Last Night In Huaraz?

This is a pretty common view for me down in Peru. The van is called a collectivo. It's basically a socialist taxi that drives specific routes. You get on whenever and can get off whenever and only pay 0.80 soles (~25 cents). Similar to a public bus, but far more frequent (every 2 minutes or so). The best part is that they will ALWAYS pick up passengers, regardless of how full it is. The record I've seen so far was 21 passengers, 1 dog, and countless bags of recently harvested crops. My friends and I are going to write a song called "There's always more room in the collectivo".

With some upcoming climbing adventures planned, I'm furiously trying to get back into shape. This gorgeous boulder today certainly helped. Somehow put down a V5 second try, so maybe I haven't lost as much strength as I'm assuming I have. Today I met some awesome locals, a couple Swedes, and an American from Georgia. Solid crew. 

The weather is incredibly consistent here. Cloudy in the early morning. Sunny most of the day. Then intense rain storms every afternoon between 3 and 5. Every single day. My new past time has been to watch the storm roll through. Today was the 3rd day out of the last 10 days where the power has gone out. Lightning stuck no more than 500 feet from the hostel. 

Spent the last couple days climbing. My psyche for climbing disappeared at the start of this South American trip but I think it has been fully restored. So much in fact that I have purchased my flight back to the states. Tomorrow I might head out of Huaraz and start making my way to Chile for climbing, star gazing, sandboarding, winery hopping and potentially some volunteer work (If Chile is in fact as expensive as everyone tells me it is).