Volcano Time

Papagayo

We left Quito early by taxi and headed to Papagayo (http://hosteria-papagayo.com), which was to be our staging post for our Volcano climbing.  Papagayo is kind of ranch/hostel in the middle of nowhere.  It is great place with nice rooms and gardens and seems to do a roaring trade in pony trekking, which is something I just don´t get - why ride when you can walk?

At the ranch we were met by our guide Diego and Swiss chap called Elia who had tried to climb Cotopaxi the night before, but been turned back by a massive fall of new snow - this didn´t bode well for us- but what the hell. we´ve climbed in Scottish winter...

After some general faffing around, we were taken to the climbing store, where we sorted through various vintage equipment to find something that vaguely fitted - thank god we had brought our own cold weather clothing! Suitably equipped, we headed for Cotopaxi with a stop at Machachi to pick up the food.

Arriving at Cotopaxi, you drive up a massive hill of mud to reach a car park just below the hut and start of the snowline.  Given that this was a Sunday, there were hundreds of Ecuadoreans at the car park doing some sightseeing and taking the short walk to the hut to buy a hot chocolate.  Not that there was much to see, the entire volcano was enveloped in dense cloud.

View from Cotopaxi Hut

Cotopaxi  Hut

At the hut Diego cooked for us and we drank litres of tea, chatting with Elia, before heading for bed in bunks on the drafty first floor to try and grab some sleep before the 2am start.  The hut had a guardian, like those in the alps, but that was pretty much wear the similarities ended.  Compared with European Refuges, it was pretty basic, aside from a few soft drinks, there was no food to be had, you did your own cooking and there were no blankets or heating.  We slept in our clothes and were both warm enough in spite of the drafts.

The next morning we ventured out after breakfast into miserable morning, visibility was poor and there was a strong wind blowing fine ice crystals at a horizontal angle.  We climbed switchbacks for about an hour until the start of the glacier proper, here we stopped to rope up and the first group turned back.  By this stage we were all coated in a stiff layer of ice about half a cm thick.  We put on our crampons, roped up and persuaded Diego to continue.  From here we climbed up through a combination of switch backs and traverses with the route completely obscured by the fresh snow.  From this point it became clear that Diego was having difficulty finding the route, he stopped a couple of times and conferred with another guide and we rerouted, taking the lead of a new group of 7 formed from the two remaining groups of climbers.

Covered in ice at 5300m

About half an hour later, we reached an area of complex glacial terrain, visibility diminished further and we became surrounded by a huge number of crevasses and seracs.  Diego and the guide from the other group now set about exploring the terrain, trying to find a way through.  When they started flagged wands along our route, it became clear that they were unsure of the path.  To their credit, they tried a number of different route to get through before telling us that a key snow bridge had collapsed under the weight of the new snow.  Much to our disappointment we took a couple of pictures including one of Elia with his frizbee (He plays for an Ultimate Frizbee Team in Switzerland) we turned and headed back, following our footprints back down the volcano.  We had reached 5300 metres, about 500 metres off the summit.

Diego, Me, Kirsty and Elia

Back at the car park it was raining hard and when we discovered that the windscreen wiper on the drivers side of our aging Land Cruiser, didn´t work.  After a few minutes of trying to drive with his head sticking out of the side window, it became clear that this technique wasn´t going to work in the long term.  So we pulled over and Elia and I relinquished out boot laces which Diego tied to the offending wiper, one lace coming back through his side window, held in his left hand, the other feeding through the passenger window held by Elia.  Diego now drove one handed, whilst he and Elia took turns pulling their lace to drag the broken wiper back and forth across the windscreen.  This worked quite well until Elia fell asleep.

At Papagayo we stayed the night and were still weighing up whether the weather would be good enough attempt Chimborazo the next day when we waved Elia off.  After looking at as many weather websites as we could find, all of which uniformly predicted poor weather with more snow over the coming week, we decided what the hell and confirmed with Diego to make an attempt the next day.

The drive to Chimborazo was much longer than to Cotopaxi.  We kept our fingers crossed as the cloud cleared and the pressure rose.  As we neared Chimborazo the cloud cleared enough to give us a lopsided view of the summit - promising.

