So we arrived in Huaraz, Peru last week Monday. Our friends Alli and Nate met us here a couple days later. We took a couple days to acclimatize by doing day hikes and going mountain biking in the area. The picture below is over Huascaran Sur, the tallest mountain in Peru, over 23,000 feet, towering over the town of Huaraz. Our first hike in Peru was to a lake called Laguna 69. The hike started around 12,000 feet, and the laguna sits at about 15,200 feet. The crystal clear blue waters of the lake are fed directly from the glaciers melting from the peak that towers about 6,000 feet higher! It is really deceptive in pictures, but the scale of everything in the Cordillera Blanca is huge, the biggest mountains I´ve ever seen by far. Incredibly tall and steep, there are few skiable lines on most of these peaks, but I´m sure there are a few lurking out there. The shot below shows Laguna 69 and towering peak. It is the beginning of the rainy season in Peru, it rains everyday, not necessarily for the whole day, but for at least a couple of hours every afternoon. This makes for interesting mountain travel as we found out later on. Another activity that is popular in Huaraz is "mountain biking". Since I love to ride my bike I just had to try Mountain biking in Peru. The craziest part of our ride was negotiating the bustling streets of Huaraz to catch a ride in a collectivo up to the start of our ride. Since there seem to be no rules regarding driving in this country, it is hard to predict what drivers are going to do. Another interesting part of riding in Peru is the incredibly old and janky mountain bikes. I know that I´m a bike snob, but it´s been years since I´ve ridden a hardtail, and even longer since I´ve ridden without real(clipless) pedals. Check out the picture below to see a Peruvian bike rack. Those bikes are leaned up against each other and held to the roof with rope...for a 40 minute drive up a dirt road! And it worked, no problem, they certainly do more with less in this country. "Mountain Biking" in Peru is basically riding on dirt roads as far as I can tell. Our 3,000 foot downhill ride basically followed a lightly used road through really small villages. Riding on the dirt roads was alright though due to the nature of the old and frightening equipment we were using. In the shot below I´m cruising through one of the small villages, you can see a Peruvian woman dressed in the traditional clothing that the mountain farmers seem to wear. The mud brick buildings are also the typical structures that you see once you leave the cities.