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| View from our roof terrace |
The range scales from the town at 3000 meters to many peaks over 6000 meters.
We had met back up in Huaraz with a friend we made in Argentina "Dan" and a similarly keen trekker. Our plan was to complete the 4 day Santa Cruz trek, the pre cursor to this though is the Laguna 69 acclimatization trek.
We decided to do the trek on our own, the trek begins 2 1/2 hours away from Huaraz which led to a very early alarm call of 5.30 am, after banging around and shovelling oatmeal in to our mouths we left the hostel at 6.20 with the rising sun.
We took a small mini bus to the town of Yungay, a 5 Soles ride that lasted an hour. Once we arrived in Yungay we were mobbed by people trying to take the Gringos to the trek, but they were asking for 15 Soles each way. Now 15 Soles is only £3 but in Peru that's quite a lot and we feared there was a huge amount of tourist tax being added, so decided to have a look around and see what we could do as an alternative.
We eventually found someone who worked for the national park, who sold us our park entry tickets. We bought a 1 month ticket for 65 Soles per person, he then confirmed 15 was the going rate to get to the trek!
So we found a taxi driver and tried to negotiate 10,12,13 no 15 soles. Then argued about how many people would be in the car....As normal we lost the argument!
The ride up to the start of the trek takes about 1 hr 15 in a car and more like 1 hr 1/2 to 3/4 in a minibus. The ride is very uncomfortable and dusty, this is not a typical road but a stoney path!
Half way up to the trek start you pass a beautiful glacial lake shadowed by snow covered mountains.
Another 40 minutes on from this lagoon is the start of the trek.
The trek starts gently meandering through the valley, past waterfalls and over streams, the trek begins at 3900 meters so the air is already thin.
In the distance behind us as we climbed appeared what we think was the tallest mountain in Peru Huascaran rising to 6768 meters.
After about an hour and a half of progressive climbing we reached a lagoon, however not our final target lagoon.
After 20 minutes wandering through a flat valley we saw our first sign post directing us to the lagoon.
After an hour of hard up hill walking at well over 4000 meters we arrived at the lagoon which sits at 4600 meters.
We had walked to the lagoon in 2 hr 35 mins, the target time is 3 - 4 hours with some people saying it takes 5....
We were rewarded for our efforts with a brilliant blue glacial lake surrounded by 6000 meter mountains and glaciers that creaked and cracked as bits fell off.
We spent an hour sat around the lake eating lunch and relaxing in the baking sun, eventually most of the pre paid tours began to arrive at the lake. This was our time to exit as our tranquillity was lost!
We guessed that as the walk up had taken 2 and a half hours the descent would be around 2 hours, we were greeted all the way down with beautiful views.
The main draw back to completing this trek is when you finish you to wait for a ride back to Yungay, the rides end at 4 pm but we were there at 3 pm with ages to spare.
Unfortunately the only ride available had Dan and I sat in the boot of an estate car, bouncing down the road for 1 hr 15!
So acclimatization complete we head for the Santa Cruz trek on Monday, as I write this post we are about to go out to get our tent.
The next blog post wont be for 4 or 5 days but will be entitled "3 Amigos on the road to Santa Cruz"
Beautiful. Thank you.
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