On sunday morning, my second full day in Huancayo I was again the first to wake up and because of the freezing temperature decided to stay in bed a bit longer. I happened to think about my experiences during the past two days and like to share some thoughts with you.

You could say this trip was my first real backpacking experience – I indeed had a huge backpack, was traveling alone, didn’t plan any activity in advance for this weekend and even stayed at a stranger’s place. On the train I guess everybody had an awesome experience, because somehow all backpackers seem to share the general attitude of being interested in getting to know people, culture and local traditions. These deep experiences and thoughts that getting rid of every-day life back home, work/study duties and all the routine things we do seem to put most of us in a kind of philosophical state. Somehow traveling together in an open and spontaneous way really binds together. It was amazing how naturally we talked to everybody else on the train, exchanged phone numbers and knowledge about the places we saw and Huancayo, our final destination. I am not someone to easily trust people I barely know, but in this case it was different. Like Couchsurfing it’s somehow a small community and at least I felt these people were somehow like me, leading to an intutitive feeling of trust.

I don’t know why we behave so much differently than I could imagine back in Europe. Is it the local culture we’re embracing, the sense of freedom away from home or just neccessity because we just don’t have a network of close friends over here?

Especially that weekend I felt is was the perfectly right decision to step out of the comfort zone and try something new and admittedly both frightening and promising in advance. It’s an extremely rewarding feeling to realize how social, friendly and plainly happy humans can tbe together without any materialism, luxury and entertainment and despite language barriers, different cultures and barely knowing each other. I’m already looking forward to my full three weeks of backpacking!

I woke up at 7.30 without any hadache and ready to do something. Still I stayed in bed till 8 reading the New York Times, because it was so cold. Then I got up and enjoyed the sun a bit on the rooftop before having breakfest. Marco had told me he will work from 9 to 11.30 but when I got back up to my room I met him and Jana (also German, Marco had met her in Huaraz and told me yesterday evening she was arriving today) was already there. Marco headed off to work and I had another breakfest with Jana talking about various stuff for hours until Marco called us to meet at the Plaza Major downtown at noon, so I quickly told the Belgian couple and we headed off using a colectivo, a taxi that picks up everybody who wants to join on the way up to 6 passengers, but we were lucky to only drive with 2 others.
When we arrived I was astonished about how many friends Marco had invited, our group now consisted of 2 Peruvians, 4 Italians, 2 Germans and 2 Belgians. At first Marco didn’t like to have such a large group, but in the end we took 2 (!) taxis to Huayucachi. Since we even had to take our luggage into the cabin there wasn’t much space and I was really happy when we arrived. There was a small festival ongoing and we were all hungry, so loocked around. There were two tables with old women serving food. We split up because the Belgians and I wanted to have cuy (guinea pig) and the others had chicken. The cuy was tasty, comparable to rabbit or chicken.
Afterwards we started our walk in a small street. We saw some baby dogs which were really cute, but when we had already passed them their mother came and barked at us protectively so we went a little bit faster. She still came after us and unfortunately I was last so she bit me, but luckily I wore a jeans, so her teeth didn’t reach my skin. Still it was a pretty strong bite and bled a little bit, but I don’t want to know what had happened to the girls with shorts. At that moment I also thought it was good to have the rabies vaccination.
The trek itself was very nice and we talked a lot. Marco was very entertaining and played his flute a lot. He also told us a lot about the history of Huancayo and we saw a church, that was built by the Spaniards in the 16th century being one of the first catholic churches in Peru.
We were in the sun almost all the time, but I was again a bit worried about getting sunburnt as I still only have spf 45.
We reached the top of one mountain at almost 3800 meters and the view was breathtaking. It felt like being on top of the world 🙂
Only minutes after we took the pictures at the top the sun was hiding behind some other mountain and it quickly got dark. The way back was just climbing down offroad and much stones were loose, so it was impossible not to fall sometimes. We were just lucky the moon was shining bright, othereise we would probably still be somewhere in that mountain searching for the way. When we arrived back at were we started we were a little bit afraid to encounter that dog again, but fortunately we didn’t. Instead of having to take a taxi we went by microbus this time back to Huancayo, which was equally crowded but cheaper.
Back to Huancayo Jana,Marco and wanted to go to a vegetarian restaurant, but it was closed, so we ended up in a chifa, but still had vegetarian food.

Afterwards we were all pretty tired so we showered and went to bed relatively early again.

It’s friday 29th of June – a national holiday here in Perú. My alarm goes off at 5.10 a.m. Luckily I have everything packed so I just grab my bags and some food and head off to the Metropolitano station. It fooles me a bit – at first the station is closed even though the first bus should already go through and then the display shows the next line A bus, the only one working for me goes in 40 minutes. Fortunately it still arrives on time and I am at the train station at 6.20 a.m. In line I already meet a guy from France and a couple from Belgium.

