A k a day in Peru in 2022 Day 4

 Another monster day of over 11km, we are certainly racking up the ks. Today was a trip to the parque de los sombreros (the park of the hats). It is a fairly small affair with as you might expect some hats.

There were a number of hats atop a number of things, all very hat like. Not really sure why but hey ho it was a nice day and we were clocking up the kilometres.

Onwards to the Parque de Identidad Wanka a somehwat unfortunate name which is one of the many spellings of the people who inhabit the area. Being from Huancayo the first bit Huanca is pronounced Hwanka and somtimes is spelled Wanca but the park is a celebration of the people of the area. It is built from literally millions of stones of varying sizes none of them particularly large. It was a very pleasant place to take our picic lunch. You may recall that "Ooor Wullie" statues were located all around Scorland well it seems that one of them made it to Huancayo

And finally the strava

A k a Day Day 3 Torre Torre

 Torre Torre

Today is day 3 and we are thankfully suffering no ill effects from the high altitude except that we are a bit breathless while walking uphill (nothing new there! - just more breathless than normal). We are walking more slowly so we don't want any criticism of the time we are taking. We stop off to look at any mildly interesting things along the way.

Torre Torre is just an interesting rock formation on the hill above Huancayo. It was 11.5 km there and back so we have fulfilled our 5k obligation more than double today. The elevation gain according to strava was 198m so not a shabby walk.

The video doesn't seem to upload here. And so to the strava:

A k a Day in Lima (but not in Lima) Day 2

Day 2 and a change of scene.

For the first time since we arrived in Peru we have ventured a bit of a distance from the capital Lima. It was a 9 hour bus journey to Huancayo a city at an altitude of 3200m. This is two and a half times hgher than Ben Nevis and about a third the height of Everest. The journey to get here took a very winding path up over the Andes and at its highest point was 4800m high, that is over half the height of Mount Everest. In a bus!!! That is the highest we have ever been whilst still connected to terra firma. Views were spectacular.  

Having spent most of the day on a bus getting our 5K done was to prove a bit of a challenge especially since we had just transitioned to high altitude. We decided to try walking to our rental apartment a distance af about 2.5 km. We coped pretty well and the only apparent effects were that we had to breath a bit deeper. Once settled into the apartment we walked back into town to get dinner so the 5K was done in segments. But it WAS done. Picture quality is not the best out of the moving bus window. More to follow.

Stravas

A k a day 2022 in Lima Perú - Day 1

 And so it begins:

What a year it has been. Sheila and I are still in Lima and still wearing masks outside. We had heard that from today it was allowed to not wear a mask outside if you didn’t want to so we set off maskless. I must say it felt good. However we soon realised that almost everyone (but not everyone) was still masked up. We were heading to the chemist to collect some things so I asked the guy in the shop about the new law. He suggested it didn’t get passed so we masked up for the rest of our walk.

The weather is still really nice here in Lima although a little hazy. We are on holiday this coming week and were supposed to be flying to Juliaca (still in Perú but only just) to spend a few days in nearby Puno. It is on the edge of Lake Titicaca the highest navigable lake in the world. I had planned to have some great pictures of us doing our Ks by the lake. Unfortunately they have suddenly closed the airport and all flights have been cancelled. 

So, after a hastily rearranged trip we are heading instead to Huancayo. I will tell you about it and what we find there in a later post. We head there by bus tomorrow so it’s going to be a bit of a challenge to get our 5k done tomorrow. 

View from the apartment right now.

Here is the first of thirty one 

A k a day in Lima Peru (Day THIRTYONE)

And so we have it. Thirty-one days of walking and some cycling and 173.78 km behind us, all to raise funds for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) in memory of Robert Rowan.

The organising team have done a tremendous job keeping everyone motivated and organising a few competitions along the way. We can look forward to our medals in due course. I would love to actually get them here in Peru but the postal service can be dodgy and so I think we will elect to collect them from our other "home" the next time we are back. The are very eco friendly with Rab's memorial logo and some Rowan berries with a honeycomb containing our achievement level.

Ours will be inscribed as Queen Bee because we elected for the highest level of challenge. We don't mess about you know. Aim for the top.

