Advertisement
Published: November 7th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Fire Place
My favourite place in the hostel After flying into Lima I jumped straight onto a 9hr long night bus which kindly dropped me off in Huaraz at 6.30am. Huaraz is a small town situated near to the Cordillera Blanca mountain range in the Andes, Peru and sits at just over 3000m above sea level.
I checked into my hostel (Churup Auberge) which I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to stay in Huaraz. It has great friendly staff, lovely rooms, a fire place in the lounge on the top floor which has views of the mountain range and a great set up for taking treks into the mountains.
I had planned to meet Isabel, Siobhan and Liz here (who I had met in Ecuador) but unfortunately they were delayed by 2 days due to illness and buses, so until they arrived I joined in some treks with other people from the hostel. But I was also recovering from a cold, so wanted to take it easy for a couple of days.
My first walk was just to Wilcawain, a small village a 2 hour walk away where there are funery ruins from the Wari people which date back to 600 - 900 AD. This walk started
at 3100m and just rose to 3500m. A nice easy walk to start getting me acclimatized.
Next up was a trek to Lake Churup. Described in the hostel as moderate to difficult that may require some climbing skills, the folks I met round the fire the night before did not seem fazed, so off we went at 6.30am. Amazing scenery around you all the time, it never gets boring, however this was a lot harder than Wilcawain. We started at 3800m and rose to 4450m. It was very steep and we could all notice the altitude having an effect on our breathing and heart rate, I’ve never felt so unfit before in my life! The final hurdle before reaching the lake was where rock climbing skills were supposedly required. Upon attempting to climb, and getting many cuts and grazes on my arms, me and 2 others gave up on it whilst the remaining member of our group succeeded and went on alone. However all was not lost, we found a 45minute detour walk, which meant we did eventually manage to see the lake, and it was beautiful!
Upon arriving back to the hostel that evening I was greeted by the
appearance of my lovely ladies and started catching up on the events that had occurred since we last met and what we would do for the next couple of days in Huaraz.
To help the girls acclimatize we opted to trek Lake Llanganuco. Situated at 3800m it was a relatively flat walk, but again the scenery was amazing. At one point we were faced with a sticky situation as the thin path through the forest we were following was blocked ahead by a Bull with two calfs and a cow…….understandably we were a bit reluctant to walk straight for them so instead we opted to forge our own path through the dense forest growth to the side of the path. After many scratches and insect bites, we made it past the animals and carried on our walk. It was a very fun and enjoyable day.
Now that everyone was sufficiently acclimatized, Lake 69 was our next target! Named because it’s the 69th lake on from Puno, it forms part of the popular Santa Cruz 4 day hike and sits at 4600m. This time our taxi driver kindly picked us up at 5.30am (!!) and we started the hike from 3900m
with Siobhan setting off at a very nifty pace. Unlike Lake Churrup that was very steep straight away, this had a slightly less of an incline but just kept going and going and going past countless waterfalls and over countless ridges. After stopping for a morning tea break on what seemed like the only flat we made the final ascent and discovered why this is a popular 1 day trek…..the view was amazing! And we were also the first ones up there so had the place all to ourselves, it was breathtaking! Hopefully you can appreciate some of the photos I’ve uploaded. All in all it was 5 hours of hiking, so by the time we were back at the hostel we collapsed by the fire place and ordered pizza in, we had deserved it!
It was then time to say goodbyes to the girls again. Next stop for me Trujillo on the Peruvian coast line.
(There are a lot more photo´s that I want to upload, but the internet is ridicously slow here and I want some food, sorry!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.034s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0171s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb