I stumbled onto the minibus at 5am, mumbling my sleepy greetings to the other passengers, before settling down in the back to try and get 20 winks.
The road was heavily potholed, which required the driver to constantly swerve all over the shot, making sure to keep his foot to the floor, in true Peruvian fashion.
None of us had gotten a lot of sleep the night before. I was rapidly beginning to regret trying out the local rum. 6 soles (about 1.7 dollars) for a little 125ml bottle. I had planned on packing them as emergency rations for the hike, but at some point in the evening I had managed to convince myself that surely the most responsible thing to do would be to drink both of them beforehand, skipping the potentially grave risks associated with combining alcohol and altitude. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now our roller coaster simulation of a minibus ride was causing me to spin out, and it seemed increasingly inevitable that I would end up redecorating the interior of the bus.
As the sun came up we all gradually gained consciousness to various degrees, and began to break the ice through conversation.
Faith, one of the guests at my hostal, had brought the group together. She was an American from California, who had backpacked her way up from Argentina with her boyfriend. Her partner had decided to head down to the beach to go surfing, while Faith wanted to suffer in the mountains for a while longer before joining him. We had two other touring cyclists on the bus, Issi and Will (from the UK and Australia respectively) and Jack, from New Zealand.
After a good 5 hours or so, we made it to the beginning of the trail.
From left: Jack, me, Will, Issi and Faith.
Faith’s boyfriend had helped pack her rucksack for her, and had apparently opted for the ‘well you never know if you might need it’ approach, since the thing weighed a good 4 or 5 kilos more than what I had brought. I felt really sorry for her as I helped to pick it up and plonk it on her back.
After my recent experiences eating a truly uninspiring and slimy dinner of cold soaked noodles on my Santa Cruz hike, I had jumped at the chance to share cooking equipment with Faith. I carried the gas canisters, while she packed her Jetboil. I offered to carry a bit more, but she insisted on 50-50.
Time to begin the trek.
We kept getting overtaken by donkeys (or were they mules?) while working our way up the first hill. It turns out that most people who hike the Huayhuash enlist porters to carry their camping equipment for them. Many of them walk the whole thing as part of a guided group, with their tent pitched up for them, and a hot meal placed in front of them every evening.
The first campsite. These guys got all their tents put up for them in advance of their arrival. The downside? They had to roll out with the rest of their tour group at 6 am…
We opted to push on a bit further to a more secluded spot next to Laguna Mitacocha.
The temperature fell well below freezing overnight, and we woke up inside a bank of fog, with our tents covered in condensation.
On the bright side, we met Rihannon and Connor (from New Zealand and Australia) in camp, and wound up sharing the trail with them for the rest of the hike.
We organically formed ourselves into two separate hiking groups, with Jack, Connor, Rihannon and myself in the faster group, while Issi, Faith and Will brought up the rear.
We regrouped at lunch, and planned to meet up again to camp together in the evening.
Our little fast group turned out to be a really chill company; we pretty much nattered all of our way up and over that day’s mountain pass.
It turned out that Rihannon, Connor and Jack all lived in Perth. Rihannon had worked for a spell in my home county of West Sussex in the UK, in Lancing, before moving out to Aus. She’s an occupational therapist.
Connor worked in a microbrewery in Denmark (Australia), called Boston Brewing, which obviously piqued my interest. He was a relaxed bloke, very easy company.
Jack was an electrician, who had moved out to Perth from NZ to work in the mines. It sounded like he was absolutely raking the cash in, living the FIFO (fly in, fly out) lifestyle.
He definitely got me thinking about where my life could have gone in a parallel universe: Back in school I was really into metalworking. We even got a secondhand welder at home so that I could churn out my design technology (DT) projects outside of school hours.
I got my highest sixth form (high school) grade in DT, but instead of going further down that rabbit hole I went off to university to study Biology, and wound up as the science teacher that I am today.
By comparison, Jack cracks on for several weeks in the mines, before flying out to somewhere like Bali to chill for a spell (cheaper than renting in Perth), then heading back to the mines for another stretch. You can pick up and put down jobs whenever you want, since there’s no fixed 2 year contract like you get in teaching at an international school. I reckon that it is a really good arrangement for a backpacker.
The drawback is that it’s apparently pretty difficult to keep a decent group of mates, since the community is constantly rotating.
We found that we had chatted our way all the way up to our lakeside campsite.
The next day we set off up and over the next mountain pass.
We took that famous Huayhuash photo of the three lakes.
And, after eventually making it over the pass, descended down into camp in the next valley.
