Up til now on the trip we've booked a total of two hostels; one for our very first night in Lima and one really nice one in Baños. Otherwise we just look at some recommendations on line, then turn up to the most promising one and hope they have a spare room. So far so good, until we reached Huaraz.
The hostel I'd found had a room, it looked nice, it had a gorgeous rooftop terrace, it was quiet, really it was very nice; but it was expensive. As the plan was to be based in Huaraz for 3-4 weeks while we go out on treks we needed somewhere affordable as a base. So the search for the perfect hostel began . . .
Three days and three hostels later we decided the perfect hostel didn't exist in Huaraz and picked one that was affordable, quiet and nice enough. Ah well.
Huaraz itself is an interesting mixture of a place. It is in an incredible mountain setting, huge peaks rising up all around, but the city itself is noisy, busy, dusty and a bit dirty. But it's fun. The market is amazing, one end full of fruit and vege stands, with cheese, meat, assorted dry goods all mixed in. At the other end is everything else you could want to buy from plastic bags and containers, to clothes and toys and pushchairs, to bolts of cloth and seamstresses ready to turn it into whatever you want. Due to our hostel not having a fridge we visited the market nearly every day.
There are endless places to buy something to eat in Huaraz. Upstairs at the market there is an endless selection of food stalls (all with the same menu, we began to think), in the gringo part of town there are restaurants with every type of gringo food available (at gringo prices too), everywhere else there are local eateries ranging from roast chicken and chips to chinese, to stalls on the side of the road. On every block there are bakeries with delicious sweet treats.
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| Impressive view of Huascaran towering over Huaraz, from the balcony of the first hostel |
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