Huaraz // Laguna 69

The bus from Mancora dropped me just after 7am in the morning on some random street somewhere in Casma. First I was worried how to find the bus to Huaraz from here but as soon as the bus left some guys came running "Huaraz?" "Huaraz?". When I told them yes they pointed at a normal car standing on the street and said: "30,- soles!" (30,- soles ~ $ 10,-). The girl who sold me the ticket for my bus to Casma had said there would be a bus for 20,- soles. But she had also said the bus would drop me at a bus station so I didn't know if I could trust her that much. I still tried my luck and asked for the bus to Huaraz but the guys replied there wouldn't be a bus till the afternoon. As I was used to people trying to fool you I crossed the street where I saw some other guys and some TukTuks waiting. They also offered me a ride in a car for 30,- soles but when I asked for the bus one of the TukTuk drivers offered me to drive me to the bus station for 2,- soles. I jumped in the TukTuk and after 500m we stopped outside a bus station (I could have walked but he obviously didn't tell me that ;)). Unfortunately the bus at 7am had just left and the next was running at 8:30am. I decided I didn't wanna wait that long to safe a few $ and told the TukTuk driver to take me back to the car. I got the price down to 25,- soles and as I got the last seat in the car we left right away. The landscape was still pretty dry and dreary and the road partly so bad that we were actually driving on the field next to the road for a while. But I could see the mountains ahead and was excited for the change of scenery. After about half an hour we passed a bus and a lady in the car told me that this was the bus I had just missed in Casma. So at least we would even be there faster than the bus.
Just a bit further I saw a some people and dog running on the side of the road. I'm always afraid of dogs running on the street as the drivers never slow down for them. Usually dogs know not to run on the roads but this one didn't. Our driver hit the breaks and blew his horn but it was to late. We only came to a stop after we hit the dog. I covered my face because I didn't wanna see what had happened. The lady next to me was shocked at first but than she turned around and relaxed. She told me: "No, no. Solo un perro!" - it was only a dog. She must have thought we hit one of the people. For me it didn't make a big difference. I also felt for the dog but as I had learned before people here don't really. Our driver got out. Not to check on the dog but on the car. Unfortunately we had hit the dog quite hard and something was broken. It looked like we could keep on driving. At this moment the bus that we had passed earlier showed up. The lady pulled me out of the car and the driver just signed that it was ok. We hadn't paid him yet but as he couldn't take us any further we was fine with us getting on the bus instead.
I wanted to check on the dog first but I knew there was nothing I could have done and the busdriver told us to hurry up to get on the bus.
Once on the bus we only had to pay 15,- as we got on a lot later than the other people. Of course I was happy to safe some money like this bit it also felt like the poor dog had given his life for this :(.
Some people in Mancora had warned me about the altitude in Huaraz. Especially as I was going from sea level to 3,000m in one go. My hostel was on a little hill and walking up there with my backpack was pretty exhausting so I can't deny I felt the altitude. Also as I wanted to put on sunscreen the and opened the bottle everything shoot out at once. But other than that I felt fine. I walked around town, had lunch in a nice Café and checked out different companies for the hike to Laguna 69. Midas and Maria had told me in Mancora that the tour was basically just the transportation to the starting point so it didn't really matter which company you took. My hostel offered the tour for 35,- soles and in town you could get it for 30,-. I was hoping to meet some other people doing the tour so I didn't make any reservation yet. Back at the hostel I met Mitch who had just booked the tour with our hostel. So I decided I would spend the 5,- soles extra to go with him.
After I had fixed the tour we went into town and to the market to buy food for dinner and our hike the next day. The hostel had a nice kitchen and almost everybody was cooking for themselves. When we started preparing our dinner the kitchen was crowded with other german speaking people. I felt a little bad for Mitch. Even though I was still talking to him in english I was at least able to understand everything. And people were actually telling some really funny stories. I translated some stuff for him later over dinner.
As I hadn't slept a lot the night before on the nightbus and we were being picked up around 5:15am the next morning I knew I should get to bed early. But I wasn't tired at all. I stayed in the kitchen reading after everyone had left and only went to bed around 11pm. I fell asleep for a while but woke up around 2am and just couldn't get back to sleep. After a while I remembered that people had told me they didn't sleep on the volcano Acatenango in Guatemala because of the altitude. So maybe that's the reason? The last time I checked the time it was 4am and when my alarm went of half an hour later it didn't feel like I had slept a lot.