We parked at the lower hut, had lunch and walked up to the Whymper hut, which was only a couple of hundred metres above at 5000m.  Both huts were much nicer than the one at Cotopaxi and we both felt good on the short walk to 5000m.  At the hut there was only one other party, another Swiss guy called Vincent, who had also been at Cotopaxi with us, and  his guide. 

Chimborazo

By the time we had finished dinner, the weather had improved dramatically and leaving the hut we were greeted with a clear view of the first summit high above us.  

It was a cloudless night, and we started our climb under a canopy of stars.  Leaving behind the other party, we set off a good pace and quickly passed them as we snake through the moraine to join the left hand side of the glacier under the rocky pinnacle of the Castle.  Here the glacier was covered in a fine layer of dust and rocks from the pinnacles above.  From here we climbed up onto the shoulder leading to the first summit peak, following a smooth dirt ridge to meet the snow line above.  The snow slope stretched away beyond us, its muted outline visible for a few hundred metres ahead under the glow of the constellations above.

We began the monotonous trudge up the slope, Diego leading, rope back to Kirsty and finally to me at 3 metre intervals.  After about half an hour, Kirsty started to slow, so we stopped to rest, continuing, she started to feel sick, so we stopped again and rested.  She had felt sick on our climb of Mont Blanc, but we had continued and it had passed.  I felt great and we had both acclimatised well having spend roughly half of the last month above 4000m, with a couple of visits to 5000 plus.  Kirsty wanted to go on, so Deigo and I split the contents of her rucksack and we continued for a while walking about 50m at a time and stopping for 5 mins at each interval. Eventually we were passed by the other group, who wished us well and continued towards the summit.  

The altitude sickness wasn´t lessening and she started to complain of dizziness, I looked at her face and it was completely drained of colour.  We were at 5850 according to my watch, with another couple hours to make the first summit and no sign of her sickness abating I decided to turn us round.  Kirsty was upset and few tears were shed before we started our descent.

The descent proved painfully slow, I led with Diego keeping Kirsty on a short rope from behind.  Even on the short rope, Kirsty kept falling over, it didn´t help that it was still very dark.  The sickness didn´t lessen as we lost height either and as we got lower and the sun began to rise I saw Kirsty´s face in the light of day- it was completely ashen and her lips were grey.  When we finally arrived back at the hut, I we got a hot sweet drink down her, followed by a coke and she started to feel a little better.  By the time we got back to the car park, some colour had returned, but she was just desperately gutted to have had to turn back.

Shadow of Chimborazo in the clouds below

Our consolation came when we were rewarded with some great views of Chimborazo and the surrounding mountains, including Cotopaxi, which we saw for the first time as we drove away.

Cotopaxi in the distance

The Altar

The will be other mountains - there´s only one Kirsty.

Quito

Ecuador seems much more prosperous than Peru, the cars are all newer and even in the countryside and on the outskirts of Quito, we not seen any of the shanty town structures that cling to Peruvian cities.  Even better, they have a central bus station, where coaches of all companies seem to arrive and depart, unlike Peru, where even company has its own seperate terminal, often miles apart.  Better still, the Quitumbe terminal had a Tourist Information Office with free city map!  Once you´ve been travelling for while - this kind of thing becomes really cool.

The Terminal is located on the outskirts of Quito, but connected with the city via a comprehensive and impressive metro bus system which you can ride anywhere for only 25 cents.  The only downside is that the bus routes don´t correspond fully with the map, but hey ho - the bus people are friendly and helpful.  Bizarrely much like Peru, there are staggering amounts of armed security guards on hand.  Each stop on bus seems to have one, who doubles as a route planner.

We headed into the Mariscal district and failed to find the hostal that we had found online.  Instead we booked ourselves into a slightly more luxurious one and hit the sack.

After catching up on our sleep, we headed out to wonder around Mariscal, again forewarned by the LP to watch out for the muggers and miscreants that lurk round every corner.  It turned out to be really nice, prosperous looking neighbour.  The streets are clean and colourful, trees line the avenues and the people appear friendly yet unconcerned by the many tourists.  Aside from a couple of locals who seemed think that we needed tattooing, there is no tourist hassling. like you find it Southeast Asia.  Also outside the markets, there is not haggling, the stuff in the shops have prices and that is what you pay - nice and simple.

