My Big Blunder

I must apologize to Joy in public. I had suggested (decided) that our next stop should be Chimbote,farther down the coast. On the map it looked like a good move. Unfortunately in my wisdom, I had not read either of the guidebooks we had with us until we were on the bus. Turns out Chimbote is the place you do not want to stay in Peru. It is the largest fishing port in Peru and smells like it. In addition it is apparently a very dangerous place to stay. After I confessed to Joy (she is still working on forgiveness), she said that we would just take the next bus out of town towards Huarez but probably stopping in Casma. Well we got a rather beat up small Mercedes bus that was going to take us to Huarez via a short-cut over the Corillero Negro to Huarez in the heart of the Cordillero Blanco, the highest mountains in Peru and second highest in South America. The description of the dirt road climbing from Casma to the pass at over 4000 meters was not encouraging,but of we went after agreeing that life had been pretty good to this point. Fortunately the book was out of date and the road was paved 2 lane road except where rock slides had narrowed it to one or less. It is hard to describe to climb into and above the clouds and the vertical drops that just go down forever. Amazingly there were people living up there on the edge of these cliffs. I would have taken video but my eyes were closed most of the way. Thank goodness for night as we rose. Then we saw the lights of Huarez below us when we were still almost 50kms away. The downhill, twisting back and forth on hairpins, went on interminably,but we finally arrived safely in Huarez and got touted into a hostal by Johnny who wanted us to take a tour the next day. I needed a few days rest!
Jim