I got up and put on all my close again like I had done for Quilotoa. I put the sandwiches I had prepared the day before in my backpack and knew I would probably need most of the space in there for clothes I was taking of once it got warmer. The bus picked us up and while we were picking up more and more people in Huaraz before heading towards the Laguna 69 I actually managed to get back to sleep. We stopped after about 2hours for a quick breakfast at a little shop. I had brought enough food but I got me a coca tea as I thought it couldn't hurt with the altitude. Coca leaves are not a drug. They only give you some extra energy and supposedly help really good when you get altitude sickness. You can brew them with hot water and drink it like tea or chew on the leaves and keep them in your mouth for a while. Mitch had also given me some coca leaves in case I struggled to much walking up to the Laguna but I had chewed leaves before when I was in Colombia last year and I remembered it being pretty disgusting. But the tea was nice.
After breakfast we got back on the bus and drove a bit further till we got to another lagoon on the foot of a mountain. We were rushed of the bus just to take our pictures and get back on again. 10 minutes later we got to the starting point of the path up to Laguna 69 and our guide gave us the instructions. It was 9:30am. It should take us 2.5-3 hours to walk up to the lagoon. Going down should be faster but we shouldn't leave up there later than 1:30pm to get back to the bus latest at 3:30pm. If at 1:30pm we were still on our way up we should turn around anyways and go back to not make anybody wait. Easy task. It was nice that like this we could all walk at our own pace and didn't have to wait for each other along the way.
Mitch and I started walking and made it ahead of almost everybody pretty quick. It had been freezing on the bus but once we started walking in the sun it got hot pretty quick. I took of both of my jumpers and my jeans that I was wearing over my leggings quickly. It was a nice walk only increasing slight through fields surrounded by snow covered mountains. The views were amazing. After a while the path started ascending more and more. And even though I had done steeper climbs before the altitude made it more exhausting. At some point our guide pointed us to a shortcut through the bushes. We took it but I realized that going a lot steeper only made me catch my breath longer once I got back to the normal path so it wasn't really a shortcut. After 1.5 hours we made it the first plateau. We had to walk flat for a while and then take another rise to get up to the lagoon. That part was really the hardest. I tried to chew some coca leaves in the hope it would help me with this but when I tasted the juice I spit them out again. It felt they were only making me sick. I think I never walked that slow before in my life. I send Mitch ahead and just took one step at a time catching my breath every few minutes. I definitely blame this on the altitude ;)
Once up the last rise it was only a few hundred meters flat to get to the lagoon. As soon as I caught the first glimpse of the turquoise water I forgot the hard climb up here. The colors were unreal!
We had still made it up to Laguna 69 as one of the first of our group and had a good hour to spend here. We relaxed, ate our food and took lots of pictures. Some people actually jumped into the water. First I was a little disappointed that I hadn't brought my bikini but when I took of my shoes to put my feed in I realized this was more than enough.
Around 1:15 our guide told us to start walking back soon so we packed up and started heading down.
Walking down was a lot easier than climbing up and I almost got a little bored at some time. I put in my earphones and listened to my music. The further down I got the more ofter I would stumble. That's the problem with going down. You get tired and unfocused and I guess this is when the most accidents happen. But we made it down fine and took our last break in the sun when we could already see the busses. At 3:30pm we walked the last bit over to the busses realizing that there weren't a lot of people waiting. We sat outside the bus for a while and only got on when our driver was moving the bus closer to the path. Still a lot of people were missing including our guide. Turned out his job was to walk back with the last and slowest people. When they finally arrived he was even carrying their backpacks. It was 5:30 by now.
My original plan had been to take a bus that night to get down south but when we got to the hostel around 8:30 I couldn't be bothered and just extended my stay for another night. We spend the rest of the night in the kitchen having a big pasta for dinner and again talking a lot of german (at least me).
The next day I bought my bus ticket for the night bus to Lima and secured me the spot on the second floor all the way in the front - with a "panoramic view" :)
I didn't really have anything to do for the rest of the day and just strolled around town. Suddenly I realized the main street had been closed of and they had set up some pavilions here. When I got closer I saw a long table with lots of fresh food. What was this? I realized that no one was actually eating the food. At some point I found a sign: "El ceviche del chocho mas grande del mundo". The world longest ceviche! Here in the mountains they did a ceviche with chocho instead of fish. Chocho is a white bean from south america which apparently is the new quinoa. 100m of superfood. It was actually a guinness world record.
Later I went back to the hostel and spend some time on the roof of the hostel writing on my blogg. Spending more times in places then originally planned meant I was finally catching up.
When the sun went down I went to the kitchen. Luckily for Mitch tonight crowded with guys from Australia and New Zealand. I met Luis for dinner later who had caught up with me here and done the Laguna 69 tour that day. Afterwards I jumped on my bus with a view to Lima where I was changing to another bus for Ica.Read more