Santa Cruz Trek in Peruvian Andes/ Lima

After a short sleep and an early start as we set off on the classic 4-day santa cruz trek in the Cordillera blanca mountain range of Peru. I may have been more sure but for my part Dennis was a little uncertain of his skills in tackling such a big task. We met at the tour office at 6 AM and were joined by 5 others who were all traveling alone. There were two Israeli´s, one german, one slovakian, and one other canadian. We set off in a small combi with our bags strapped to the roof and arrived at our start point (which was actually the traditional end point, so therefore we did it backwards). We hiked up (in the hot sun) alongside a beautiful river in a valley between sheer cliffs for about 9 kms to our first campsite. In an open valley and when the sun was behind the clouds the temperature dropped significantly and we quickly bundled up to stay warm (no fires allowed in the park). Once our donkey driver arrived with all of our baggage our guide cooked up a wonderful meal. On the second day we were awake early from a long sleepless night in the cold. We started out for 7 hours of hiking with amazing scenary of snow capped mountains peaking out from behind the vast mountain scape. We veered off the the main trail to a hike up to a view point of another mountain view and continued on up to a glacier lake. The view was breath taking and the wind even more so, we quickly headed down to keep warm. Our camp for the night was below a magnificent mountian view. The night was cold and we got very little sleep, when we awoke there was a thick layer of ice on our tents and the ground was white with frost. We got moving early to keep warm and to start our climb up the mountain pass. Our guide told us it would take 3-4 hours, but under 2 hours we were at the top enjoying the view on either side of the valley. The elevation on top was just under 16,000ft! We then descended down on a very different landscape to another valley with lots of trees (and random cows). We hiked on to our last camp spot and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in the warm sun playing cards with our group. We had a great time getting to know all of the people in our group. Finally we hiked out of the mountains to wait for transportation which took many hours longer then expected. We drove down a winding nail biting road that left us grateful to be alive at the bottom. We returned to huaraz and went for some awesome food with our group from the trek and then we went our seperate ways.

We headed out on a night bus the day we returned from our hike to Lima where we arrived at 5 am. We found a hostel and quickly headed out for a full day out in Lima. We visited some ruins which were neat to see. Then we headed off to Larco Mar, which is an open air mall that is over looking the ocean. Then off we went to do some souviener shopping at hundreds of craft stalls. Weary we treated ourselves to a little McDonalds for supper! We then pressed on rejuvinated from our meal and a bit of ice cream for dessert to drop off our treasures at the hostel before heading out to the "festival of fountains" (or something) where there are over a dozen water fountains that are lit up with different coloured lights all around a huge park. The various fountains are all very unique where one you can walk under a tunnel of water, or one where you can dodge the water (there were lots of screaming teens-we just watched), one was in the guiness book of world records for the highest fountian, and one lazer/music show on water!! It was pretty neat to see and the park was full of people.

Another day on the big city today we killed the morning waiting to go paragliding, but unfortunately there was no breeze and we were not able to go. We walked along the walkway at tge top of the cliffs that over look the ocean. Lima has a beautiful water front. We relaxed most of the day wandering around Lima.

We are off again tomorrow morning for Haucachina and Nazca.

Did we mention that the ice cream here is great and everywhere!! I am a very happy girl.