Arrived in Huaraz after an absolutely hideous night bus journey - i have decided that i never want to travel on one again. Huaraz is a really nice city up in the Andes. We spent a couple of days preparing for our trek and project, then set off.
On our first evening camping we went to visit some ruins. the temperature was pleasant, and I remember thinking that the trek wouldnt be so bad. We set off the next morning and had an hour of nice flat trekking before our leader pointed into a very steep valley and said that we had to go down into it and up the other side. That was when the hell began.
After a good few hours of uphill was when I had my one and only breakdown of the two weeks we were in the mountains - i decided that I couldnt carry on any furthur without food and burst into tears - slightly embarrassing but never mind! After lunch somebody got bitten by a dog, but the leader decided that it was fine, and just to trust the locals that the dog wasnt rabid - very encouraging!
The entire trek continued in this vain - very tiring carrying backpacks, very hilly (no matter how flat our leader said it was), cold and wet. Not that Im complaining, or anything. We lived on noodles for dinner and porridge for breakfast - yummy!
On the last day we arrived at our project in Solidad de Tambo. There is only one way to describe this place - muddy. We had to wear wellies just to go to the toilet, which, by the way, was a hole in the ground at the bottom of the churchyard where we were staying which we had dug. The project involved digging a trench, then digging loads of holes for fenceposts to go in for a barbed wire fence, which we finished before we left. the village was in the middle of nowhere, and seemed to have a kind of microclimate of cold - every time we walked down to the ´town´ about 1/2 an hour away, it was far warmer.
There were some good time though - on one day we had lunch of potatoes baked in an outside wood burning oven and tuna with the locals - it was really nice.
Finally it was time to leave. we trekked for 5 hours downhill to the bus and all sat gratefully down on actual chairs for once! on the way back to Huaraz we visited Chavin, some really interesting Inca ruins. We got back and had a hot shower, washing our hair for the first time in 2 weeks. We had a really nice couple of days just relaxing and sleeping in Huaraz before heading on to Lima.