After another long overnight bus, I arrived in the city of Huancayo and the first thing on the to-do list was to find a place to sleep. I tried a couple hostels in the downtown area, but found them to be a bit too pricey for my needs, so I wandered around town before running into the famous Lucho Hurtado.
Lucho is somewhat of a Huancayo entrepreneur. He runs a restaurant, hostel and tour agency in the city… and it was out of pure luck (or pure genius on his part) that I ran into him. He spotted me (an obvious Gringo) and asked if I was looking for a place to stay. I told him I was… and then he told me about the current situation with his hostel.
As it turns out, Lucho’s hostel had been closed due to the fact that the owner of the building had raised the rent and refused to sell Lucho the building for a reasonable price. So rather than pay the inflated rental fees or buy the building for more than it was worth, Lucho had agreed to rent a new building way across town… and move his hostel there. It just so happens that I had arrived in town on the very first day that his once famous backpackers hostel was no longer in business.
Despite his hostel being closed, Lucho asked if I might want to stay at his new hostel way across town. He promised it would only cost me 20 Soles for the night, so I said “Sure, why not?”
Lucho and I then jumped in a taxi and drove across town. About 7 minutes later, we were there – at a small residential house on the outskirts of Huancayo. The place didn’t look like a hostel at all… and it was way, way, way out of town. I never would have stayed at the place if had not run into Lucho himself. Nevertheless, I agreed to spend the night at Lucho’s brand new hostel for at least one night… and even though the place was still a distaster zone, the workers went to work right away on setting up a room for me.
I was tired and dirty from my long overnight bus ride the night before, but the showers in the hostel weren’t yet working, nor was the electrical, so I decided I’d take a hike.
Lucho recommended that I hike into the mountains just outside of the hostel… and that’s exactly what I did. I spent nearly the entire day hiking in the hills, passing by tall trees, remote mountain farms, and beautiful cascading creeks.
After hiking through the mountains for a number of hours, I crawled down into an area that looked as though it might have been transplanted from the desert regions of southern Utah. It was a small area where large sandy rock formations were carved into the hillside. I spent about an hour crawling through the area and taking photos. It was a place unlike anything I have seen in Peru.