During our exploration we found the hostel (www.alcalahostal.com) we had been looking for and booked in the the following nights.  The Alcala is a nice friendly, family run affair in the heart of Mariscal.  

Mariscal itself is a party place, it is full of bars and clubs which from Thursday through to Saturday play some thumpingly loud music until all hours of the night.  We´re not really party people anymore, but if you are, this probably a cool place.

We organised a trip to climb Cotopaxi with Gulliver's Tours (www.gulliver.com.ec  Recommended by L&G) and headed out to climb a volcano called Pichincha on the outskirts of Quito.  This peak sits above Quito and can be reached by taking the spanking new Telepheriquo (Apparently this is the second highest cable car in the world). From the top of the bubble lift, there is a clear path that allows you to climb to the summit at 4696 metres.  At the top we were joined by two Swedish guys: Bjaren and Andreas these guys whipped out an ipod and speakers and insisted on us joining them for a summit dance(He promised we would be in their next video...).  It turns out that they are sponsored skiers who are touring South America, climbing and skiing the most notable peaks.  Andreas had just skied Denali, and they were on Pichincha, acclimatising before heading to Chimborazo. (There´s more about the crazy stuff these guys get up to at Bjarne´s website http://endlessflow.posterous.com)

Quito from above

View from Pichincha

The next day, we decided to get a dose of culture and headed to the Old Town to see the sights. There were some nice looking Spanish colonial architecture there and plenty of churches, plazas, parks and statues, including a large angel that towers above Quito at El Panecillo.  Lack the requiste appetites of city based culture, we headed for the highest place we could get ourselves: the San Francisco cathedral. 

El Panecillo

Towers of San Francisco Cathedral

Stained glass window in San Francisco Cathedral

From the outside this is a suitably impressive Gothic cathedral akin to those that dominate many European cities.  Get inside though and it is all artifice:  The cathedral was only built in the 1920s and made almost exclusively from concrete.  Once inside, as you climb higher, away from the areas of worship, the iron girders are not even disguised, their rusty points poking out from the walls at all kinds of bizarre angles.  Its saving grace is that it is very high and you can get almost all the way to the top, which does afford some good views of Quito, there´s even quite a cool catwalk that you can cross to get to the towers.

Catwalk to the towers

Before heading out to Cotopaxi, we went looking for new books to read and found the “English Bookshop” which is run by a bloke from Lea-on-sea in Essex - small world.

Peru to Ecuador

Sitting on the Bus about to leave Llamac, I had to once again marvel at the amazing dichotomy of Peruvian dress.  Seated on a bench beneath my window was a little old woman of indeterminate age - it was clear that she was old, but given the hard lives led in some of these village, I was unsure of whether she was in her 60s or her 80s.  This venerable old lady wearing the standard issue local hat, adorned with exotic feather in the hat band, from under which two steely grey plaits emerged tied together with a ribbon were they met in the middle of her back.  On her top half she wore several layers of hand knitted tightly buttoned, brightly coloured cardigans.  At her waist she had a fairly nondescript belt from which several keys dangled. Below the waist, her costume consisted of a umbrella of multi-layered skirts and petticoats.  Her legs were covered in some heavy duty looking woolen tights and on her feet - the British burglar’s trainer of choice - the Reebok Classic!  

Through the opposite window I was possible to see the road, where another, younger woman, was herding some donkeys, whilst wearing a pink velour tracksuit with boots!? Fashionable and practical - the perfect choice for a bit of light donkey work...Once again, my English reserve prevents me from taking picture directly of the local fashionistas.

On our return back to Huaraz, we went back to the Churup for a quick shower and change, before taking up our invite back to the Huascaran Tour Office for some “Pisco Sour”  This is apparently a traditional Peruvian tipple - I guess it must go well with Guinea Pig.

The drink was prepared by Paulina, Huascaran´s owner, and consisted of egg white, sugar, some kind of brandy and lots of ice all mashed up together in a food processor. In spite of the egg, it didn´t taste to bad.  After several of these, we left the office with a distinct glow and headed by taxi to the bus terminal.

