Huaraz & Cordillera Blanca

30.03.2012

MIRADOR

So, thanks to Lonely Planet, last night we found a nice hostel called Aldo's Guest House quite in the centre of Huaraz, and today we decided to take it easy and spend the day checking out the town and planning our trekking trips. Huaraz is a nice touristic town set in the wonderful scenery of Cordillera Blanca part of the Andes. The weather was nice and we decided to take a taxi ride to the viewpoint of Huaraz. This is what we could see :)

We then had a set menu lunch in a typical restaurant recommended by the nice taxi driver...the interesting part of lunch was the drink, called "emoliente" (softener?!)..when we asked what it was made of, the lady answered among other ingredients: dog's leg, horse's tail...you can only imagine our faces :)

We had dinner almost every night in a nice restaurant called Teo's where they served the most amazing chicken soup: it was a bowl big enough to serve three people, including spaghetti, a chicken piece, egg and boiled potato, we felt it was a hard job to finish it up, but how yummy!!

ALD'O'S GUEST HOUSE

We made good use of the hostel internet and called our families :)

31.03.2012

TRIP TO PASTORURI GLACIAR 

Today we took a day trip to a glaciar called Pastoruri, at almost 5000mt altitude! On the way there with the minibus we could buy our first sachet of coca leaves. You are supposed to chew them to help with altitude, but they are really bitter! 

Other people in our group were a nice couple of a peruvian girl with german boyfriend, and a couple from the Uk, plus many peruvians. On the way there, we could observe the weird "Puya Raimondii", a plant which is 10-15mt tall, lives about 60-80 years, then flowers once and dies. Nature (in Quechua: Pachamama, mother earth) is really amazing. We could also observe some rock paintings from many centuries b.c. and finally, after a slightly hard walk (mainly due to altitude) the impressive glaciar. 

The bad part of the trip was the lunch at the restaurant on the way back: we asked for roast guinea pig, but were served with a super small and hard guinea pig which was impossible to eat, and a couple of potatoes. Sofar, we had a better guinea pig in Ecuador! :)

01-04.04.2012

SANTA CRUZ TREKKING (4 days - 3 nights)

This was the highlight of our stay in Huaraz, and also the hardest thing we've done so far in the journey; we signed up for this 4-day- trek with Galaxia agency and left together with other 11 foreign tourist, 2 guides, a cook and a donkey driver (and of course a few donkeys to carry our stuff). 120 dollars per person all inclusive. Unfortunately it was not possible to do the whole hike because of an avalanche which cut the path in two, but we still had a chance to have an unforgettable experience with a very nice group. 

The group was made of: a Korean girl, a German couple, two German girls, a German-Swiss gentleman and a group of 3 guys from the US with the mother and brother of one of them visiting during their trip around South America. A super cool group and we had a lot of fun together! We had two guides, Ricardo and Eric. Unfortunately Ricardo ( the lead guide) was not a very good guide and this ruined a bit the experience...we felt he didn't really care about the group and about giving info to us or keeping the group together, while Eric was a bit shy and unexperienced, so we were lucky to be a group of such nice people at least :)

DAY ONE

During the looooong bus ride (about 5 hours) which took us to the starting point of the trek, we could visit the nice lakes of Llanganuco.

We finally arrived to Vaqueria and we started our trek passing by several "campesinos" (farmer) houses, where kids were anxiously begging for sweets and cookies. For most of the trek, we will let pictures speak by themselves. :) 

First campsite: when we arrived to the campsites, the tents were usually already up and ready for us, and coca tea waiting for us, which was nice.

The US teenagers were unstoppable and never tired! Always up to some activities and always leading the hike.

In the eating tent, having Mate de Coca :)

DAY TWO


We were a bit disappointed today because the guide offered the group to skip a part of the trek (which already was shorter), which meant we wouldn't see the Alpamayo mountain, which we really wanted to see. The guide "sold" this other option assuring we would be able to come back to the start point through an alternative way, instead of through the same path. (the sentence "there are two options" will be never forgotten by the group, you will later discover why!!)
Unfortunately we had quite a lot of rain today, but we reached the campsite just after midday.

Second campsite

A brave group of four (Giovanni, Lorena, Orion - a US guy with an amazing sunny personality and incredible walking skills with simple running shoes!,  & Rinaldo, the german-swiss gentleman) decided to continue the trek on their own up to the Punta Union pass (under the rain!). The view from the top was cloudy and foggy but still beautiful, and the feeling of achieving the top before anybody else is great! Sometimes it is nice to share certain moments within fewer people...

Once back the rain stopped for a while and the snowcapped mountains showed their beauty. The view of the mountains at night, with an amazing bright moon and the starry sky is breath-taking!

DAY THREE

The whole group climbed to Punta Union pass. This time the view from the top was less cloudy. On the way up and on the top, our guide Eric started to play a Kena, an andean instrument similar to the flute. It was magic to listen to those sounds on the highest point of our hike! (we will post a video as soon as we get a good internet connection)

Ricardo taking pictures of the group with all our cameras :)

Now to the alternative route back! It turned out to be sooooo hard, first coming down very slippery stones, then through wet meadows, we were falling down and slipping at every step! Towards the end Lorena was feeling really dizzy as we had been on the road for long with very little food (they only gave us a sandwich and few chocolates for the whoooole day!) and this made things worse.
We reached the campsite well after dark and under the rain at 7:30pm!!!! :( However, we did feel like heroes to have accomplished that (and veeeery angry with Ricardo for taking us to that and not to the Alpamayo!!!)

DAY FOUR

We woke up and had a nice breakfast outside, then walked under (finally!) a nice sun back to the town of Vaqueria where it all started. This time it was an easy trek of few hours and we even had the time to stop and chat to the kids (and give them all the sweets and chocolates that we had saved up for them). The bus arrived at 11am and took us back to Huaraz. The sky was finally very bright and on the way back we could admire a looot of mountains! 

Once back in Huaraz, we just had a shower, dinner and straight took a night bus to Lima, the first of our stopovers on our way to Bolivia!  :)