Cordillera Blanca

The moutains are incredibly beautiful. During the tour along the valley I saw the many amazing peaks covered with snow - hence the name - many of them over 6,000 meters high with passes for trekking at between 4,000 and 5,000 meters. I visited the city of Yungay. It was destoroyed by an earthquake and mudslide in 1970, everything fell except the fasade of the church. It is now a Campo Santo - a big cementary. Some graves are in places in which bodies were found. 20,000 people died in that earthquake... But it is a park/cementary. There are flowers and bushes everywhere and it's a very peaceful place. Visitors walk around and think of the ones who have parished there. The new town was built on a hillside north of the old town. I also visited a few other small towns in the vicinity, all overlooking the massive mountains. I admired the mountains from afar - I didn't feel well enough to do any trekking. People told me that trekking in these mountains is very demanding and one has to be in the top form to do it. I saw a few trekkers in Huaraz with twisted ankles and broken legs. There was one recovering, his leg in a plaster cast, in my hostal.

From Huaraz I went back to Casma for a day to recover from the altitude and then went to Trujillo, about which in the next entry.