We arrived at 6am in Huaraz... under the sun, which was nice especially after spending 2 days under the grey sky of Lima. Huaraz has been destroyed by a hearthquake in 1970 and was reconstructed like an american city. All in concrete, large straight streets, so the city is not very nice. We straight looked for a hotel and after booking a room and dropping our backpacks we tried to book a tour for the day. We booked a tour to Pastoruri (a summit 5240m high) with an agency (S/30, price was S/45 but we asked for a discount) and soon regretted it. They told us the tour will start at 8h30, but at 8h30 they told us it will be at 9h and at 9h they told us it will be 9h40....we complained as we got very annoyed by the way they were treating their customers and ended up getting our money back. Lucky us we managed to book another tour to Pastoruri at the last minute with another agency for the same price (S/30). We really liked the tour, we saw beautiful landscapes, impressive plants called puya raimondi (can be up to 12m high, see picture), and even walked up to 5000m (the shelter), we did not make it up to the glacier as we suffered from the altitude (we got a headache and we could not catch our breath), we saw the difference with the Chimborazo. When we went to the Chimborazo we had been in the mountains for more than a week. Today we had just arrived from the coast and felt more the effect of the altitude. When back in Huaraz we booked a guide with the agency Chavin Tours to go the next day to the Laguna Churrup ($20 for two). We tried to recover from a long day having a very nice meal at the restaurant El Horno. Walking around Huaraz after our meal we have been very surprised to see that the town is very lively. We ended up buying nice hats, gloves and scarfs.
