Sur America: Huaraz and Cordillera Blanca...Andes Mountain time!

We arrived in Huaraz, Peru just over one week ago and have been busy here! Huarez is perched up right next to the Andes Mountains (specifically in the Cordillera Blanca Mountain Range) at 3050 meters. This makes it a prime starting location for many trekking and mountaineering expeditions.

We spent our first day in Huaraz acclimatizing to the elevation. We discovered a great fruit, veggie, meat, grain and bread market where we could buy all of our food for meals we would cook back at our hostel´s kitchen for very cheap. We also found the California Cafe, which has homemade treats, like oatmeal chocoalte chip cookies (not as good as my mother´s) for only 1 sol!, and makes a great jarra of Chai tea.

Our first hiking in Cordillera Blanca was to Laguna 69. We hired our hostel owner to get us up there (about a 3 hour car ride, half of which was on some pretty terrible roads) and since he couldn´t go that day, he had a friend of his drop us off at the trail head and pick us up on the way back. The hike was beautiful! We hiked the first hour through a green valley with lots of cows (Jon and I are both pretty upset and disgusted with the fact that so many cows can roam free in National Parks, pooping all over and mucking up the trails and drinking water, but that´s Peru). The trail started switching back along rocky mountains, eventually getting us huffing and puffing to Laguna 69 at about 4600 meters high. It is a stunning lake, intensely turquoise and backdropped by silvery rock that stretch upwards to rugged snowcapped peaks. As if it wasn´t beautiful enough, a few waterfalls elegantly fell from the glaciers into the lake. Pictures can describe better than these words, but even the pictures can´t describe how breathtaking it was (and I´m not just saying that because of the altitude).

Jon and I spent the next few days preparing for our big Santa Cruz overnight trek and doing a bit of mountain biking! A group of our friends had returned from the 3 day, 2 night Santa Cruz trek and gave us all the info we needed. We shopped around town for prices on equipment rental (we needed a tent and sleeping bags), bought a cheap pot and utensils at the market for cooking and we were set. We ducked out of the planning and preparation process for a few hours in the middle of the day to do a mountain bike trip with our friend Luke. We took a collectivo (van that seats about 15 people, crammed) up a mountain east of Huaraz, biked the remaining 40 minutes up to a Mirador (lookout over the valley that Huaraz lies in) and bombed down a dirt road through villages, constantly being chased by barking and snarling dogs that would only leave you alone if someone in the group stopped and picked up a stone to throw at them. Not our favorite mountain biking that we´ve ever done, but it was an adventure!

And finally...Santa Cruz!

Day 1...We took off from our hostel early Thursday morning. It was a process to get to the start of the trail. We had to hike to the Huaraz collectivo station, find a collectivo to Yungay (a village up the valley) and once in Yungay, had to find another collectivo to take us to Vaqueria, which was about a three hour ride away from Yungay on steep, washed out, trecherous roads. A collectivo can´t leave a location until it´s adequately full so the driver can make his money´s worth, so our collectivo did circles in Yungay for about 40 minutes, then made us switch to another collectivo because the one we were in suddenly wasn´t working, until finally the second collectivo started making it´s way to Yungay. Unfortunately, our driver, nicknamed ¨Captain Gordo Insano¨ by Jon, stressed me out bigtime. As we wound up the steep, rocky switchbacks to the pass we were crossing, our tires were hardly inches from the gravely edge that I was sure would crumble with any weight. All the while, our driver was distractedly munching on a bag of popcorn he bought in Yungay. The bag was on the dash, and his fat hand kept greedily reaching for the sliding bag, keeping him distracted and only leaving one hand on the wheel to manuver the car along the cliffs edge. The best part was when he finished his popcorn and fished out his pop bottle, finishing that off with his head tilted high and eyes off the road for several long seconds. He promptly tossed that out the window when he was done, right in the middle of a National Park, true South American style.

Safely in Vaqueria, we were finally able to start trekking! It was already midday, but Jon and I were hyped and our first day was an easy three hour hike into Paria campground. We wound through villages, checked in at the ranger´s station and hiked up the first valley, arriving at Paria before 3pm. We were joined at camp by three Argentinians going the same direction as us and two Frenchies going the opposite way. The French duo had just crossed the big Punta Union Pass that day, and said it was magnificent! That got Jon and I even more excited for the following days hike. Surprisingly it only rained two hours on us that night, which is amazing considering its rainy season in Cordillera Blanca.

