Overnight camping at Laguna Churup

Finally my bag arrived and I barely had time to get back to the hostel, have a shower and get my things ready to go.

It was 8 of us going including 3 French gals, a couple from the UK, Cesar (who was our guide), Maria and me.

It took us about an hour in a van to get to Pitek, the starting point. The 600m climb over 3km to our campground was quite steep and very slow (3 hours!) between the weight of our packs and the altitude.

By the time we got to the top, rain was coming so we had to setup camp quickly. Very shortly after, the UK couple started feeling pretty ill with altitude sickness and they were getting worse by the minute so Cesar had to take them down and hike back up in the dark. 😔

It was very cold so we were all napping in our tents waiting for Cesar to come back to have dinner together. The poor thing made it back around 9pm, so beat but still with the best of moods. He made Coca tea for the remaining group and we all crashed afterwards. ⛺️

In the morning, we all went up to the lake while Cesar packed up the tents. Lucky we didn’t have to carry our packs for this because it was almost a 100m steep climb on boulders and chains! ⛓️

We got to spend like an hour enjoying the landscape! The colour and reflection on the water, the rock formations surrounding the lake, all breathtaking!

Around noon, we started making our way down and on the drive back we picked up a few climbers who ended up serenading us with an ukulele!

To wrap up the day we went for a lovely group dinner but it was an early night as a few of us would be waking up at 4:30 am to go to Laguna 69 the next day!Read more