Sunday 19 January 2014

Huaraz and Llanganuco Lakes

Right so first and foremost I am sorry it has been so long since I did a blog post! Too much happening and not enough money. So here comes news of our first bit of proper travelling! Only a short weekend and we were dying after arriving back in Trujillo at 4am Monday morning, but it was so worth it.

We took an overnight bus and arrived at 5am in freezing Huaraz - people had told us it'd be cold but we clearly hadn't really listened to them enough! Everyone else was in big warm blankets and jackets and there was us in our jeans and thin jumpers, used to warm sunny days in the aldea. Buying an Andean jumper was top of our list!

We spent most of the Saturday in the market - it was so fun to see another city's market since we've become so used to our own. Huaraz is so beautiful, surrounded by huge snow-topped mountains but still so sunny.

We couldn't wait to get up into the mountains so booked an organised walk for the Sunday, leaving at 6am. The bus journey up was so scenic even if rather bumpy, and we passed lots of cute wee Andean villages up in the mountains before getting to the Llanganuco Lakes - they are so gorgeous and so amazingly blue, even when it's not sunny! I spent a good 10 minutes in wonder at how beautiful it was.

The town of Huaraz sits at over 3,000m above sea level and we walked from 3,900m to 4,600m that day. Altitude sickness was not fun but manageable, I don't think either of us thought we would actually get it but we realised we must have when we were too out of breath for it just to be unfitness! We carried on and started the walk up to Laguna 69 - I must say it was most definitely not the easiest walk I have ever done, but it was so so beautiful, even more so that we had finally made it to the top!

Unfortunately as soon as we got to Laguna 69 our guide told us there was going to be a huge storm so we only had 10 minutes there before we had to practically run back down the mountain to avoid getting soaked and also to make sure we got the bus taking us back down!

Heather
Amy and I at Llanganuco Lake (in our Andean jumpers)

Laguna 69