Hostal Blanco

The next day we drove through the Canon del Pato to Huaraz, and the pictures speak for themselves here. It was a gorgeous road that goes through 35 tunnels in just a few kilometers. After the canyon it’s paved, and goes through lots of green small towns that remind us of Ecuador.

We finally arrived in Yungay, the turn off to the Cordillera Blanca and Huascaran National Park, where we intended to spend the night. At the gate however we were told that it would be $25 each to spend the night in the park. This was for the month pass. No amount of explaining that we only wanted one night would suffice. Oh well, we headed up to Laguna Llaganuco for a hike anyway. Driving into the glacial valley was amazing, the walls went straight up until they disappeared into the clouds. Every now and then we caught glimpses of the snow covered peaks that surrounded us. Although the Cordillera Blanca is only 20km wide and 180km long, there are 50 peaks over 5700m. For reference, North America only has three and Europe has none of this height. We were at the base of Peru’s highest mountain, Nevado Huascaran, at 6768m.

We were also amazed at the masses of Peruvians from Lima. Hordes of tourist, with only a sprinkling of gringos.

Descending back to Yungay we saw a green land rover with roof racks coming around the corner. Being an overlander down here is pretty exciting, and we get excited to meet others. “It’s the germans it’s the germans” we said. Stopping next to us I opened my window and asked “Toby?” We had been told about them and their green land rover by Collin and Liz, the brits we met in Huanchaco. We had a quick chat and exchanged contact information as it was sleeting.

I’ve often wondered how it happens that places like Bates Motel stay in business. Well, much as in the movie, it was raining, we couldn’t find a decent place to park the van, and then we saw a tiny, faded sign saying “Hostal Blanco” past the windscreen wipers. Walking up the dark muddy track I found Norman. Well, actually his name was Victor – but he was weird. He ran down to open the creaky iron gate and ran ahead of the van looking much like Gollam in his gate. This is when the back of the van started loosing traction and in an instant the back right wheel dropped two feet into the corn field. Stuck. Getting out and inspecting the situation I realized that we may have been the first guests here in years and the better part of the road track had been taken over by the corn field.

Kim got very excited that we would finally get to use the HighLift. I’d explained to her the intricacies of this marvel of engineering, how it can lift, pull, pry, and knock teeth right out. I was very pleased to have married a woman that gets excited about these sorts of things. After getting rigged up we began slowly extricating the van, my biggest concern being that the front wheel would slide off and that the van would promptly roll over. Pablo manned the HighLift, his wife barked instructions to all four of us, and Victor ran around apologizing and pushing. An hour later the next adventure ensued. The “hot” shower.

In the cold highlands our solar shower never warms up, and after a long day in the rain we thought a hot shower would be nice. As I was cleaning mud off the chains and highlift, Kim came out asking if I could try and make the shower hot. Being covered in mud we decided to ask Norman. He confessed that the breaker sometimes needs to be fiddled with – with very dry hands – he said several times, making me wonder about past guests demise. Some fiddling later and the lights dimmed a LOT as the water started coming out warm. This was one of those South American shower heads that have wires (often bare) running into it and a heating element inside. (I suspect Underwriters Laboratories would treat it like a bomb.) Just as Kim got wet, pop, all the lights went out. I looked outside to see if her shower had darkened the whole town, but it seemed to just be our area. Well, so much for the warm shower!

The beds were in about as good repair as the shower so we retired to the van for an excellent night sleep in the cool mountain air of Yungay.