Passing through

Between May 15 and 17, we were on the road intermittently. On May 15,
we left Ollantaytambo for Cuzco. We arrived back at the apartment
where we'd stayed earlier, showered and got caught up on laundry and
email. That evening, we had planned to visit a restaurant for supper,
but when we got to Plaza San Francisco (one of the central squares),
we found a carnival-like atmosphere and decided to eat in the square.
Countless women were selling various Peruvian streetfood from carts on
the square: anticucho, fried eggs with potatoes, various barbecued
meat (including alpaca), popcorn and more. We bought the girls each a
plate of fried eggs with fried potatoes and rice. Derek and I decided
it was time to try anticucho: skewered chicken hearts, deep-fried and
punctuated with a small boiled potato at the end of the stick. Our
Lonely Planet guide calls it "heart attack on a stick" and "deeply
addictive" - both are true.

Next day, we were on the plane back to Lima so that we could next go
to Huaraz. Unfortunately, the various regions of Peru are not linked
up by good highways, and there aren't any flights from one town to
another, so if one wants to see more than one region, one must double
back to the capital and hub, Lima.

We were back in the capital by early afternoon and weren't scheduled
to be on the road until late night, so we had a few hours to fill. We
decided to go to the zoo. We had a couple of hours there before it
closed, so we got to see some Peruvian animals: llamas and alpacas
(and their close cousins, vecuñas and guanacos), leopards, a panther,
various small rainforest cats, many little monkeys of all sorts, a
sloth, toucans, and lots more. The kids' favourites: a small
rainforest cat and the tiniest monkeys.

Once the zoo closed, we grabbed a cab to downtown and hung out in
Plaza San Martín for a short while, then headed out to an entirely
forgettable restaurant that may or may nor have been the cause of a
very unpleasant busride for me that night... Lesson: Lonely Planet
suggestions aren't always foolproof.

By 9pm we were at the bus station to wait for our night bus (7-hour
ride) to Huaraz. The plan was that we'd get the kids settled at the
station so they could sleep a couple of hours before we hopped onto
the 11pm bus. Solanne slept a little; Maïa did not. Both slept well in
the bus and were surprisingly refreshed when we arrived in Huaraz at
6am.

The staff at our hotel, Soledad, was very gracious and let us check in
at 6:30. I recovered from whatever tummy bug I got; Derek took the
kids out to explore our new locale. After having been in some very
touristy towns, it was apparently a nice break to be in a town where
people just go about their day and don't exist just for tourists.
Derek describes Huaraz as a homely but nice town.