PERU: 4+630

I´M AT: Albergue Churup, see below.

There´s only one, mostly-unpaved road from Huaraz to Willkawain.

Juan, the hostal owner, recommended we hike there, and get the bus back if tired. Mark and I both needed the exercise, to get our strength back, and to acclimatise properly you need to stretch your heart, head and lungs.

At the end of the hike, at Willkawain itself, you can find what is basically a quite impressively-restored, stone-built barn, about 20 metres square, 15 metres high and with three floors. The whole place has been built with great care. The stones in the walls and ceiling varied in size from small pebbles to huge slabs of rock, all of which had been polished a shiny black over time. The first floor was given over to animals and their feed, whilst the second and third were for humans. The guide speculated that this was probably the home of an important local family or families; it was impossible to say for sure, as only miniature ceramics, for burial with the dead, have been excavated. Willkawain was built in 1100AD.

Clearly our faces at breakfast had betrayed a health and stamina which wasn´t yet there, as the hike almost killed me. Countless times, turned corner to find - yet more steeply-sloping dust. One of the many rest breaks brought some sort of curse from a witchlike old woman, haggard in her mountain garb, who, in answer to an amiable ´buenas tardes´, viciously swished a bent cane and muttered darkly at us as we sat at the side of the road.

Anyway, as we sweated I noticed all the houses were painted with numbers - 3+190, 3+200, 3+220 and so on. When I saw the big 4KM sign at the side of the road, I twigged what these were - extremely practical house numbers. The numbers show the distance from the start of the road in Huaraz to the house itself, in kilometres+metres. The road is not a good one, so a gauge of distance is very useful.

It was at 4+630 - a ramshackle concrete block with a dusty lump of garden - that I felt the heat in my belly and was forced to plead for the baño. And what a baño this was. A tramp through the dust to two size-six, foot-shaped carvings on the floor, and a damnation of brown below, accompanied by a barking dog nipping at my lowered jeans. I had to hang on to the unplastered wall to avoid following everything down.

As our bus came back down the road, from the ruin, I tried to make out the hallowed ground, so I could take a picture, but all I could make out was mud, bracken and a set of grinning teeth.