Trekking the Cordillera Blanca, Peru

On arrival in the mountain town of Huaraz, situated at about 3100m above sea level, we found a nice room at the swiss style chalet hostel, Albergue Churup, for ourselves and a leafy spot in a nearby local's back garden to park the car, and then spent a couple of days doing very little except acclimatizing to the altitude.

The hostel turned out to be one of those very sociable type places full of people of all ages from all corners of the world in this case united by a desire to climb mountains, trek around lakes and get lost on the numerous dirt roads on mountain bikes. As such, there are plenty of people talking about the 6000m mountain they climbed in Torres del Paine, the 8 day trek they did where the guys from 'Touching the Void' nearly died and the numerous volcanoes they have climbed in all corners of the world.

For us, however, this was going to be our first trek so we kept our mouths firmly closed and instead asked people how many pairs of socks they thought we should pack for it and what kind of extra food we should take... that kind of thing.

We did, however, meet some great people - namely the American couple - Nanette and John Shapiro, who were incredibly friendly as well as extremely knowledgeable and helpful about all things to do with trekking! Although we were unable to spend much time with them as they were leaving Huaraz and we were preparing for our trek, we hoped to meet up with them at a later date down in Patagonia.

It also turned out that our group for the 4 day Llanganuco to Santa Cruz trek in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range were also really lovely people from Holland, Maaika who was with her mum and dad on a holiday before heading to Antigua, Guatemala for 6 months and then Cris and Karin on a four week holiday before moving into their new house back home.

 We began the trek with our fingers crossed for some decent weather as it has rained solidly for several days and there were plenty of ominous clouds circulating around the area. However, luck was on our side, and after a slightly rainy first day, the skies cleared and we were treated to some glorious sun giving us spectacular views of the mountains and lakes all around us. The trek itself was, although hard work at times and a struggle for those who found the high altitude difficult, absolutely stunning and we barely passed another soul over the course of the 4 days despite being warned that it was quite a busy trail. We reached a height of 4750m during the 10 hours of walking on the second day which was pretty incredible although we were all pretty pleased to be heading down after that as breathing proved a little tricky!

The third and fourth day's scenery was spectacular and we took in many snow capped mountains, more ice cold, turqouise blue lakes as well as shining glaciers, sparkling streams and gushing waterfalls.

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This was a great first trek for us as compared to most of the treks you can do down in Patagonia where you have to carry everything on your back that you need, we had a team of very sweet, very shy little donkeys and two donkey drivers who kindly carried all our stuff for us... not to mention a guide who cooked for us every morning and evening. All we had to worry about was purifying our water with little iodine tablets we had bought in a pharmacy in Huaraz, plenty of warm and waterproof clothes, any spare food we wanted and our cameras! We passed a couple about our age on our second day who had chosen to do the whole thing on their own and they were collapsed in a heap at about 4000m, she was crying with tiredness, he was trying not to...

After four days we happily finished in the little village of Santa Cruz where we  caught the bus back to Huaraz and took much needed hot showers. That evening we even made it out to sample a bit of Peruvian saturday night life which was really kicking off! We danced to salsa and some bad Latin American rock music and then headed home to some well earned sleep!