After a brief stop in Lima we jumped on a night bus to Huaraz (eight hours north of Lima) – home to some of the most spectacular hikes in South America and the white snowcapped mountains of Cordillera Blanca.
There are so many options for Hiking in Huaraz from small walks taking a few hours to the monster 10 day Huayhuash hike. We decided to do the one day trek up to Laguna 69 and the 4 day / 3 night Santa Cruz trek. Both of these treks are graded as moderate to difficult – especially as they climb above 4,500m. Huaraz itself is fairly high up at 3,000m above sea level but the treks require a few days in town and some warm up hiking to get acclimatised.
For our warm up hike we opted for the half day non-guided trek to Lago Wilcacocha which reaches up to 3,720m. Getting to the start of the trek should be easy – a short collectivo (local bus) ride jumping off at Puente Santa Cruz. Unfortunately, we let the bus driver convince us to stay on further and get off at a fairly random spot. This meant we paid a little more for the bus, had an unsigned hike and probably started up at higher altitude than we wanted (and hence didn’t quite the same acclimatisation benefit). We followed the road up until a friendly old local man told us it would be mas rapido if we cut across the farms on the mountain. We tried this for a while until a pack of wild dogs encouraged us to change our path again. Fortunately this actually put us onto an easy path leading straight to the lake.
The lake itself was small and nothing special but the colours of the mountains and views from the top offered some reward. We also watched a fairly aggressive llama trying to make special friends with a sheep – any tourists getting within a few metres of his turf were quickly scared away!
One of the highlights in Huaraz is Laguna 69 which is best done on a one day tour (with a 4:30am pick up, sadly something we are getting used to). The tour bus drives you a few hours to the start of the trek where you hike up from a starting altitude of 3,800m to a whopping 4,600m. The hike starts quite easy but at times is straight up and takes about three hours (I think we did it in about two and a half). Coca leaves, coca lollies and mate de coca help give the energy to beat the altitude.
The hike down is steep and a little slippery but much easier than going up so only takes around two hours. An awesome hike but we slept well once we got back to town!
These two hikes were a great warm up but our real target was the four day Santa Cruz trek. After a lot of research we chose to use Eco Ice Tours – a small agency that turned out to be an excellent choice. The guide, food, and camping facilities were all excellent but simple.
The tour starts out driving past the starting point for the Laguna 69 hike – stopping on route at a beautiful colourful lagoon that you don’t need to hike to!
The drive beyond Laguna 69 gets a bit more hairy, as we crossed the mountain at around 4,800m the road became more like a mud pit and it took some skillful, experienced driving to get us around safely. The views from the high points of the mountain proved a very useful distraction.
Once we got to the starting point our overnight bags and camping gear were loaded on to our donkeys and mules and we set off on a fairy easy four hour hike to our first campsite.
The meals each night were impressive and gave us a chance to chat and play cards with our awesome trekking group. By luck we were in Huaraz at the same time as Dec who we met at Spanish school in Sucre and he joined us on the trek. The three of us immediately clicked with the rest of the group – three British girls and an American girl who had already met each in various countries in South America. Having such an awesome group kept us entertained throughout the long days to come! There’s nothing like hiking for four days with no shower and a hole in the ground (or big rock) for a toilet to quickly bond people together.
Day two started early, around 6am and we had a long day hiking starting out with five hours climb to our highest point – Punta Union – at 4,750m. This was pretty tough at times but the warm up hikes had us in good shape.
Whilst hiking up to 4,750m was hard, it would have been impossible for us without our hard working donkeys! As noted on other posts, we always try to avoid any tourism that encourages or enables the mistreatment of animals. I’m pleased to note that all the donkey drivers we saw on route treated the animals well (and need to do so as they rely on them for their livelihood).
From the top we walked a couple more hours to our next camp site. Our group seemed to hike a little further than other tours each day to make sure we had a campsite on our own and at the best spot.
Day three started early again with a three hour round trip to take in the sights of Lake Arhuaycocha.
As nominated (well self nominated really) photographer I got to take a few extra pics!
The rest of the day was fortunately a flat walk through the valley (well, actually Peruvian flat which in any other part of the world would be called hilly) – though we walked for around 10 hours in total!
Throughout the entire walk we were accompanied by trek dogs who latch on to groups. We had a group full of dog lovers so we gave the dogs plenty of attention. Special mention must go to a dog we named Tres who dug his way into the fly of our tent on the last night and slept as close to us as he could. Unfortunately he had stomach issues and had been rolling in something unpleasant so, as cute as he was, we had a very stinky sleep!
Day four was a pretty simple three hour downhill trek back to the van and a few hours drive back to town. Once back in Huaraz we were taken to Orlando’s, the owner of the tour company, house for a massive home cooked meal and pisco sours! A really nice touch and a great end to the hike but we were all ready for a shower (and a toilet that’s not a hole in the ground).
Huaraz city itself has enough to offer for the days between hikes. As you would expect there are hundreds of seemingly identical tour agencies, plenty of hostels and places to eat and drink and a few shops selling/hiring out adventure gear.
We ate a couple of times at the Chilli Heaven restaurant in town that served up huge portions of Mexican, Indian and Thai food and more importantly sells one litre jugs of pisco sour. We had a few of these with our hiking crew after Santa Cruz and before we jumped on the night bus. They definitely helped me sleep.
We also really liked Mi Comedia Pizzeria – an upscale pizza place that was a league above many of the fairly average pizza places we’ve experienced in our travels.
You can also get great Thai food at the guesthouse we stayed at La Casa de Zarela. Although a little out of town we loved this really comfortable place, especially the really friendly and interesting owner Zarela who we spent ages chatting to – she was about to head off on a six month holiday including trekking in Nepal.
Next up: we head back to Lima for a couple of days then continue on to the sand dunes of Huacachina.
daleb81
A 22 year old American / Canadian male named Jesse went missing in Huaraz on 28 Sep 2017. If you are in the area now pls check insty hashtag #helpusfindjesse for photos.