I woke up at 7.30 without any hadache and ready to do something. Still I stayed in bed till 8 reading the New York Times, because it was so cold. Then I got up and enjoyed the sun a bit on the rooftop before having breakfest. Marco had told me he will work from 9 to 11.30 but when I got back up to my room I met him and Jana (also German, Marco had met her in Huaraz and told me yesterday evening she was arriving today) was already there. Marco headed off to work and I had another breakfest with Jana talking about various stuff for hours until Marco called us to meet at the Plaza Major downtown at noon, so I quickly told the Belgian couple and we headed off using a colectivo, a taxi that picks up everybody who wants to join on the way up to 6 passengers, but we were lucky to only drive with 2 others.
When we arrived I was astonished about how many friends Marco had invited, our group now consisted of 2 Peruvians, 4 Italians, 2 Germans and 2 Belgians. At first Marco didn’t like to have such a large group, but in the end we took 2 (!) taxis to Huayucachi. Since we even had to take our luggage into the cabin there wasn’t much space and I was really happy when we arrived. There was a small festival ongoing and we were all hungry, so loocked around. There were two tables with old women serving food. We split up because the Belgians and I wanted to have cuy (guinea pig) and the others had chicken. The cuy was tasty, comparable to rabbit or chicken.
Afterwards we started our walk in a small street. We saw some baby dogs which were really cute, but when we had already passed them their mother came and barked at us protectively so we went a little bit faster. She still came after us and unfortunately I was last so she bit me, but luckily I wore a jeans, so her teeth didn’t reach my skin. Still it was a pretty strong bite and bled a little bit, but I don’t want to know what had happened to the girls with shorts. At that moment I also thought it was good to have the rabies vaccination.
The trek itself was very nice and we talked a lot. Marco was very entertaining and played his flute a lot. He also told us a lot about the history of Huancayo and we saw a church, that was built by the Spaniards in the 16th century being one of the first catholic churches in Peru.
We were in the sun almost all the time, but I was again a bit worried about getting sunburnt as I still only have spf 45.
We reached the top of one mountain at almost 3800 meters and the view was breathtaking. It felt like being on top of the world 🙂
Only minutes after we took the pictures at the top the sun was hiding behind some other mountain and it quickly got dark. The way back was just climbing down offroad and much stones were loose, so it was impossible not to fall sometimes. We were just lucky the moon was shining bright, othereise we would probably still be somewhere in that mountain searching for the way. When we arrived back at were we started we were a little bit afraid to encounter that dog again, but fortunately we didn’t. Instead of having to take a taxi we went by microbus this time back to Huancayo, which was equally crowded but cheaper.
Back to Huancayo Jana,Marco and wanted to go to a vegetarian restaurant, but it was closed, so we ended up in a chifa, but still had vegetarian food.

Afterwards we were all pretty tired so we showered and went to bed relatively early again.