Santa Cruz

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So we´d decided on the Santa Cruz trek, the most popular and supposedly most beautiful. It takes four days and reaches an altitude of 4800m, which is considerably higher than I´d ever been. In Huaraz, at 3000m, walking upstairs rapidly felt like quite the physical challange, so I was curious to find out what if anything this kind of altitude would do to me.

On day one we got off to a bad start by setting our alarm for 6pm not 6am. Schoolboy error. I had one of those moments when you instantly wakeup bolt upright in bed because your inner "oh shit" alarm has informed you that you´re in trouble.

We were only 10 minutes late, but it meant we left in a rush and half asleep, which is my excuse for what happened next.

Just as we were getting off the bus in some remote village, disaster struck and I realised I didn´t have my camera with me. In the chaos and disorder of our morning packing, it somehow got left behind. This is bizzare because I compulsively check the location of my camera every five minutes. I tried to get in contact with the hostal, to see if I´d left it in my room or along with our big bags in luggage storage. Our guide couldn´t get any signal on her mobile, so we had wait until we´d walked to a village with a satillite phone. Guide lady called the hostel and informed me that there was no sign of my camera. I was absolutely devastated by this. I actually remember very little of the first day of the trek, I was too consumed with self loathing and mourning for my camera and it´s 600 or so lovely photos. I was just so utterly fucking furious with myself for losing it, and for not having backed up the photos, I refused to allow myself to have any fun.

The camera did turn up in the end, in case my Dad is reading this and deciding to disown me because I have lost or destroyed 4 cameras in 4 years. It´s fine. Just a breakdown in communication with the people at the hostel, who found it and kept it safe for me.

But I did not know this at the time, so it took me roughly 12 hours to cheer up. By the time we got to camp on day one I had walked off most of my rage. It gets dark at around 7pm, after which there is not a lot to do really, so we busied ourselves making a campfire. I am inclined to get very cold very quickly, as opposed to Kit who can handle the cold but melts at high temperatures. The first night I slept inside my sleepingbag wearing 4 layers of clothes, my alpaca hat and mittens. I was still fucking freezing. Someone later told me that these fleecy sleepingbags only work if you sleep in them naked, so they trap your body heat, but I was in no way willing to test this theory out.

The equipment provided was pretty variable. Once we´d figured out that there were two delux sleeping bags and a number of inflatable rollmatts up for grabs, we made sure we always got to camp first so we could shotgun the good equipment and not end up sleeping on a 1mm thick square of foam, in the cheesy feet bag.

Day two was hard work. We were surrounded by snowcapped peaks and climb was beautiful, but the last part was damn hard work and we had to spend a lot of time focusing on our breathing and our footing, leaving us litte chance to enjoy the scenary. We had to ascend something stupid like 900m in one day, because for some reason we seemed to be doing the circuit backwards. Kit struggled most with the altitude, I believe in part due to his poor decision to drink cheap rum the night before. Our guide was a 5 foot tall local woman wearing a Britney Spears T-Shirt who ran rings around us all and was clearly part llama. She was utterly unsympathetic. She never learned our names, refering to us only by number and nationality when heckling us from the top of the mountain.

Guide - VAMOUS INGLAIS DOUS!! VAMOUS!
Kit - I am going nowhere. I´ve just done a little bit of sick.
Guide - RAPIDO INGLAIS DOUS!! RAPIDO!
Kit - I will kill you with this biscuit.

Everybody eventually made it up, except one woman who´d come with her boyfriend directly from Lima the day before. She had to be dragged up on a horse. Attempting to trek to 4800m on day 2 after arriving from sea level is, of course, phenomenally stupid. They had come armed with a big back of altitude sickness medication, but it did them little good. They looked thoroughly miserable the whole time.

The view from the top was, obviously, beautiful. Once we´d recovered enough to appreciate it. We sat and ate our crappy packed lunch, watching condors circling and the avalanches on the peaks in the distance. The mountain lakes are luminous blue, because of minerals or something, and when the light is on them they look like they´re made of turquoise glitter. I stopped claiming that Í´ll never touch another camera as long as I live and took some photos with Kit´s, whilst still sulking and complaining bitterly that it´s not as good as mine.

On the way down, out of nowhere, we started getting pelted with hailstones. This confused us, because we´d been basking in the sun at the top of the pass 10 minutes earlier. Luckily it didn´t last long, and the walk down to our campsite was easy.

Day two was by far the hardest part, the last two days were just making our way back down. But like I said, for reasons that were never explained, we were doing the circuit backwards. The journey back was very chilled out, through stunning valleys and canyons. We had more time to play around in rivers, climb trees etc without having to worry about keeping pace.

When we sat down to discuss it over a tasty bowl of indeterminate meat soup, we found out that everyone on the trek had booked through different companies and paid different prices. Spanish guy had got it for $90, probably through virtue of being fluent. The 4 Inglais including me and Kit paid $95. The rest paid $120, aside from miserable couple who´d clearly paid loads booking via a travel agent back home and refused to specify an amount. The moral of this story is you don´t get what you pay for so you might as well just pick the cheapest and hope for the best.

To be fair the equipment wasn´t bad and the guide wasn´t completely unhinged, though the food we were served got progressively worse, culminating in the tragic cheese sandwitch for lunch on day 4 (see below).

When we got back to Huaraz we all went out for the steak dinner we had been fantasising about for days. Miserable couple were uninvited because they flipped their shit on the bus on the way back. Yes, there were 16 people in a 12 seater minibus. Don´t like it, don´t come to Peru. You can´t have 4 seats to yourself just cause you´re extra grumpy. So we lied to them about when and where we were going to meet. Harsh, but they deserved it. Afterwards we went out drinking with our guide, whose energy levels had not diminished and who still did not know any of our names. We found a bar with giant jenga, things got a little competitive, I suck at Jenga, there were enforced penalty tequilla shots, we ended up in some totally deserted club and the rest I don´t remember. Fun times though, and we were lucky to have found ourselves doing the trek with a really nice group of people.

The next morning was definitely not fun times. Details later.

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Comments

[NickTheTrick]

Most amusing
Hi, I enjoyed reading this blog immensely - probably schadenfreude (sic?). I did that trek, the correct way around, with my camera. Did it with a friend on our own just backpacks and our own tent. So it probably cost us $20 transport, plus the remaining $75 in food (for some reason we had a about 20 tins of tuna, which I hate). I annoyed my friend by shouting hurry up in spanish at him at the pass (but he was carrying all the tuna). I remember a cow ate a lot of my lunch one day - but it was still more satisfying than your cheese sandwich i'm sure. Hey I scanned your other blogs - I also climbed that weird mountain at Vilcabamba, Mandango I think it was called. Cool place! Bit scary. Did you go to the top? Nick