Lares Trek

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Today we travelled to Ollantaytambo and visited some Incan ruins in the town itself and the surrounding Saqsaywaman (sexy women) National Park before starting our trekking expedition at 4.30am tomorrow morning. In the morning, we caught the bus to Calca where we stocked up on supplies to distribute to the locals on our trek. we bought tons of bread and fruit, and some crayons and toys for the children. Then we were off to Lares Town for a thermal bath at the hot springs and some food before we started our trek to the first campsite. On the way children would run up to us on the path and we handed out bread and food to them. We climbed nearly 1km to 4000 meters above sea level to a town called Chaqchapata where we camped on a local farm for the night. the dogs howled and scampered around our tents the whole night, protecting the farms livestock, Llamas, from the foxes and.....erh... pumas!!! That wasn't in the brochure!!! After a hearty breakfast, we packed up camp and headed for the Paso Wakay Wasi Casa. This was a house high up in the Andean mountains inhabited by a family of 8, mother, father and 6 children. It was at an altitude of over 4600 crazy, at this height, there is so little oxygen in the air that even the fittest of us was panting walking up a slight gradient!! The mother showed us around her tiny house. I couldn't believe that 8 people lived in a space smaller than my bedroom. Not just that, they shared the house with two dogs (who lived outside really), a family of cats and about 20 guinea pigs (for eating)!! it was quite emotional talking to her, hearing about how she lived day to day and watching her children running around playing with their food!! I gave her a bag of Coca leaves and doled out the food to the children. She gave us the sweetest blessing as we left and wished her 'Sal Pikie' (see you soon in Quechua), she said 'may many hummingbirds kiss you on your journey'.... i bought lots of llamas socks from her, she was lovely!!!! Back on the trail, we reached the highest point of our trek, having lost one of our party to illness she took the mule to the top, but we all felt triumphant when we reached the summit next to a glacier and saw the beautiful blue lagoon where lunch was waiting for us!! Legends tell that the lagoon is inhabited by mermaids..... i didn't see any!!!We camped at Mantanay, 4400m above sea level, it was freezing but the chef made us a cheeky hot toddy to send us off to bed with.... i managed to psych myself up into such a tiz that night i barely slept a wink as i imagined panthers and bears invading our camp, not sure whether it was the altitude, lack of sleep, cold, or just my very vivid imagination but maybe a combination of them all!!! i woke up very tired but ready to get going. The terrain completely changed as we crossed the mountain and headed back down, it turned from rocky mountain, to mossy downs, to deep forest within a few hundred meters. We meet many more locals on the way and handed out the rest out our wears, ending up at a school, the kids were so cute!! We collected a bus back to Ollantaytambo to catch the train to Machu Picchu........

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Photos

Local kids
loving seeing their pictures

The Camp is in sight
end of a very long day