Arriving in Huancayo you get the impression of arriving in some Wild West frontier town. Tumbledown outer suburbs, dusty, chaotic streets, people wandering seemingly at random and all around the mountains rise and surround. Yet the altiplano (Andean plateau) on which Huancayo is built gives the whole scene an air of welcome space often missing in the Andes. Huancayo is an arresting town. Once you’ve dusted your spurs and settled in, the real town reveals itself. It’s modern yet traditional. There’s good accommodation and top-class wine-and-dineries in which to wash off the dust of the mountains and taste hearty local fare, all to the accompaniment of crisp Peruvian wines or local boutique beer.
Above all Huancayo is a center of activity for this whole section of the central highlands, and on a local level the Río Mantaro valley. There are culture and fiestas to be savored, crafts to be learned, musical instruments to be dabbled with (maybe even mastered one day) and for the adventurous there’s Andes trekking, extreme mountain biking and jungle tramping. Polyglots can add another linguistic arrow to their bow by learning Spanish at well-organized language courses. Huancayo challenges at first, then bids you to hang around a while. Most travelers eventually do.
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