Nothing of any excitement or note happened on today's walk which was the same as the very first one except that we did it in the opposite direction, as if to bring the whole thing back to where it started. I would like to thank all of you who have followed along our journey and hope that I have managed to give you a flavour of the little corner of Lima where we live. Things are slowly improving here in terms of COVID so I hope that we will be able to explore a bit further afield soon. I might even add a few more entries to the blog if the mood takes me. Who knows what the future holds but one thing is for sure, we must all make the very best of what we have been given and live our lives to the fullest because there are many who never got that chance. Take care, be nice to each other.

There is nothing else to add except our final strava.

Lima over, and for the time being, out.

A k a day in Lima Peru (Day 30)

The penultimate day of the challenge and the penultimate blog post. I am not sure about you but I feel that it has absolutely flown in. I can't quite believe that we have done a full month tomorrow. So for our last Sunday stroll we decided to take advantage of the closed off roadways around out area an do the big one. Out San Borja Norte and back via San Borja Sur. It measured 9.8 km almost twice our daily requirement.

As a bit of a tribute to Rab and to Brentford who finally achieved promotion yesterday after many near misses we donned a cap especially embroidered with Rab's Memorial logo.

Our plan today was to tackle the big one and do the full loop. It was such a pleasure with most of the roads closed off to allow Sunday lockdown activities to take place more safely. Families were out walking, biking and running. It was lovely to see and we wondered if it should always be like this on a Sunday.

I mentioned before about every country having branches of the Lions Club and today we found a monument thing to the Rotary Club

The inscription underneath says "Dar de si, antes de pensar de si" which translated means give yourself before thinking of yourself.

As I said before only essential vehicles are permitted to go out, no private cars so the roads were really quiet. Well quiet of cars. They were chock-a-block with cyclists and pedestrians although this picture was taken at the extreme end of our walk and there are only a couple of bikes at that moment.

As we walked on and re-joined the far end of San Borja Sur we met the Hedge family who were out for their usual Sunday stroll with their dog Privet. In fact you can see them there every day. I could see that he was really excited by my cap and Mr Hedge asked if he could try it on. I indulged his craving as I always feel that we should engage with the locals as much as possible.

Although this was my longest walk of the challenge it was actually not Sheila's longest. Yesterday she did over 11km with Nicola so she has done 20k this weekend alone. Big shout out to her for that.

Penultimate day means penultimate Strava bringing our total to a tad over 168 km.

I wish I could say that I have something really exciting planned for tomorrow's blog but I don't want you all getting too excited. At this very moment I am devoid of plans, exciting or otherwise. See you all tomorrow for the chapter 31.

A k a day in Lima Peru (Day 29)

 Today was one of the few times where Sheila and I did our 5k separately. Sheila and Nicola headed of to Jockey Plaza to try to get get a change made to Nicola's phone and I headed off to the fruit market to get our supplies. It was a lonely old 5.9km for me today. Nobody to talk to except myself but I did get it all my own way.

I felt sure that the saffron finches would be back because they enjoyed their little feast yesterday and sure enough this morning they were back to get some more.

I am hoping in time to offer other food and maybe attract some other species. Does anyone know where I can by a fly hatchery to try to attract the vermillion flycatcher 😂. That would be cool if a little cruel to the flies!!

On a completely different note, last year, at the height of the pandemic I was really wanting to start playing my guitar and singing through the internet in zoom sessions and Facebook live but I didn't have the right equipment to connect. I saw the equipment advertised on Mercadona Libre and I decided to buy it. Mercadona Libre is a kind or Amazon service where you can buy practically anything. It was a local music store and he assured me that he had the stuff. I ordered it and paid for it S/600. Only after I had paid did he decide to tell me that he couldn't deliver until after the lockdown. This was of course somewhat of a blow since that is why I needed it. I cancelled the order and hoped that the money would be refunded. To be fair the guy said he would no problem but I never saw the money back in my bank account.

The yesterday I decided that we could use an ethernet connection to try to make our Amazon firestick a little less laggy. Sometimes it stalls a little. The only place I could see the genuine article available here was ... you guessed it .... Mercadona Libre. I thought ok bite the bullet and try again. Imagine my amazement when I clicked buy this item and proceeded to the payment where I was offered the option of paying using the S/600 soles in my Mercadona Libre account. Reeeesult. My money has been lying there waiting for me to spend it for months. Now what else do we need. I can feel a small shoppping spree coming on.

OK only two more days to go. Y'all take care now, missin' ya already.