The Lares Trail: Peru's Energizer Bunny

Day 7: Lares Trek - Part 2

After lunch, we sat with a local woman who showed us how she cooks potatoes in llama dung, virtually the only source of fuel up in the mountians. I know it's been a while since you've seen a waterfall video on this site, so I'll end the tortuous wait:

As we continued down the narrowing valley, we passed several farms. The children would see us coming and sprint all the way across the farm just to stand at the side of the trail, watching us curiously. And if I haven't already mentioned, Peruvian children are SO well behaved. You never saw one whining or being scolded in public, a common occurrence in the states.



Fooled by the Spanish phrases they had learned to parrot back to travelers, we would wave and attempt to chat with them, not realizing they only spoke Quetchua.

After hours of downhill, the trail began to climb slowly upward as it clung to the increasingly steep mountainside. It seemed an inappropriate route for humans, generally only the width of your feet at a standstill. Rounding the corner, the trail steepened as we headed up into the next valley.

Here we saw another trekking group in the distance - the only other "outsiders" we would encounter on the trail. No one was excited to be heading back uphill, and we finally rested at a small lake. Surrounded by scattered tiny boulders, with the clouds hanging low above us, we voted on whether or not to continue over the pass, or camp here and wait until morning. Although everyone was nearly exhausted, we agreed that it would be better to get it out of the way now, shortening tomorrows hike considerably, and allowing more time at the hot springs.

However, we might have changed our minds if we knew exactly what we were in for. The next 45 minutes were straight upwards, the steepest part of the entire trip. To make matters worse, we had caught up to the other group, whose 30 or so members continually slowed us down in one way or another. Halfway up, the thin air was too much and John needed to be carried up the rest of the way on horseback.

We finally reached the summit, all of us now ahead of the other group, let out a quick celebratory group cheer, and headed quickly down the other side. Totally engulfed amongst the clouds, there was nothing to see anyway, and we wanted to reach camp before darkness set in.

Care to know the difference between llamas and alpacas? Observe:



The trip down was much longer than expected (for no reason other than Edgar #1 liked to over and under exaggerate our expected hiking times), almost 2 hours, and arrived at the campsite ten minutes after switching on our headlamps.

There was a raging debate as to how far we traveled that day, but Edgar #1 insisted 30km, almost 19 miles! There along the stream running down the valley, it was easy to relax knowing tomorrow was all downhill, and the hot springs awaited us.