After meeting back up in Lima for a day, Alex and Joe departed back to the UK. After they left, me, Niall and Lyle headed north to Huaraz, a hiking town. We hiked up to Laguna 69, a lagoon formed from the meltwater of the nearby glacier. Whilst at the top of the hike with view of the lagoon, we heard very loud cracking of the glacier for around 40 seconds, didnt see where this was occuring, could have been the other side of the mountain but was amazing to listen to.
The next day, we visited Laguna Paron where we took a row boat onto the lagoon.
With me and Niall running out of time in Peru, we didnt have time to do any multi day hikes in Huaraz, although Lyle has stayed there to do the Santa Cruz trek. The day before me and Niall departed we decided to have a small walk up the hills and have a look across the city and surrounding mountains. One of the mountains visible was Artesonraju, the mountain used for the Paramount intro on films (from a different angle).
After admiring the views, we kept walking, not prepared for what would come. All of a sudden a large dog came sprinting at us full pelt, very aggresively barking. It split us off and then seemed to be chasing Lyle. After it gave up on Lyle, it came for me and Niall. I can vividly remember sprinting as fast as I could, looking behind, sprinting, looking behind 2 seconds later and seeing all the ground it had made on me. In that moment I fully thought within the next few seconds I was getting brought down via a leg bite. Luckily it gave up, as it did with Lyle. We think we must have ended up going down the wrong path, towards a farm, and the dog was aggresively protecting the territory and chasing us off. At this point, we were fully pumped with adrenaline and on high alert. This did not bode well for walking back into the town toward the hostel, past many many street dogs who could sense this. Our first encounter on the way back was with 4 other dogs (3 small dogs, 1 was bigger), who chased us down some rubble, where at the bottom were 2 huge dogs resting. Much to our delight they weren’t bothered at all, presumably having “seen it all before” from their neighbours. We had been completely fine with street dogs the whole trip, but now as we met each set of strays, hearing the barks of the previous set they thought we were a group that needed chasing off. It was very relieving to get back to the safety of the Hostel! I have since looked up how to better deal with conflicts like that -running is not the best idea as they will chase, and usually be faster!
The next day me and Niall headed back to Lima, leaving Lyle to do the Santa Cruz trek. After Niall left, i had 2 days to chill in Miraflores, Lima before flying to Cartagena, Colombia. I’m currently writing this after arriving at my hostel in Cartagena, and I’m finally up to date with the blog! With any hope, you can expect more frequent posts now, rather than nothing for ages and then a mad catchup. We’ll see…
My plans are to head to Taganga within the next few days and do some Scuba diving.
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