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Well the last blog seems to have caused quite an uproar! So I will start by addressing all of the comments suggesting that this whole trip is in fact a hoax! Firstly to mum and dad, no the pictures were not fake and I am not in fact staying in some theme park in America! Secondly to Uncle Ged, no I am not in fact living in a bedsit in Manchester, working in Primark and photoshopping myself into pictures from the Internet! And lastly to Helen, yes that is actually me in the pictures and not some random! When the hair dye comes out and the makeup comes off this is what I look like! Scary I know!
So on to this weeks tale of woe....
After i arrived in Lima last Saturday i spent 4 nights in Miraflores which is known as the ´nice safe´ part of Lima and is where all of the tourists stay. I spent a couple of days hanging out with some of the students from the University of Lima. Aldo took me to a well known cake shop to try some Peruvian deserts, which is quite funny seems I've only just managed to
stop stuffing my face with cakes! Still i managed to force one down! The next day he took me and Ed, a guy from the UK on summer exchange, for a look around the uni and Lima centre which is surprisingly nice. Its full of beautiful old colonial buildings which date back to the 17th and 18th century, the time when Lima was at its height of wealth and power. We went to China Town for lunch and had Chifa which is apparently a cross between Peruvian and Chinese food. But to be honest i couldn't find anything even vaguely Peruvian about it.
On Wednesday i took an eight hour bus north to Huaraz which is in the Cordillera Blanca. The Cordillera Blanca is a mountain range full of snow caped mountains and turquoise lakes. My guide book says it has the largest concentration of glaciers in the worlds tropical zone! But i didn't see any unfortunately. I booked straight onto a 4 day, 3 night trek starting at 6am the next day. We were going to be walking from Lagunas de Llanganuco to Santa Cruz Valley through the Huascaran National Park, one of the finest treks in the
area.
We met at 6am and travelled by bus for about 3 hours to Lagunas de Llanganuco where we loaded our donkeys up and set off. We walked through a small village, along a lovely river and through beautiful grassy valleys with mountains in the background. It was an easy enough walk but i had trouble on the uphill parts. And by uphill i mean small slopes!
We camped in an nice field surrounded by snow covered mountains. It was beautiful. Or at least it was until the sun went down! Then it turned into hell! it was freezing! So cold that as soon as i had eaten my dinner all i wanted to do was get into my tent and sleeping bag. And it was only 7.30pm. The night was horrendous. It was so cold that i didn't sleep a wink. The outside door of my tent was broken and the inside one had a hole in it. I spent the whole night trying to warm up by rubbing my arms, my legs, and my feet together. I even tried sticking a thermal relief pad for muscle pain on my feet! it didn't work. when i got
up in the morning i found ice on my backpack which had been inside the tent with me! I was freezing cold, tired out and feeling hard done to because i was the one that got the dodgy tent and didn't get any sleep. Typical. I felt so terrible i started to cry. But gave up after 2 or 3 seconds when i realised that i didn't have the energy.
Over breakfast (cold hard bread buns with jam) i found out that no one had slept which made me feel a bit better! And funnily enough we all thought that we were the only ones that had been up all night! One guy was convinced that he must have been given a dodgy sleeping bag, another said that he had wind coming into his tent. We were all feeling pretty shitty.
And for me that was only the start of it. The walk that day was horrendous. We climbed from 3800 metres to 4750 metres. That's nearly a mile! That's like walking from my mum and dads house to the middle of town! Vertically! And at a ridiculous altitude! I couldn't breath. Every 30 steps or so i
had to sit down and catch my breath. On the particularly steep bits i was piratically hyperventilating. My head was killing me. It was like a never ending torture. Every time that i thought that i was nearly there another peak appeared. Luckily for me one other girl, Natasha, also had problems with the altitude so at least i wasn't in it alone. Every time we stopped to get some air muttered to each other how ridiculous this whole thing was, how it was completely stupid, how we couldn't believe that we had paid to put ourselves through this, how we couldn't believe that some people actually thought that this was fun! I thought that it was the most horrendous thing I've ever done. And the worst part was that i knew I couldn't turn back. i had to keep going up, there was no choice. I don't think i have ever felt so physically terrible in my whole life. I was desperately trying not to cry. A couple of times i just couldn't hold it in and a massive wail came out! I managed to turn it into a laugh last minute though, which to be honest just made
me sound like a crazy lunatic! Poor Natasha was trying not to cry as well. We must have looked like a right pair crawling up the mountain panting for breath.
When we finally got to the pass at the top (which was covered in snow on one side and all sunny and warm on the other!?) all i could see was the miles of rocky path i had to go down , and the field after field that i had to cross to reach the campsite. And to be honest I'm not so sure why i wanted to get there so much when all that lay ahead was another night as a human ice cube!
I put more clothes on this time. I put on everything i had with me. 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of leggings, a pair of trousers, a vest, a long sleeved top, a t-shirt, a fleece jumper, a cardigan, hat, scarf and gloves! And me and the other 2 guys that had tents on their own all got in one tent. So there i was, looking like Joey from friends in the episode where he puts on ALL of Chandlers clothes, sandwiched
in between two hairy Israeli guys in a cold smelly tent! Oh what a delightful way to spend a holiday! I have to say the extra body warmth and clothes did help a bit, I'm sure i got a few hours sleep but it was still a rough night.
The next morning all but 2 of the group had decided that they had had enough and wanted to do the last 2 days of walking in one. I was a bit reluctant at first, not wanting to give up and because id paid $130 to do the dam walk! But the thought of spending another night i n the cold was too much.
It was not a fun day. I still had a splitting headache and i felt quite sick. It was all downhill but it was over boulders and gravel. So I was either leaping from boulder to boulder concentrating on not tripping or falling or digging my feet into the gravel trying not to slip over. We were going at quite some speed so that we could make the bus back to Huaraz. Actually I was practically running it. It was agony on the knees and
the thighs. And quite dangerous i thought! One foot wrong at that speed and you could be over the edge of the mountain! The countryside was beautiful, absolutely stunning, but there was no time to enjoy it, or even look up at it really!
When we got back to Huaraz I checked into a dorm with hot water and cable TV. Ohhhh it was bliss! A hot shower and a warm bed! My whole body was in pain, my back was killing me and i had piles of blisters on my feet. The pedicure from the Philippines is well and truly ruined.
Looking back on the trek now, 2 days later, it really doesn't seem that bad, i almost think that i had a vaguely nice time!? Perhaps the overwhelming beauty of the place dulls the memories of the pain i went through to see it? I still don't think that i would go as far as to say it was fun though! Perhaps i will stick to the day trips from now on!
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Ben
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Vodka
First Glance I thought it was a Peru Bru of Vodka! Spewing.. Soft drink! Good to see your keeping fit climbing mountains girrl