Pastoruri Glacier

My weekend trip to Huaraz was off to a bad start. I’d taken a two-hour van ride to Tarapoto, caught a flight south to Lima, and was going to take an overnight bus north to Huaraz, hopefully getting a little sleep along the way. First, though, I needed to get from the Lima airport to the bus terminal. I split a cab with a couple of other people who were heading ‘approximately’ in the same direction. The taxi ride ended out taking about two hours, through some of the most terrifying traffic I’ve ever seen, and the taxi driver tried to get more money out of us, because we were less approximately in the same direction than he had believed when we started. Then when I got to the bus station, finished waiting in one line, was redirected to another line, and got to the front, I was informed that I was at the wrong terminal. The Huaraz buses left from another terminal, a 15-minute cab ride from there. It was only after getting there and waiting in a couple more lines that I was finally ready to start my overnight bus ride. At which point I spilled a soda all over myself.

The question: could Huaraz possibly be worth all this hassle?



The answer: a resounding yes.



On my first day here, I went up to Huascaran National Park, to hike around the Pastoruri Glacier.





These are the largest bromeliads in the world, the largest flowers in the world, and can live up to 100 years before flowering and dying.



A trip to Peru is incomplete without alpacas in sunglasses.

Also, dinosaurs:



Skiing and snowboarding were allowed on the glacier until recently, but because it’s melting so rapidly, that’s no longer permitted (it's now billed as part of the 'climate change trail' instead).











After my hike, I had the worst headache of my life (pro-tip: going from sea-level the night before to a several hour hike at 16,500 feet can apparently be hazardous to your health), and went to bed at 7:30 pm.

Still totally worth it.