As Close As I´ll Get To Snow

OK folks, I am determined to finish posting about Santa Cruz, so brace yourselves. Just to give you some perspective-I´m currently in La Paz, Bolivia and planning to move to Argentina next week. I got stuck here for reasons I will explain, at this rate, by oh, I don´t know, October?? I am behind by about 7 weeks!!! I guess I only have my own babbling mouth to blame...

The above picture was taken quite a while before we got to the pass. So that you can see how close we got, ie how high we climbed, here´s a picture of the snow capped mountains from near the pass:

We only went down a few hundred meters to the camp site that night, so I was freezing by nightfall and that is when I understood I had sorely underestimated the weather conditions. My sleeping bag, while very light and compact, was nowhere near warm enough for this kind of cold. My teeth were chattering the whole night and I barely managed to sleep 2 hours. Rikki, on the other hand, was quite cozy:

Heee, I´m mean. That night, I think, was when I decided not to go on more treks at such high altitudes. I can't breathe during the trek, I can't sleep at night, do I really want to get any nearer to snow capped mountains?? More on this dilemma in another post.

Now that I think about it, this trek was chock full of drama, quite fittingly for South America. As we were approaching our camp site the 2nd night, we heard about an accident that had taken place quite near Santa Cruz. Apparently a French ( I think) couple were trying to climb a mountain called Alpamayo (at an altitude of 5,947 m.) on their own when the guy had fallen and died. Luckily, the reports were inaccurate and the next day we got news that he had *only* broken his ribs. Still scary. I can´t exactly remember which of my pictures is that of the Alpamayo, so I´m putting a random picture here instead which I think is very cool and deserves to appear on the blog:

In my opinion, the 3rd day of the trek was the most beautiful, mostly because there was a lot of water involved. Also, it didn´t hurt that we were walking downhill and could actually breathe and enjoy the scenery, which looked something like this:

This was also the day when we got in close contact with some donkeys on our lunch break:

They just kind of came and surrounded us and refused to leave, it was quite surreal. But I have one more drama to tell from our trek, one which we keep remembering to this day. Our camp site for the 3rd night was smack next to a stream of water, which was ridiculously loud.

I was wondering just how I was going to sleep with that roaring sound when we realized that one of our party was missing. Maya, who had been travelling with Pinto up until the 3rd day, had decided at some point that she wanted to walk and gotten off. The only problem is that she hadn't made it to the camp site and we didn't know whether she had fallen behind or missed the camp completely and kept on walking. I was convinced she had missed the site because I myself had almost gone past it without noticing, but everybody else thought this was unlikely. So Chagai decided to walk back from the camp, in the hopes of finding her. He came back a while later, saying that he had walked until the last spot we had stopped at and not seen her. In the meantime, someone else walking on the trail passed us by and told us he had seen someone who fit Maya's description go by. By this time, it was nightfall and we were starting to get worried.

It would soon be really dark and it was a really scary thought for a girl to be walking alone at night in the middle of the mountains. The truth is that the end point of the trek was at a village 2 hours from our campsite and Juan told us that the donkey bearer's brother lived there. So he decided to take Pinto, Maya's sleeping bag and a flashlight in the hopes of finding her there. We gathered in the big tent, which was generally the warmest place in the camp because of all the cooking, and continued waiting nervously. On the one hand we were scared, but on the other I think we were hoping for the best so we started playing silly games to pass the time.

Looks easy, right? It isn't. Don't try it at home, kids!

Well obviously Maya's story ends well-Juan found her at the village as we had hoped and we found out that she had actually had quite a nice time there. She had realised at some point that she had missed the camp site, but hoped to reach the village before nightfall. When she got there she found a little boy with whom she sent a note to us to let us know she was ok. The family in the village took her in and were very generous to her, she was even serenaded with a harp before going to sleep.

So that brings us to the end of our very eventful first trek. Next post-our whirlwind week going through Ica, Pisco, Nazca and Arequipa by the coast. Until then...