Day two...We were out of camp by 7:30 and on our way up the valley. After about an hour of gradual incline, the trail sharply ascended the valley wall. We started getting impressive views of the rocky ridges in front of us and the vast valley behind us. Eventually, the trail leveled out as we passed ponds and lakes on a plateau on top of the valley but below the granite ridges. The last 40 minutes was a hard push up the steep granite to a notch in the ridge that we knew was the pass. Coming through the narrow pass we were amazed with the view on the other side. The Santa Cruz valley stretched out in front of us, with rocky mountains on either side and magnificent white peaks standing even higher up in the blue, cloud-patched sky. Directly to our right was the massive peak of Taulliraju and just below it was a glacier-fed, bright turquoise lake. Jon and I spent about an hour at the pass, taking pictures and scrambling around on the rocky ledges, free of our heavy backpacks. We were joined by another French couple going the opposite direction and enjoyed our summit stay with them.

After a quick lunch, we made the hour and a half desent into Taullipampa campground. The sun was out at camp and all of the surrounding peaks were cleared of clouds. We set up our tent to dry it out and lounged against our backpacks, watching the big screen TV of mountain-epicness in front of us. We both had mild headaches from the altitude, so we cooked up pots of coca tea while we were resting. We thought we had better soak in the sun while it was out because surely it would be gone in an hour. But, 4 hours later, we were still doused in sun rays and permitted 360 views of the entire valley.

The only bummer about our campground were the cows and horses. The horses were especially daring and would get only a foot away from our pot while we were cooking dinner, sneaking closer by pretending to just be grazing on the grass near to us. We constantly had to shoo them away. But with the weather and our hike that day, we really didn´t have much to complain about. We even got a grand, firey sunset down the valley. Throughout the course of the afternoon turning to evening turning to night, the peaks changed drastically in colors. It was an impressive, natural light show. The clearest we saw the mountains was during the night, when only the stars were out and the skies were clear. Their white peaks contrasted starkly with the midgnight sky and we could see every detail in their texture. Truely some of most beautiful mountains we have seen!

Day 3...We were up before the light packing up camp. We knew we had a long hike out ahead of us, and we wanted to get to Cashapampa by 1pm to catch a collectivo out of the mountains. The trail snaked down the valley, crossed a vast riverbed and then hugged the lefthand side of the valley for the remainder of the day. We passed a few other campgrounds, lakes and snow-capped mountains that would peek out from behind the massive, rocky walls of the valley.

Passing the last campground before Cashapampa, we got a pleasant surprise. We caught up to a group of four backpackers in front of us hiking out the same way and recognized Patrick, a Canadian we had spent the Christmas holiday with in Banos, Ecuador! We knew he was in the area, but hadn´t connected with him before he headed out on the Santa Cruz trek. Even more suprisingly, he was accompanied by two other travelers that we had met on an overnight bus to Chachapoyas, Devon an American and Matteas a French-Canadian. We were introduced to the fourth hiker, Gorka from Spain, and the six of us hiked the remainder of the trail together.

Once in Cashapampa, we bartered for a collectivo ride to Caraz, where we hopped in another collectivo to take us back to Huaraz. We arrived in Huaraz by 3.30 in the afternoon, exhuasted, stinky and dirty. Jon and I got back to Caroline´s Lodging (the hostel we had stayed at before), took long hot showers and cooked up a feast of quesadillas, eggs and guacamole. That evening we met up with our four friends for a beer from a local, Peruvian Brewery called Sierra Andian Brewing Company. I got Don Juan Porter and Jon got the Alpamayo Amber and both were by far the best beers we´ve had in South America (which isn´t hard to beat carbonated water they sell as beer)...but almost Pacific Northwest standard even! It was a great way to top off an awesome trek, and an overall amazing week in Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca Mountain Range.

Tonight we head out on the night bus to Lima! We will spend a few days there before continuing on to Huacachina for some sandboarding, Ica for some pisco tasting and then Arequipa for another trek in the Colca Canyon. We will keep you posted!