The movil Terminal was not quite as fancy as the Cruz del Sur, but not far off - it still had bag a luggage check in area  and stiff security regime, which I was glad of, when one of staff discovered that a fellow passenger was carrying a full on Dirty Harry style revolver.  From the look of things, the fact that he had this obscene hand cannon, was not a problem, the problem was that he hadn´t filled in the appropriate forms - the Peruvians can´t get enough of paper based bureaucracy.  So he was marched off to the front desk and forced to fill in a vast sheaf of paperwork in triplicate.

After the third attempt to get on the wrong bus, the “conductor” finally showed us onto the bus leaving for Trujillo.  Failing to heed the gunman´s lesson, I suddenly remembered that in addition to the penkife in my pocket, I had my camping knife in the top of my rucksac.  The security guard scanned me with his wand, which duly beeped when it passed over my pocket and bag.  I had flash backs of trying to take an adjustable spanner on a US internal flight just after 911.  Fortunately, however, Gingoes must not be considered inherently dangerous, as before I could say anything, he waved me through.

The bus was once again luxury standard, with on board meal (boxed this time, not hot like on CDS) and fully reclining seats.  We arrived in Trujillo without incident but far too early to do anything, so we sat in the bus station and read for an hour or so.

We took a taxi to the next bus station, where we were able to deposit our large Rucksacks, reading the map wrong (This was all Kirsty...) we brushed past the the taxi drviers thronging round the exits, declining their offers of rides, telling them it was only 2 minute walk.  By the time we had walked 10 minutes and were no nearer anything that looked like a Plaza de Armas, I asked a passing Trujillian, who gave me a puzzled look and pointed back the way we had come.  Looking at the map again, we realised that bus station that we thought marked our place on the map was acutual that companies ticket office.  This was as Kirsty had right said, only 5 minutes walk from the centre of town - unfortunately, we where at the bus terminal, which was serveral kilometres away.  Embarrassed, we slunk past the waiting taxi drivers on the other sided of the road and haled a passing cab just round the corner.

From inside the cab, Trujillo looked just like the outskirts of central Lima: wide streets arranged in a grid format lined with workshops and cafes, pavements populated with litter and street vendors.  All of this laid out under an oppressive sky of monotonous grey cloud.

We were dropped just short of the Plaza de Armas as the roads were closed by hoards of pistol carrying policemen.  Existing the cab we walked the last hundred metres and found the streets lining the central square thronged with people watching a procession of military looking people, marching to a brass band.  We watched for while as the uniformed marchers completed a lap only to be followed by a whole host of civilians, adults and children, carrying homemade banners.  This went on for ages, and from what we could see consisted of everyone from the local football team (resplendent in their football shirts) to the Mother Union, and local pensioners lunch club.

Bored of the procession, we found a cafe for breakfast, where I made a  mistake of smiling at the local drunk/character, who then tried to talk to us in some unintelligible local dialect.  Once it was clear we had no idea what he was saying he then remonstrated loudly with the other diners - I assume to the effect that we were obviously foreign idiot who could not understand his lucid Spanish.  They laughed - we smiled and left.

With time to kill until the next night bus, we booked on a half day tour of Chan Chan and the surrounding attractions.  According to the guide book, Chan Chan was some kind of epic ancient city, home to a prosperous pre-Inca civilisation.  Having had the tour, I can now tell you that it is some large but crappy piles of sand and mud and a lot of local imagination.  This civilisation existed around the time of the middle ages, had no written language and seemed to build most of its stuff from mud - which over the centuries has not lasted well.  This has not stopped that locals inventing all kinds of information about the culture, and beliefs systems of these mud dwelling fisherman.  In fact they have a museum full of frightening looking models and paintings depicting local customs and have even spent quite some time building mud structures of their own, which only after direct questioning did they admit were not the original structures - who cares the tourists will believe anything.

The tour was capped by a visit to the “beach” which was busy with local revelers, but for the most part grey and depressing.  Following the tour we had dinner and headed to the bus station to wait.

The buses seem to be getting progressively worse with each leg of the journey, despite this, they are still head and shoulders above National Express.  After another pleasant nights sleep, we arrived in Piura, where we broke the mold and took a day bus to cross the border.  Inspite of the Lonely Planet warning of border crossing dangers, this was straight forward affair: Get off the coach on one side of the bridge, get passports stamped, walk to the other side of the bridge, admire Ecuadorean boarder guards nudie calendar, get passport stamped, get back on coach - job done.

