Steve's South America Trip 2007

A fantastic 8 days of high trekking around the Cordillera Huayhaush, a remote mountain range in the Peruvian Andes with peaks reaching over 6700m. The best known of these is Siula Grande - made famous by Joe Simpson´s climb and subsequent disaster in the book and film ´Touching the Void´. This was the mountain soon after sunrise from our 2nd campsite but from the opposite side to the West face that he climbed.

Fortunately it wasn´t on our itinerary. Our group consisted of 5 - our guide and chef Roger, our donkey driver (or Arriero) Fermin, and the 3 of us - David from US, Emily from Oz and myself. I had met them all briefly the day before. The journey to and from the trek was an adventure in itself - initially a 3 hour journey in a fairly decent bus from Huaraz to Chiquian with as many extra passengers as possible crowded into the drivers area. Chiquian is the largest town in the area with maybe 1000 residents. We then changed into a rickety minibus for our onward journey to Pocpa, the start of our hike.

At various times on this 3 hour, 25km windy bumpy journey, we shared our limited space with goats, chickens and guinea pigs. On the return we only had a lamb to contend with, and for half hour less travel as we finished a little closer to Chiqiuan. Glad to finally be out of the bus at Pocpa we met Fermin and his donkeys before setting off for a 4 hour gentle climb to our first campsite.

And so began our trek. Each day we were blessed with fantastic weather for much of the day, just a few clouds each afternoon, and superb views of high snow covered peaks and icy blue lakes.

The only downside of the great weather was freezing cold nights. With all campsites between 4200m and 4500m and clear skies at night (unusual for this time of year apparently) the temp dropped to -5 and my sleeping bag struggled to keep me warm. At least in my tent it stayed above -2, lucky me! This meant that tea consumption each evening was limited to avoid midnight bladder relief outings, although I still ended up going twice on several occasions, and that packing away was traumatic. Freezing cold hands usually resulted from trying to roll my frozen tent into it´s bag each morning. Not pleasant at all, especially on the longer days when packing up before sunrise was necessary. I suppose the stunning location of our campsites went some way to making up for the discomfort......

The last picture was our final campsite - the tents are just visible (I think) in the bottom left corner close to the river. Food was getting low by this time so Roger went off with David and Fermin to catch some fish in the lake. They came back several hours later with a bucket full of small trout - delicious. The food was fantastic throughout. Roger turned out to be a great chef - we kick started each morning with pancakes followed by a small snack mid morning before a tasty and healthy salad lunch, usually enjoyed from an amazing viewpoint. Depending on arrival time at our campsite a cup of tea with popcorn was the norm followed by a meal at 6-7pm. This was always tasty with veg, fish or chicken, chips, rice, potatoes, desert etc. Amazing. We were always in bed by 8 as it was far too cold to stay in the group tent (where Roger cooked and we ate) after the gas stove was turned off. The donkeys never seemed to mind the cold nights and were always cheerful in the mornings.

Each day involved climbing at least one high pass between 4700m and 5000m. Because I´d had plenty of time acclimatising and was only carrying my things for the day (the kind donkeys had my tent and sleeping bag) I didn´t find the trekking itself too demanding, although the higher passes always meant slowing down a bit. Half way through there was an opportunity for tackling an extra climb over 5000m to give spectacular views of the large peaks. David and I did it with Roger guiding the way and taunting us with flute playing whilst powering up the high slopes well ahead of us. The climb was good but the views were somewhat reduced by our cloudiest afternoon yet.

The other passes provided plenty of photo opportunities with high peaks close by and clouds around us.

The circuit has been notoriously dangerous in the past with robberies and attacks on trekkers. This all stopped 3 years ago when the tiny villages in the area got together and decided they could make some money from the tourists by charging a security fee for protection on their land. I didn´t expect it would be so well organised - at the entrance to each new area we were charged the set fee, given receipts, our details taken down and sometimes even given our own security man for parts of the hike.....

All in all a fantastic hike that I would definitely do again but without the benefit of donkeys and a guide. The 8 days took us over 120km and up more than 7000m of climbing and through some of the most amazing scenery I have seen yet on my travels.

However enjoyable, as with the end of any trek, the final village was a welcome sight. This time Llamac, deep in one of the huge valleys in the area.

From here we had a 2 hour wait before 2 bus rides and 6 hours back to Huaraz where I had time for a shower, change of clothes (nice after 8 days in the same trousers and t-shirt and socks) before my night bus to Lima.