A rare evening out...

Yesterday was a rest day. We didn't leave the apartment until after lunch when we made our way down to the central area to pick up some more supplies.

There is a small archaeological museum at the central plaza, so we paid the 5 soles ($2 CAD, $1.50 USD) entrance fee per person and went to see what there was to see.

Pastoruri Glacier Tour - Peru

We've pretty much figured that we are going to stay here in Huaraz for the balance of our Peru trip. There is simply too much to see and do in this area that we don't see the point of moving somewhere else just for the sake of moving. We love our accommodation, and the area itself is spectacular.

Take yesterday, for example. Once again we booked a day tour with Peruvian Mountain Adventures. The cost of group day tours is usually around 50 soles ($19.50 CAD, $15 USD) each and that is for the full day tour. We've learned that it wouldn't be much less to get to any of these places on your own, so the day tours make a lot of sense.

What do we do on a day off in Peru?

Here in Peru, a day off is when we don't do any hiking! It's important to take a break after some of the strenuous hiking we've been doing.

So after doing the Laguna 69 hike on Tuesday, we made Wednesday a day of rest.  Of course that doesn't mean we just sit around and watch television all day!

Five Things to Do When You Have Just a Couple of Days at Home

Does it seem like you are constantly travelling? Maybe you have a job that requires you to be on the road at all times, travelling outside the country and even continent. Then again, maybe you just really enjoy travelling and try to book trips as often as possible. While the travelling part may be fun, exciting, and busy, it doesn’t leave you much time at home. When you are at home, that means you need to scramble to fit everything in before you’re off on your next trip.

To help you manage your time a little better, here’s a look at the top five things to do when you have just a couple days at home.

Well, we did pretty good at 15,000 feet...

...for a couple of almost 58 year olds!

We had booked a day tour hike to Laguna 69. It's a fairly popular hike, but the trailhead is located in Huascarán National Park and it's a 3 hour ride to get there from the city of Huaraz. Normally, we would try to arrange our own transportation and do the hike on our own, but it makes more sense in these mountains to go with an experienced guide. Plus, the cost isn't much more than you would pay for transportation alone. In this case, we chose Peruvian Mountain Tours as our operator.

Downpour!

By the time you are reading this, we will be somewhere up in the Peruvian Andes. We are being picked up at 4:45am for a 3 hour bus ride to the trailhead for the Laguna 69 hike.

This is a popular hike that leads to a turquoise glacial lake located at 15,000 ft elevation. Are we ready for that? Not sure, but I guess we'll find out today!

Our first day hike in Peru

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here, but that doesn't mean that it rains all day long. In fact yesterday we woke up to sunshine and blue skies. Perfect for our first hike in Peru.

There is a pre-Incan ruins site about 6 kms (3.7 miles) from our residence. And it's an uphill climb of about 1,300 feet in that distance, so it would be good exercise and we would see how our bodies are adjusting to the altitude.

A little bit of excitement last night

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here at the base of Huascarán National Park. Prime hiking months are apparently June, July, and August when you get mostly clear blue skies. So while we do get some sunshine through the day, it is mostly cloudy and there is a good chance of a shower every day as well.

We are getting our bodies used to the fact that we are at 10,000 ft altitude. Most of the good hiking is upwards of 12,000 ft, so it is good to take a couple of days to get used to the thinner air.

We didn't expect this scenery

Most people who have never visited Peru have only a vision of Machu Picchu in their minds when they think of Peru. We were the same, of course, because we had never been here either.

So we were somewhat surprised to learn that the city of Lima and the surrounding area is all desert. That's one of the reasons there are very few trees in the city itself, and it's such a dusty dirty city.

Four dollars well spent!

One thing that we have learned about the city of Lima is that it takes forever to get anywhere. Traffic is horrendous, and while we've enjoyed our three days here, three days was enough for us. We probably could have done one more day in the downtown core, which would have been fine if we were actually staying in the downtown core. But we were not.

Most tourists who come to visit Lima stay in the "Miraflores" neighborhood. But Miraflores is an exclusive residential and upscale shopping neighborhood. It's not really our style, and it's certainly not what we came to Peru for.

A busy day in Lima, Peru

Yesterday, we made our way to "el centro"... the downtown historical section of Lima. We had originally planned on taking the local bus, but it's not an easy system to figure out and even with our hosts help it seemed confusing.

Plus, Lima is a big dirty city of 8 million people, and not all areas are what could be considered safe for tourists. In fact, our Uber driver told us that "Lima is full of bad people".

Beautiful photos of Peru

I know you are expecting us to show you beautiful photos of Peru. And hopefully we will live up to your expectations one of these days, but it won't be today!

Yesterday was our first full day in Lima. We are staying in a nice place with a very friendly local family who do not speak any English.

Arrived in Lima, Peru... country #38

Lindsey drove us to Ottawa airport at 11:30am yesterday. Lots of time for our 2:00pm flight to Montreal. We find that time passes quickly in airports, and it's always better to arrive at an airport early than late!

Sure enough, we were soon boarding our "puddle jumper" flight to Montreal.

We are off to Peru!

Yesterday, one of our readers asked about our trip cancellation insurance.

We have been using a TD Travel Visa that includes a variety of insurance provided you use that Visa card to book your trip. Now, we have a Scotiabank Passport Travel Visa and it includes the same suite of insurance products. Interestingly, in all of our years of travel, we have never had to use cancellation insurance, and this year we have had to use it twice!

Our trip to Ecuador is cancelled!

We've been closely watching the escalation of problems in Ecuador.

Ecuador does not have their own currency. They use the U.S. dollar. While this provides a level of currency stability, it creates other problems. When a country has its own currency, they simply print more of it. However in this situation, the Ecuador government was running out of money, so they went to the International Monetary Fund and took out a loan of $4.2 billion.