06/18 Writing this on Sunday, aka “Happy Let’s Get Drunk and Make Asses Out Of Ourselves Day!”. It’s also Father’s Day so to my Dad… OK I won’t say anything sappy. 
The ride up here from Huánuco had to be one of the easiest climbs ever. The grade almost never went above 3% and I sailed along with a nice tailwind all day. Not too much going on with scenery so no pictures. There are no snow-capped mountains around here and the hills lining the valley are a bit bland.
Today was a day off to do some shopping, get my clothes washed and just eat a lot. The big purchase was a Click Stand that I’ve been debating getting for a while. I went ahead and placed the order for the Max version after reading nothing but positive reviews online. It’ll be another thing waiting for me in Florida where I think I’ll be in about 45 days.
The fancy place to stay here in Huariaca is Hostel Rosa Nautica and it’s extremely nice. The double room cost S40 and it comes with everything including wifi. The hot shower was great and there was even decent water pressure which can be a rarity.
Huariaca is a nice town that evidently doesn’t see too many gringos stopping over (maybe none would be more accurate). Market day was today and walking along the one long road they use I was kind of amazed how clean the streets were. Normally they are a hot mess with scraps of everything laying around which can make walking along in flip flops a bit soupy at times.
Tomorrow I head up to one of the highest altitude cities in the world, Cerro de Pasco (pop. 70,000). It sits at 14,370 feet. The city has a lot of issues thanks to the almost mile wide, 1,600 foot deep open pit mine that sits smack in the middle of it (lead, silver and zinc have been extracted from it for 55 years). It is one of the poorest and most polluted cities throughout the world with 85% children in the area having high levels of lead in their systems (3x safe level). They use chemicals such as cyanide to extract the minerals (silver) from the ore but instead of being properly stored the waste is simply dropped in lagoons and in between houses. There’s actually been a project floating around to relocate all the city residents just to get them away from the area.
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