We hope everyone had a great Christmas and we wish you a very happy new year.

We are currently in Huarez, in the Northern Andes of Peru at 3100 metres. I am out of breath typing its that high.When we arrived a few days ago we believed we may have got off the bus at the wrong stop, as the snow capped mountain peaks we were expecting were simply not there. We grumpily made up our mind that Huarez was a waste fo time and we didnt want to be stuck in the cold and rain for christmas when there wasnt anything to see, and swiftly took the next bus out of town to a place called Caraz. Here there really was nothing to do other than pay too much for the only decent hotel in town. So we stuck our tails between our legs and returned to Huarez, where to our great delight and suprise the sun was shining, the clouds were gone and, oh look, what are those? The most spectacular snow capped mountain peaks surrounding the whole town. Pesky things were hiding before obviously.

Some of the mountains stretch up higher than the clouds, some as high as 6000 metres. Owing to the patchy weather and lack of proper warm weather gear we decided to pass on the week long expeditions in a tent, and instead took a daytrip up to the Pastoruri glacier on Christmas eve safe in the knowledge we had clean clothes and a roof over our heads when we returned. On the way up from Huarez the driver stopped for his lunch at a roadside cafe, giving us the opportunity to sample some mate de coca (tea made from coca leaves) which locals say makes it much easier to deal with the extreme altitude in the andes. It worked in as much as our lungs didnt collapse, but it did taste pretty gross so i might stick to the better tasting coca sweets in future. During the ascent we stopped at a couple of semi-interesting places, firstly a water springs with such high mineral content that the surrounding flora and rocks had been turned bright orange. It tasted of metal, yuk. Second on the whistle-stop tour (the driver was in no mood to give us any information or stop for longer than 5 minutes at anything other than the point he dropped us off at the foot of the mountain) were the worlds tallest flowers, about 5 metres high, which flower once and die. They were dead, but that didnt stop an annoying swiss couple taking at least 400 photos of the stupid things. A fleeting glimpse of some 1500 year old rock paintings and then we were almost there. We hurredly started to put on every item of clothing we had as the minivan climbed up and up and up, all the while giving us amazing views of the surrounding snowy mountains (at this point it was very clear, not for long....) and we arrived at the base of Pastoruri, 5000 metres up.

The climb up to the glacier (only another 400 metres) was unimaginably tough, every step felt like we were dragging a block of lead under our shoes, and every breath felt as if someone was increasingly tightening a massive elastic band across our chests. Then the blizzard hit. This reduced our visibilty to about 3 metres, and reduced every exposed piece of skin to burning, stinging, red raw useless flesh. I have never before been that cold, and both of us spent the rest of the day inwardly cursing that we hadnt exchanged our christmas presents a day early as (unbeknown to each other) we had both bought each other some very warm Peruvian alpaca wool hats and gloves. Oh how i wanted those gloves!! But when we did make it to the top, thighs burning with wet and cold, lungs burning due to a lack of oxygen and hands about to drop off, it was definetely worth it! We were face to face with an enourmous block of ice hundreds of thousands of years old, as pure white as, well, snow and ice. We felt pretty privileged to witness this as the glaciers in this area are apparently receeding very fast owing to global warming, but luckily we werent adding to it as we simply had no oxygen to convert into CO2!

Returning back to Huarez I decided that perhaps i hadnt given Cuy a fair chance before, and that the local speciality picante de cuy (spicy guinea pig stew) might warm me up and might even taste better second time around. It didnt, its still tough and chewy and scraggy and disgusting.

We spent Christmas day preparing our make-shift christmas dinner of potatoes, veg and sausages, which actually ended up being one of the best meals we have had in a very long time! Then just like home we ate so much we could barely stand, drank beers and relaxed watching christmas films (you gotta love pirate one dollar DVDs!) after a couple of phone calls home. All in all a good christmas :)