Issi doing a spot of planning for the day ahead. Every evening we would all get out our various GPS applications and umm and aah over elevation profiles
The next day we tackled the highest pass of the Huayhuash.
The view from the top was just breathtaking. A camera couldn’t hope to capture even a fraction of what was on display.
I recently put out a little YouTube update to try and catch up a bit. If you skip ahead to 2 minutes 30 you’ll get a pretty decent panoramic view from the top of the pass.
We ran into this gorgeous golden retriever on the hillside. He didn’t seem to have any particular owner, and apparently just wandered around on the hills begging for food from hikers. Will named him Rod Stewart.
Walk of shame. While fishing around inside my rucksack, my foam roll mat caught the wind and went flying off down the mountainside.
A long, twisty descent down into camp for the night.
The next day’s hike brought us to Huayllapa, our only bit of civilisation on the loop.
A beautiful, warmish shower after days of cold. I danced on my clothes to wash some of the grime and sweat out of my clothing, and hung in up to dry.
We had a very basic, but hearty dinner, homecooked by a local grandmother.
Huayllapa is the only place where you can leave the trail and catch the bus.
Faith was shattered. She wanted to quit.
We all offered to split her gear amongst our backpacks to keep her in the game, but her mind was set.
I’m convinced that if she had started off with a reasonable base weight, she would have kept going. She can’t have weighed more than 60kg herself, and her ruck was definitely over 20. She had been constantly trying to get rid of food during our lunches, apparently having packed about double what was necessary.
Anyway, we plodded on. This time Will and Issi opted to make a very early start, while Connor, Jack, Rhi and I had a nice home cooked breakfast in the hostel, before beginning our steady waddle up and over the tops again.
After a little while I let them motor on ahead. I’m a natural loner, and I treasure spending time in my own space, especially when I’m in nature.
They kindly waited for me to catch up for a spot of lunch, after which we all sprawled out on the grassy mountainside for a nap with Rod.
Up and over the pass, gasping and wheezing all the way, jabbing the ground with our hiking poles in order to give a little extra nudge forwards.
And then a long flowing descent. What I would have given for a mountain bike at this point!
That evening Jack and I decided to stay out to watch the stars come out. It got bloody cold, but we stuck it out for a bit. Eventually, I cut and ran for the relative warmth of my tent.
Waking up with frozen water in the bottles was pretty standard most nights, but this was definitely our coldest one yet.
Time to get on the hoof again.
We rolled out of camp in various fragments. Will and Issi went together bright and early, while Connor and Rhi left a bit later. Jack and I didn’t feel any particular urgency, and made a pretty late start. After a while, Jack motored on ahead, until I lost sight of him on the climb, and I settled back into the comfort of my own thoughts.
I made it to the top of the pass. No sign of Jack, or anyone really. We had all agreed to meet up at the campground at Laguna Jahuacocha, so I wasn’t particularly fussed.
From the pass there were two routes, the alpine circuit, or the regular Huayhuash path. Up to this point in the trek we had more or less done about 50 50 of each. I was feeling strong, motivated, and fancied a bit of a challenge, so I opted for some extra climbing via the alpine.
What followed was the most beautiful section of hiking I’ve experienced in my whole life. I was just completely blown away. On cloud 9.
I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything.
Looking down on Laguna Jahuacocha, about to descend.
Somehow Rod Stewart had contrived to get himself up on the alpine circuit too, and was busy begging food off of the other hikers hanging around taking snaps of the lake. I gave him the rest of my cheese.
I was over the moon with the incredible scenery that I had been lucky enough to temporarily become a part of, that I ran all the way downhill with a big grin on my face.
I found the rest of the group relaxing at the bottom by the lakeside. It turned out that everyone had skipped the alpine for the standard route. I did my best to downplay the fact that they had missed one the best bits of the hike, but I’ve never had a good poker face.
We had made very good time getting to the lakeside campground, and it was only early afternoon at this point.
Our little fast group began to wonder if maybe it might be worth going big, and putting in another day’s hike, in order to arrive at Llamac, the village at the end of the trek, that same day. Apparently the buses all leave before 11am or something like that, so, if we opted to camp at Jahuacocha, we would be obliged to drag ourselves out of our sleeping bags in the icy cold early o’ clock, in order to make it to Llamac in time to get home.
It would also give us bragging rights. Since Huayhuash is ostensibly an 8 day hike, we would now be looking to complete the whole thing in just 7, carrying all of our own kit to boot!
Our little squad headed off into the afternoon sunshine. Hostel beds and cold beers were waiting for us at the end of one last march…
