Huaraz and the Santa Cruz Trek

Another night bus through the black landscape and I woke up back in a misty morning mountain landscape. Huaraz is a proper Peruvian/Andean town in the valley formed between the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Blanca and in the high season is probably swarming with walkers and climbers drinking and eating in the numerous cosy looking bars and restaurants that are all around town. However, being the low season right now, as usual, I had to trudge round all the agencies asking if they had any groups going to do the 4 day Santa Cruz trek. I found one agency first with a French couple going but continued to try to find a different group for a few more days before giving up and going back to them, resigned again to being a gooseberry. My other option would have been to go with a group who were doing the Huayhuash 12 day trek around the range on which the Touching the Void story was played out. I was sorely tempted but just felt under prepared for a challenging trek (having posted all my heavy duty walking gear home) and too pressed for time. A week later though and it is still playing on my mind now so maybe I'll have to come back one day to do it.
I always find it difficult to write a blog about a trek, because its impossible to describe the scenery really and so much of my enjoyment of trekking comes from having time to think and daydream, its kind of like my meditation.
Suffice to say that it felt fantastic to be back in green sided, snow capped mountains again. For some reason Bolivia's mountain ranges, although impressive, seemed too dry and rocky, and the walks I did in the lower parts where it was semitropical and green, didn't have that same feeling that a big mountain range gives me. The ranges around Huaraz felt closer to Patagonia again.
The french couple Claire and Arnold were fine although not overly talkative and so most of my conversations were with Erik our guide. I am pleased to see that my Spanish seems to have improved significantly since I have been in Bolivia and so I was able to whitter on about glacial features and processes in a language not my own! Not something I ever thought I would be doing whilst traveling.
Each evening at the three stunningly located campsites, Emilio our donkey man or arrerio, would set up a big scout type tent with tablecloth and chairs and get to whipping up a fantastic meal. Meanwhile Arnold ran around setting up tripods, changing lenses and taking photos of the changing sky and mountains as the light faded whilst Claire and I sat and watched it.
We started off from Vacuería after a stunning combi trip up through a sheer sided canyon from Yungay past the Llanganuco lakes. Our first days trekking was very easy and took us through a couple of small villages where the kids all asked for caramelos and along a lush green valley floor by a river. The only eventful part was when one of the donkeys got stuck in a bog, they didn't like the soft ground much and panicked when their feet started to sink in to it, but with all the weight they were carrying on of them ended up on his side with his legs crossed over somehow and it looked fairly nasty. When he realised he was stuck fast he just lay there and waited for Emilio to rescue him. We managed to unload him and get him back upright again with out any harm and he seemed to be OK, no broken bones which was lucky. Erik joked about mistreatment of animals but actually Emilio was very good with them.
The second day was the big up and over, climbed up to 4750m past a horrible smelling dead donkey but emerged to a fantastic view over the pass into the next valley and glacial lakes. Its a good thing that the views on these high altitude walks are so stunning because by the last part it really is a case of taking 5 steps and stopping for a rest. Most of the big surrounding peaks were in cloud but I could just make out what was supposed to be Huazcaran in the distance.
We descended to the camp where I stripped off and had a bracing wash in the turquoise river running alongside us, and contemplated the numerous beautiful views I have seen on my trip, many of the best have been whilst performing my ablutions, or maybe I just appreciate them more in these moments, its not often you get to look at glaciers whilst on the loo at home!
The last full days trekking took us past the two glacial lakes, across landslides and into a narrowing valley where trees that looked very much like willow and alder were growing alongside the rushing river. The vegetation was starting to get a bit more tropical here with bromiliads and orchid-like flowers and we camped in what I think was the prettiest campsite yet, under a waterfall and fished for our supper then watched the 3rd stunning sunset in a row.
The next morning we descended the final part into a beautiful little place called Cashapampa, everyone here seemed to be working hard together to maintain the irrigation channels, the pathways, the road, but the whole place had an amazingly tranquil feeling to it. We walked alongside the sparkling water channels and on our other side was what looked like a landscaped tropical garden that you might pay to visit in Cornwall, then said a sad goodbye to Emilio and the donkeys (he had told us the night before that he was going to miss us and the company). He was going to return the way we came but in half the time and sleeping in a cave somewhere on route as the camping equipment belonged to the tour agency.

---

---