Huaraz was our first stop in the Cordillera Blanca (the White Mountain Range) and is a famous base for trekking, rock-climbing, and other mountain related activities. We had heard about a fancy hostel called The Way Inn, that allowed camping, which was situated 45 minutes up the side of the mountain above Huaraz. We did our usual, which was to show up without a reservation, but this time we were thwarted. The Way Inn was on Day 1 of a 7-day Ayahuasca retreat and because we weren't on the right diet and hadn't already done the retreat we wouldn't have the right energy and couldn't stay there. They were nice though, and suggested we go a kilometer up the road to The Hoff and that we could definitely stay there. We had no idea what The Hof was, but when we showed up we found a bunch of ex-pat backpacker-types playing Dungeons & Dragons in a cabin.
The owner Chris fell in love with the area and rented these cabins to create a permaculture community. Volunteers come and work to improve the place and get to stay for cheap, and then the local indigenous people come for free classes and community building. Chris has grand visions for a collective community with profit-sharing with both ex-pats and indigenous people living together.
We got to join in and the D&D and delicious group meals for a couple days and went on some beautiful hikes. The Hof is only a couple of kms from the starting points of some amazing treks. Unfortunately it quite high altitude and we'd just arrive from sea-level that day, so we had to take it easy but what we saw was spectacular.
We took a hike farther up into the mountains from where we stayed above Huaraz.
This rock had a natural lichen face.
Since this was our second day at elevation and we were taking it easy, our goal was to get to a good view of this mountain. Success... time to turn around.
A view down the mountains towards Huaraz. We were staying just on the other side of the trees on the right.
Caral
