Trek to Laguna Glacia from Sorata

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There are many stunning snow capped mountains belonging to 'Los Andes' which over look La Paz and most are available for tourists to trek, hike or climb. One of the most popular is Hyuni Potosi which is meant to be one of the easiest climbable 6000 meter plus mountains in the world, we seriously considered attempting this one but when we looked into it a bit more we found out that to get to the top requires 6 hours of climbing up a near vertical ice wall in darkness not tied onto anything and hanging on only by your ice pick and crampons. After speaking to a few people about it we also found that only about 50% of people who do the climb actually make it as far as the top because it's so difficult.

We searched for an alternative and were drawn to the Laguna Glacier hike because of the stunning photo's of the lake. Laguna Glaciar is set in between the two mountains of Illampu (6356m) and Ancohuma (6427m), it is a beautiful lagoon that is fed by the massive hanging glacier and sits at around 5100 meters. The trek involved three days of hiking and two nights camping next to another beautiful lake, Laguna Chilate. We found the best price and booked it, finding out we would be the only people on the trek along with our guide and a porter/cook.

We were picked up the following morning at 7.30am sharp and introduced to our guides and new best friends for the next three days, David and Gibsen. The four of us jumped on a local bus and four hours later arrived at the starting point of the trek, a pretty little town called Sorata. We ate lunch next to the Plaza, bought some water (thinking 4 litres would be plenty) and got in a taxi which took us up a terrifying road which had barely been etched into the side of a really steep mountain. As the driver flew round the corners he told us that he was taking it easy because some tourists in a 4x4 had managed to drive off the edge and kill themselves a few weeks previously. We survived and arrived at the bottom of the path that would lead us to our campsite. Before we set off David noticed how little water we were carrying and asked us if we'd brought Iodine with us to sterilize the water from the lake so we could drink it (the guides didn't need to do this, they can drink from almost anywhere because they're used to whatever nasties would make us sick as parrots). We told him we hadn't any Iodine and he looked worried. There was a tiny tiny shop nearby and we had to go and wake up the owner to let us in, he had a shop full of every single fizzy pop you could imagine and sitting amongst it all was one lonely mini bottle of water, he tried to sell us some beer but we refused and took the water.

The trek to camp was actually pretty tough, harder than we expected as it was the first time we'd actually done anything strenuous since being away (except cleaning up after the animals at the park) so it took around 6 hours. When we arrived, David and Gibsen started to set up camp while we explored the area, Laguna Chilate was beautiful and our camp was just a stones throw away from it. Camp was about 4300 meters altitude so we were pretty high up and could see the clouds forming around us as the night drew in. The sunset from this height was incredible. It got dark fairly quickly so we ate our spaghetti bolognaise that Gibsen had managed to whip up and then didn't have much choice but to go to bed because there was no light and the temperature was beginning to drop. We made ourselves comfortable in our tent with our heavy duty sleeping bags designed to keep us warm in the -5 degrees it got to at night.

The next morning Gibsen and David woke us up with hot drinks, muesli and yoghurt. We hadn't slept much and were tired, insomnia is an effect of altitude, and Lil's face had swollen up, again because of the altitude. We had about 8 hours of walking ahead of us today and after finding the trek to camp a bit of a challenge the day before we knew it was going to be quite tough to get to the glacier. The hike took us over four hills and it was mainly climbing across large rocks or trekking up dry sandy paths. It was very tough due to the altitude and every step was a huge effort. At that height there is not as much oxygen in the air and the atmosphere sucks the moisture out of your lungs and we felt very out of breath and dehydrated as we were rationing our water. At one point Lil became very dizzy and the altitude was really taking its toll. David gave her some coco leaves to chew on which the locals swear by as a cure for altitude sickness. We took quite a few breaks along the way to catch our breath and admire the amazing views of the mountains and the valley below but managed to make it in fairly good time to the glacier. Within about 4 hours we were there celebrating our achievement with a ham sandwich.

The glacier was beautiful; due to global warming, at the rate it's melting they say that in about 30 years time it wont be there at all. There were a few rocks in the lake and we jumped around them and got quite far in; we walked around the lake and took in the spectacular views of the surrounding snow capped Mount Llampu, at 5100 meters we were very close to the peak of it so it looked incredible. After spending about an hour at the lake we took in our last views of the glacier and started our decent back to camp. The weather was a little ominous and the clouds had started to come in over the mountains so every now and then we had to make stops to wait for the clouds to literally pass around us so we didn't go off path and get lost. It was still fairly difficult climbing back down as the rocks were slippy but we made it back to camp after about 3 1/2 hours of scrambling down the paths through the clouds.

Once back at camp, Gibsen and David started making dinner while we rested and took in the views again, although the clouds had started to come in very fast now and it was difficult to see. We had bangers and mash and then went to bed to rest our tired legs. Next morning, the weather had taken a turn for the better and the sunrise was clear and beautiful, the clouds had lowered and created a blanket in the sky a few hundred meters below us in the valley which looked spectacular.

We packed up camp and walked all the way back to Sorata feeling very weary after another sleepless night. It was a long walk, the sun was shining hot and our bags felt heavier than ever, our legs were beginning to hurt from the previous days hike. We also were still rationing our water and by now we were very dehydrated so when we finally reached the bottom we found the nearest store and quenched our terrible thirsts!

We had a well earned lunch in Sorata and then went to take our seat in a little people carrier that would take us back to La Paz. They have very few rules when it comes to transport in Bolivia and this journey was no exception. Once all the seats were filled they then started to squish people into the tiny isle and behind the drivers seat, put children in the footwells and goats on the roof. There were old people who couldn't have been less than 85 years old crouching in the isles. It was very funny.

We arrived back in La Paz still feeling very stiff and had the urge to reward ourselves with an Indian so after stuffing our faces we went straight to bed. The next day we caught a bus and finally left La Paz to Copacabana.

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