We got to Loja in the evening, ate some dodgy chicken that tasted of frankfurters and got the night bus to Quito.

Cordillera Huayhuash

We arrived in Huaraz after our luxury coach journey to be collected and driven all of two minutes by taxi to our hostel.  Even on the short journey it was obvious that Huaraz had changed hugely in the last 10 years and judging by the amount of building, is set to change further.

The Hostel was called the Churup (www.churup.com) and we had booked it on line before we left Lima.  The place was fantastic, it is easily the nicest hostel that either or us have stayed at in all of previous travels.  It is brightly decorated with first rate en suite rooms dripping with original paintings, complete with a sun terrace and homely lounge with wood burner.

The next day was spent relaxing and wandering around town, where I was horrified to discover that “Buddy Christ” who had towered over one of the main plazas, had been knocked down.  “Buddy Christ” was a 25 ft high awkwardly disproportioned statute of the good Lord with his arms outstretched in a pose better suited to the Fonze.  Having got over this shock, we found the Huascaran Tour Agency (www.huascaran-peru.com) and enquired about organising a trek.  After much discussion about the weather we decided to opt for the Cordillera Huayhuash rather than the Alpa Mayo circuit or the Santa Cruz which I had done 10 years hence.  This trek would be a little different than the Santa Cruz: rather than a hand drawn map, we would have our own guide and instead of carrying all of our food and gear we would have 4 donkeys and an arrearo (Donkey Master - So how I feel that Vas may have missed his calling...)

By way of acclimatisation, we hiked up to Lake Churup and enjoyed the sunshine.  It took us a lot less time than stated and we surprised the owner of the travel agency when we bumped into him on our way back to the hostel.  Apparently we are “Muy Rapido”.

On the morning of the trek we got picked in a taxi by “Miguel” our non-English speaking guide.  Naturally with my gift for languages this was not going to be a problem...  Miguel was good looking young guy in his twenties all of about 4ft 5” with what looked like one half of a Chelsea smile - I didn´t like to ask how he had come by that.

The first part of the journey was by public bus to Llamac - you know the sort all and sundry strapped to the roof etc.- this part of the journey was on brand spanking new roads that cleverly through the mountains.  At Llamac we transfered into a smaller, older bus with larger, more aggressive looking tyres - which were going to prove important.  The next stretch was un-paved and rutted in the extreme, with some evil twists and turns and some precipitous drops at the edge.  Luckily our driver was more than up to the task - so skilled was he, that he did not need to have both hands to steers, nor even to keep his eyes on the road, instead he managed to carry on a loud conversation (It had to be loud for him to be heard over the the Pervuvian/Bangra folk fusion that was banging out of the stereo) with much gesticulation which keeping the wheels inches from the edge of the track.

Safe to say we arrived in one piece having had to pay our first installment of the “tourist tax” - There was a barrier across the road leading into the town, which wasn´t lifted until we had paid a fee to the local community.  This was the first of several tax stickups that happened over the course of the trek - each time we had to fill in form and hand over payment before receiving a selection of fantastically stylised receipts - The locals seem to have taken to bureaucracy in big way.  I don´t begrudge paying the money though - it goes towards the installation of amenities like drop toilets at some of more popular campsites.

Once through the barrier, we met Nichol, our donkey master, and his 4 beasts only one of who name I can remember.  The donkey was called “Rambo”.  Whilst Nichol loaded the burros, we set off with Miguel to the first campsite.  This was principally following a dirt track that wound its way through a narrow steep walled valley to  the Santa Luis Mine.  Beyond the mine the valley opened up with views of the mountains in the distance.  

The first campsite (Quartelhuain) was on a grassy valley bottom near a stream.  Nichol had already arrived and set up a massive pink and black Tepee, which was to be the mess/cook.  He hadn´t pitched our tent as it was buried in the bottom our large pack, but he was itching to get involved and couldn´t resist helping me.  We chilled out until dinner which proved to be a serious multi-course affair . nibbles, soup, followed by “segundo” (Second/Main course) and some kind of “postre” (Pudding).  We sat on our little camping chairs around a table in the tepee and were served all kinds of delicious meals - whats more when we offered to help clear up, they were at first surprised and then flat out refused -this was some seriously luxurious camping.  

