After the barren landscapes of the north Peruvian coast, we were itching for somewhere with a bit more classic beauty (Admin – she just means some beauty, any kind of beauty whatsoever!).
So we headed inland and up into the mountains. Towards the Cordillera Blanca and specifically the town of Huaraz.
Located at around 3,100m altitude, Huaraz wasn’t the highest we’d been, but the hiking routes were higher still, and after some time on the coast, we were wondering how quickly we’d acclimatise back to altitude.
Finally arriving at our hostel after a long day on the bus, we were sooo pleased to find that our room was on the 3rd floor, that the kitchen was on the 7th floor, and there was no lift!! Wow, those flights of stairs were rough with our big backpacks on!
So, after our struggle with the stairs, we decided that the next day better be a hard day of sitting, maybe interspersed with the odd coffee, whilst we re-acclimatised a bit!
Eventually though, we had to face the reality, that if we wanted to see for ourselves some of the landscapes we’d seen on Google to draw us here, we were going to have to get off our arses and do some actual hiking!
So we opted for what is regularly described as an easy acclimatisation hike. Not quite sure who’s version of ‘easy’ mind you! In fairness, it wasn’t especially long and whilst it went up a reasonable amount, if we’d done a walk of the same distance and elevation gain back in the UK I don’t think we’d have been huffing and puffing quite as much! But then, nor would we have had the soaring Andes as the backdrop!
As an aside, we’d heard that the colectivo’s in South America keep picking up people until they are jam packed, but had not so far experienced a truly full colectivo. Well that changed on the way back! Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo (probably because I couldn’t move enough to get my phone out of my bag to take a snap!), but in a minivan with 15 proper seats, I think I counted 25 people crammed in! I’m honestly not sure how they kept squeezing more people in!
Anyway, after our successful first hike, we decided to celebrate with another rest day, before going for something slightly harder and higher!
Again we decided to eschew the Instagram favourite hikes in favour of something likely to be a little less crowded and not requiring hours and hours on a tourist bus to access. So we headed to Laguna Churup; a hike of a similar distance and only a little more elevation gain than the first hike, but starting at the same elevation that the first hike had topped out at and so apparently a quite a lot harder.
It was another gloriously sunny day and when we got off the colectivo (this one carrying only a dozen instead of 25 people!), we and our fellow passengers appeared to be more or less the only ones on the mountain. Perfect.
The hike was great, and definitely left us feeling breathless very quickly, but we made good progress for 2/3 of the way. At which point there was apparently a decision to be made, with the right fork taking you up to the lake via a scramble using ropes to pull yourself up, or left, via the ‘easy’ route. We decided on the ‘easy’ route! However, due to the signpost pointing out the fork having fallen over (not that we knew it until we sat someone righting it on our way back down!), and the fork being wholly invisible otherwise, we inadvertently ended up on the right hand path! This mistake only eventually became apparent when the scramble appeared in front of us!
Unfortunately, I have no head for heights and Richard has a dodgy hip which we didn’t think would go well on such a scramble and so we were faced with a decision… brave the scramble anyway, or retrace our steps to try and find the missing fork. So we took the only sensible course of action and instead decided just to clamber up the hillside along neither route to pick up the ridge line of the ‘easy’ route that we could see above us!
After much huffing and puffing and having wasted loads of time, we finally arrived on the correct route and figured we’d now have a reasonably easy hike to the lake. So off we went. Until 15 minutes or so later we were faced with another scramble! Whilst much shorter than the one we’d been trying to avoid, ultimately, with Richards limited range of motion with his bad hip, we decided this was still a stretch too far (quite literally). And so we reluctantly had to make the decision to turn around without reaching the lake. Whilst this was disappointing, as the lake is meant to be truly beautiful, we’ve still got a lot of the trip left and we can’t justify pushing things unnecessarily, just for a few photos!
Nonetheless, it was a great hike, and still worth the effort.
After these two beautiful hikes we could happily have stayed longer to try out more, but Lima and southern Peru were calling us, so we reluctantly left Huaraz and headed south.
Sloth Journeys 