(I’ll switch to past tense here) We were able to skip the relatively large crowd of people waiting to get in, because they already had a ticket and we didn’t. The luggage was checked with metal detectors according to the Indian system – if it beeps they either do nothing or open the bag, close it almost immediately and it’s approved. The ticket check is about the same. We just have a pdf printout, with our names and passport number – I don’t have my passport with me, but they don’t even check the name.

There are 6 passenger cars – 4 are touristic class with 48 very comfortable, inclinable seats each, air conditioning (with the caveat of sealed windows), luggage storage and access to the observation car featuring a bar and even an included Pisco Sour. The real backpackers of course met in the classic cars – it was about half the price, but also included breakfest and lunch, coca leaf tea and touristic information via speakers in Spanish, English and French. The seats were actually comfortable and we had tables and could open the windows to take pictures. It turned out one car was only for online bookings and the the tickets to “clasico 2” were those sold at travel agencies and in supermarkets. It turned out that our car was almost full of tourists, while the other one had many Peruvians on it. There were a few empty seats, but the train was generelly quite full. I was sitting together with a Polish couple, but since there were four empty seats next to ours they left and the Belgian couple I had met earlier joined me, because their seats pointed into the wrong direction.

The train took off only 10 minutes late, which doesn’t really matter on a 12-hour ride. The locomotive was honking all the time, because the track goes right through the city and there were people, dogs and cows on it. We went through some parts of Lima which are not recommended to walk as a tourist, although they are not really frightening. Even though we went very slowly the train was already shaking vigorously to all sides, it feels as if the track was just good enough for the cars not to derail.

The whole railroad was build from 1870 and the track until Huancayo was finished in 1907. It includes many zig-zack switchbacks to be able to climb those mountains and thousands of workers died in the extreme situations up in the Andes. It was built to transport goods and the bi-weekly passenger train just goes because the train company was caused to offer this service by the government. Nowadays it is a lot cheaper and faster to go by bus(they only need 8 hours and the cheapest ones cost 1/4 of the train fare).

Those 12 hours went by amazingly fast, I chatted with the Belgians a lot, we got our foot airplane-style (although I guess most stewardesses will never in their lives experience turbulences comparable to the shaking in the train), but it was good. When I used their window to snap some pictures I talked to a group of three from the U.S. and found out two of them were from California. I asked them were exactly and guess what – they had just finished their studies at the UCSB in Santa Barbara. The world is so incredibly small!

During the trip we made three “touristic stops” were we could get off and walk around for about 20 minutes each. At the first stop the most interesting thing was a turntable, where three men turned around the whole locomotive by hand – the train changed its direction. There were also some old locomotives we could climb on and ring the bell 🙂

The second stop was a nice village called “Matucana” with a nice center, markets and crowded of people. Some kids were waiting for a train to dance to “Moscow, moscow”, which was nice but somehow strange in terms of unexpected.

Of course the most impressive was our third stop at “Galera”, the highest train station in the world at 4781 meters above sea level. The nurse started walking around offering oxygen, but it seems as if nobody was really sick of the altitude in our car. The Californians (is that a word?) even dring half a bottle of Vodka – I guess that doesn’t really help. They don’t even have a place to stay in Huancayo and try to make calls from the phone. Actually we had cell coverage most of the time, but it was very loud and they spoke almost no Spanish. Additionally most of the hostels seem to be full as well as buses going back to Lima as most people only drive to Huancayo and not back during the night.

After Galera we descended to Huancayo which is at about 3300 meters going through “La Oroya”, a small town infamous as being among the 10 most polluted places in the world – the largely unregulated (even state-owned for most of the time) mining industry left a dirty legacy. Especially the still active smelter for copper and lead and the zinc mine lead to most of the pollution. Unfortunately we didn’t stop, but the river didn’t look like it actually contained water.

About an hour before they told us we would arrive I had called Marco to tell him when to expect me as he wanted to pick me up from the station. He is a local mountain guide who made his hobby a profession. He is recommended in several books and the people owning the place where I live in Lima recommended me to ask for him. When I was searching for hostels I thought about trying to couchsurf and his was one of the first profiles I stumbled across. We took a taxi to his house, which is really big and is really luxurious for Peruvian standards. The living room, kitchen and bathroom are very European and he has a whole room for Couchsurfers with three beds.

I was now starting to feel the altitude (headache) and I guess I should have eaten less. Marco was really nice and offered me a lot of things, but  I just asked for coca leaf tea had a really good one from fresh leaves and went to bed very early. While it was really nice when we arrived during the night the temperature drops extremely to not much more than the freezing point and not even this house had any kind of heating or insulation, but I had enough blankets.