After some fluent phrasebook based Spanglish we discovered that Miguel prefered to be called Micky, Nichol had 3 children, told them we were married, that Kirsty was teacher and after some considerable confusion Senior Informatics Manager for local government got translated into “President”.  From this point onwards, I´m just going to say teacher too.

The next day we were up early and immediately drugged by Micky with a large dose of Coca tea - Micky swears by it - to the extent that he even puts leaves in his hat when he has a headache.  Personally I think it tastes like Privet Hedge leaves in hot water - but hey let´s just roll with it.  We were the last to leave the campsite, the other groups that were camped near by left as we were packing our bag (This seems to be the contribution we are allowed to make to the process of striking camp).  We were soon off, leaving Nichol to marshall the donkeys.  The route almost immediately climbed up from the valley floor towards the first pass.  As soon as we hit steep ground, we began to pass the other groups - one by one- we picked them off, getting to the top of the pass ahead of the rest.  Micky looked somewhat startled by the pace and again we refered to as “Muy rapido”.  As it turned out so was Nichol and he met us at the past before trotting off downhill.

Due to the “muy rapido” revelation, Micky decided to take us on a “Micky route” which was a detour from the main path.  This was great as it allowed us to contour round the pass to another higher lake and then drop down into the next valley all the while with stunning views of the snowcaps.  Once again we were too quick, so Micky took us on a lap of another lake lest we arrive at camp indecently early!

After spending the night at Janca we went another Micky variation on the standard route and instead of going around, we climbed up and into a hidden valley that took us to another high lake with more rugged mountainscapes on all sides.  Micky´s route took us on a high contour following the mountainside round to the righhandside before opening up a view of Lake Carhuacoch as it straddled the end of our valley and swept down to the heavily glaciate peaks of Yerupaja in the distance.

That night we camped above the lake shore in the shadow of the 

mountains.  At dinner we resumed our stilted guidebook conversation accompanied as ever with much laughter and gesticulation.  Having established that Nicol was married, I asked Micky if he had girlfriend.  From the ensuing conversation, we learnt that Micky had a girlfriend back in Huaraz, but was also renowned for hooking with his female clients - particularly the French ones.  Micky asked me if I had any girlfriends and somehow the conversation ended up with Kirsty telling him if I did, I would be sleeping with the donkeys - which the Peruvians thought was hillarious- and would become a running joke.

Day 4 took us down the valley on the left hand side of the lake towards the snowcoated peaks of Yerupaja.  At the end of the lake we took a sharp left and began climbing.  This first climb took us to up into another valley beneath the mountains.  Here we climbed a large Morraine that had a formed a huge rampart pinning a ice covered glacial lake against the mountainside.  As we were takeing pictures, we where joined by a group of Aussie trekkers who asked us to take a group photo for them.  As we were heading off, Micky signalled us to turn round and there in the distance were the Australians getting naked for another photo.

Leaving our naked antipodean friends behind, we climbed the up to the Siula Punta pass, which at 4834 is 24 metres higher than Mont Blanc.  After resting at the top an taking some more pictures we dropped down into the valley below and headed toward the lake.  On the way we passed a herd of cattle with brightly coloured wool “earrings” and saw a couple of local dwellings in the distance.  The local houses are incredibly poor looking one room single storey structure built haphazardly from rocks and roofed with long sheaves of ichu grass which grows abundantly throughout the mountains.  We were some way away, but two boys came running towards us shouting for “caramellos” (Sweets)  we detoured and gave them both a hand full.

We got to camp ahead of all the other groups again, had lunch and were just settling down with our books we the heavens opened.  We lay there smuggly for the rest of the afternoon watching as one by one the other groups trudged into camp soaked.

The next day we were heading to Atuscancha were Micky assured us there were some natural hot springs but only limited spaces for camping.  This necessitated the only time on the trek were we left camp before any of the other groups.  After some “rapido” trekking and donkey work we reached a solitary gate at the head of the valley.  Said gate was armed by a ubiquitous local family, dad wearing brown panama hat, mum knitting and small child cossetted in about 10 woolen layers playing with a lamb.  These were the local tourist police and this was their barrier.  We could of walked round the gate - there was no wall either side - but that didn´t seem very sporting.  So once again we paid our money and got another colourful reciept.

