Both me and my roommate in the hostel got up shortly after 5 a.m., to start our treks. I met Pia at 6 a.m. and we walked to our tour agency. Kevin, another French tourist had decided to join last-minute so we were four tourists and two guides.
At first we ate a basic breakfest, then our car arrived and we rode a bout 1,5 hours to our starting point at 3800 meters. There we paid the entrance fee to the National Park Huascaran (65 soles) and started our hike. It was very cold and windy, but beautiful. The first few hours we walked straight through the valley were we met a British mountain biker and two Australians hiking without a tour. Then we went up to our camping spot at 4500 meters. When we arrived, it was already getting cold, so we quickly set up the tents. While we had tasty sandwiches for lunch (with cheese, meat and avocado), the dinner was just awesome. A soup, pasta and tea – pure luxury far away from civilization. Meanwhile my clock showed 5 °C and we were all freezing. Our guides told us it was forbidden to light a fire, but we still had a small one. Otherwise our only option would have been going to sleep (and it was not even 8 p.m.). They had even brought Marshmallows and we had a lot of fun when they started reading our future in the fire. Kevin felt a bit ill and went to bed early, but we enjoyed the fire a bit more.
The equipment (tent and sleeping bag) were also really good, but still it was cold during the night, so we did not get too much sleep. When we got up at about 7.30 the sun was just beginning to unfreeze the frost that covered all our things. My water from the little river that I had filled in the evening to let the purification pills do their magic overnight was also half ice.
The breakfest was incredible – we had pancakes with banana and apples as well as chocolate cream. It was without doubt my best breakfest here in Peru till now. At about 9 a.m. we were all ready and started our climb. Kevin was still feeling bad (most probably due to the altitude), but was determined to continue the trek, so we went all together.
The path was ascending quickly and at about 4700 meters I was beginning to feel the altitude as well (slight headache) and was really hoping it would not get worse. Fortunately it did not. Still the altitude causes a very stange feeling of exhaustion that is not comparable to the feeling e.g. after running a competion or working hard for a long time. It really felt like being seriously ill and you had to decide between going on or dieing there. When we finally reached 5094 (thats what my GPS said) everybody was relatively quiet – quite a contrast to the first day when we talked a lot and made a lot of jokes (including dirty ones, quite a challenge in Spanish…). Kevin was feeling very bad, but he went on without complaining much. The view from our highest point was really astonishing, but it was cold and we were all wanting to go down again, so we just took a few pictures.
We decided to have lunch at 4700 meters, because Kevin just could not go on and the girls were hungry as well. I still had some headache and was not very keen to eat anything, but they persuaded me to eat some sandwiches and afterwards we were really all feeling a lot better. Soon we reached 4200 meters and it felt like being newborn. We ran the last meters to the campsite and climbed a big rock
Unfortunately we were not relatively close to civilisation again, so we could not make a fire. When it was getting really cold we were trying to set up a very small fire, but watching out for people Leo and me both saw a light for half a second. Nobody answered our “Hola?”, so the Peruvians felt they had to search the whole area, but there was nobody. Because Because robberies seem to happen at remote spots, we to ok precautions and put anything valuable into our tents this night and distinguished the fire. We were in bed directly after dinner (which was good as always) at about 8 p.m. The night was slightly warmer, but still we did not sleep more than half of the time, so I had some time to recalculate my travel plan. I was already staying longer than planned in Huaraz, but it is so nice I might have stayed longer. My conclusion, however, is that I would have to take the bus the day we end our trek to avoid too much stress the rest of the time or having to shorten the trip.
On our third day (Thursday) we enjoyed the luxury of waiting until the sun was really warm and got up at 8 a.m. We enjoyed our nice breakfast a last time and started to walk at 10 a.m. Because we were just going down and the way was easy we already arrived at our final point at 11.30 and the car arrived 5 minutes afterwards, so we were back to Huaraz even earlier than planned. After having our last lunch we all went to take a shower and Pia gave me her pictures (she has a really good camera). We had agreed to meet at Café Andino at 5, so I went a little earlier to buy my bus ticket. I used the Peruvian way of asking people how to get to the Movil office, but due to the descriptions being quite vague I was arriving late at the Cafe, but still was the first one
Soon we were all enjoying the great hot chocolates and talking about the trek, our past experiences and upcoming travel plans. We had also invited Moshe from Israel, who was also taking the Movil bus tonight, but to Lima.
Afterwards we were all hungry and decided to have Pizza. We somehow finished 4 family pizzas with 6 people, but it was extremely tasty. The only downside was I had no time to get some information about Trujillo online and write this blog post, but sometimes you cannot do everything at once… After the Pizza we had a kind of goodbye ceremony and it really felt like leaving people I had known for a far longer time.
The bus went almost on time and after receiving the included snack and saving it for breakfast I was already asleep till we reached Trujillo.
