MUNGO EATS Latin America

Yesterday started out just great.  We got the van out of it’s secured parking space, got packed, left Betty’s at a reasonable hour, and headed towards the propane place.  We found our way through Lima quite easily and found the propane place without any trouble.  They easily found what we needed as our adapter, and we also found our way to a gas station, filled both the gas and the propane tanks AND found our way out of Lima, without any issues.  How great is that?  Our eventual destination was Huaraz, but this is about 8 hours from Lima, without looking for propane adapters, etc.  There is a National Reserve just about an hour out of Lima, and this was our intended destination.  We found the reserve without difficulty, but…NO DOGS ALLOWED!!  Man, would our lives be easier without this hound!  So then, we had no destination.

We decided to beach camp again, even though we spent half a day in Lima brushing sand out of the van from the last beach camp.  We stumbled on an official picnic/camping area, in the middle of nowhere.  There was a salt pond about 500m from the ocean, and there were a series of cabañas around the pond for rent.  We camped in the van though.  It was a nice quiet camp spot.  The only unfortunate thing was that they locked the bathrooms overnight.  We took some nice walks on the beach, Mungo got to chase more crabs, and we found a couple of dolphin carcasses to look at (gory, but interesting).

This morning we were back on our way to Huaraz.  The city is located high in the mountains, so today we went from sea level to about 4000m above sea level in about 5 hours.  Huaraz, the city, is nothing to write home about, just another crowded, kind of dusty, city.  We are staying about 15 km north of the city at a mountain lodge, The Way Inn.

There are beautiful mountains all around.  The lodge has a sauna, sundecks, and a trout pond.   We will be here for 3 nights, then we will be moving to another lodge, run by some Calgarians.  Hopefully, tomorrow we can do some hiking around.  I am very excited to be up this high, and I can’t wait to snuggle under my down blanket to sleep tonight.  There are even snow covered peaks!!

Quite a difference from the sandy desert of the coast!!

Mungo is in dog heaven.  There are great expanses of open fields AND there is a 1 year old yellow lab to play with.

At the moment, he is curled up at my feet, moaning because he is SO TIRED!!  He is going to have a great three days.