Leaving the guards behind ready to pounce on the next trekker, we pushed off and got there just before lunch and camped right next to the springs.  The hot springs was basically 3 concrete tanks of various sizes getting larger from right to left, set on the middle of the valley floor.  The first and smallest was for washing clothes, the second for washing you and the third and largest was called the “swimming pool” although it was far too hot and far too small for anything other than floating.  We´d been in the pool for about 2 hours before the other groups started to arrive.  First were the Germans, then a large group of Israelis in their early twenties, which included several plump girls in bikinis - this seemed to be quite a hit with the local guides and Donkey Masters who spent the rest of the afternoon starring at them as they frolicked in the pools.  Last as ever were the Aussies.

Day 6 took started with brilliant sunshine and took us up to Punta Cuyoc Pass, which at just under 5000m was the highest on the trek.  We made steady progress and did our usual overtaking which still seemed to amaze the other guides - Micky seemed to have got used to the “rapido” pace by then.  The top afforded good views of the surrounding mountains and the valley below, but the clouds were coming in fast, so we decided to head straight to the campsite rather than detouring through the San Antonio pass.  On the valley, on route to the campsite, we passed a strange rock shaped by a long melted glacia to look like an elephant lying down.  As we got into camp the sun broke through the clouds again and lit up the valley briefly with a wonderfully warm golden light, and then it was gone

Day 7 took us on a detour to the only accessible village: Huayllapa.  Once again before we could get to the village there was a gate manned by the usual suspects, although this time one of them was armed with a machete - not sure why - but it looked cool with his football shirt and wellington boots.  Having paid of fee, we descended into the village, passing women each wearing atleast 10-15 skirts and a number of brightly coloured cardigans topped off with the local brown pananma.  Each woman was a knitting whilst walking and was accompanied by one or more children (Each with standard issue pet lamb) and or donkey.  The women look some colourful and impressive, unfortunately it somehow doesn´t feel quite right to brazenly stand there and take pictures of them -and who know what they would think if I got caught trying to do it surreptitiously - so unfortunately as yet no pictures.

Into the village we wound through narrow dirt streets until we reached shop, brightly painted in greens and reads with a picture mountain hanging above the door.  The shop was an real Aladdin's cave, low ceiling with all kinds of random stuff hanging from the rafters and  stuffed onto the shelves.  I tried to buy some beer, but was told that you couldn´t take glass bottles onto the mountain.  Undeterred by the by the glass bottle situation, with the prospect of making a sale at hand,  the shopkeeper disappeared down the road and returned with a slab of cans.

That night we camped at 4800, and spurned on by the beers, I tried to tell our Peruvian friends, Mike Campell´s Pirate joke.  Here the phrase book let me down, which no translation for the word pirate or alphabet - however this didn´t stop us from having a chorus of “arrghs!” and much laughter, before Nichol steered the conversation to his favorite subject namely me sleeping with the donkeys and Kirsty sharing his tent...

The next day we awoke to frozen tent, coated in sheets of ice which promptly fell on my head when I opened the door.  Todays leg was another Micky special, ditched the normal route and headed up the flank of Diablo Mudo, scrambling the last 200 metres to over the 5000 metre mark and just below the glaciated summit,, which looked painfully close - however no crampons or axes.  Climbing the rock at this height was absolutely exhausting - we would make a couple of moves and then have to have a rest - and this was only Mod/Diff grade!  We were rewarded with a magical 360 degreeish view of the Huayhash.  After taking pictures of each of us jumping in the air (Micky insists) we traversed a snow field and headed down towards our final campsite.

The last campsite (Lake Jahuacocha) was by far the most stunning location, sited on the flat grassland at the base of the valley, with grassy mountains on both side funneling your gaze down on the gleaming crenellated peaks of the Jirishanca massive soaring to 6094 metres above you.

The following day we had planned to walk up to another viewpoint high above the valley, unfortunately Kirsty had a bad stomch (I won´t elaborate...) so we stayed in the valley.  This was no great loss as the weather had closed in an most of the views would have been masked by cloud.  Even better, Nichol revealed his hidden talents as a fisherman and spend the day catching enough fish for lunch and dinner.  That night we ate well and shared a final carton of wine by way of celebration.

In the morning we walked back to Llamac said a fond farewell to Nichol and the donkeys and boarded the bus back to Huaraz.