes and delicious lamb. We were extremely thankful.