Los Olivos (No, Not the Olives…)

Morning starting off right: Lily’s freshly baked German bread. Delicious and seedy, hands down the best bread in Huaraz!

Yesterday on my hike down from Llaca I ran into my friend Rodrigo who lives in Marian. He and I and our friend Andrey met this morning and walked down through Huaraz towards Los Olivos (the local climbing crag across the river). A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice is one sole fifty centimos well spent.

Bumping electro swing, reggae, and mellow hip hop on the iphone mini speaker, we crushed. I mean, climbed. We climbed. One of my favorite songs of the day, Cool Down the Pace. (This is the original version…until now, I was only familiar with the Mattafix cover.)

Miguel, a friend of Rodrigo and Andrey joined us and then Guido and Victor (friends from the Casa de Guias) hopped on a route next to us. Guido, gettin’ after it.

We shifted to the other side of the crag when the sun got too hot and our hands started to sweat like running faucets. Climbing chalk is quite hard to get your hands on here and is quite expensive. To the shade, vamos!

Looking north across one of the tributaries to the Rio Santa (not pictured, to the right). Huaraz is located to the right of the frame of this shot.

As the weather moved closer, we munched mandarins and bananas and peanuts and golden raisins. Andrey and Rodrigo climbed a ridiculously hard overhung cave route while I led a climb to the side.

Right before I started to climb, as usual, I was visualizing my first few moves:

Pinch on the left, right hand into pocket on the right…ahhhhhhhh! What is that?! That’s a spider, ahhh, a tarantula! It’s as big as my hand!

We waited for the tarantula to clear out and then I climbed. How fun it was, reaching for those blind pockets. Comforting to know that this route is a spider hang out.

Solid sesh friends. Papas and huevos and choclo (corn) from the lady on the corner for dinner.