Santa Cruz, part 2

Before moving on to the nitty gritty details of the trek, I should introduce to you 2 more of our party in Santa Cruz: Juan and Pinto. Juan was our wonderful guide, who also doubled as my first Spanish teacher in Peru. He spent the first day of our trek helping me learn past tense and very patiently correcting my mistakes. It was a very welcome lesson as it was getting really difficult to explain myself when everything seemed to happen in the present tense. Would you believe he's only 36 years old???? There's something in this continent which seems to age people very rapidly, I can't remember the number of women I saw who look like they are 200 years old. Case in point:

Rikki thinks it's the sun. She probably has a point. I mean we are traveling here in "winter" and despite the cold, which will only get worse as we progress in the trek, it's almost always been sunny. So much so in fact that the locals in the villages use solar power to dry their laundry:

Yes, Peruvians are indeed very resourceful. See here another product of Peruvian creativity:

Why throw away perfectly decent shoe soles when you can just recycle them to attach a wooden gate in the middle of nowhere????

But I digress... Where was I? Oh yes, Pinto. As you might have figured out by now, he's a horse. :)

We discovered very early on in the trek that Maya and Omrit had only arrived in Huaraz the day before our trek. Altitude problems are very individual so while Omrit was happily ploughing along on the trail (she's an energizer bunny anyway), Maya had breathing problems from the first half hour of our walk. Chagai and Roni were super sweet, offering to carry her bags and waiting for her when she needed to rest. Seeing as the hard part of the trek was still before us, Maya requested a horse that night and that is how Pinto joined us. After spending many hours together, Maya and Pinto had formed a very special bond by the end of the trek.

The only other event worth mentioning on our first day was the rain which seemed to come out of nowhere in the afternoon and lasted for a good 2 hours so that by the time we made it to our camp, we were all soaking wet. Or rather some of us were. I had on a wonderful raincoat from the other SA which meant that not a single drop of rain made it inside. Oh Cape Union Mart, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

It was the second day of the trek that registered the highest ascent. Very early on in the walk we could see the snow capped mountains in the distance:

We had, as Juan described it, a 1.5-2 hours of 30% ascent, then a 1.5/2 hours of 45% ascent and then a 1.5-2 hours of 60% ascent. Everybody seemed to have a different pace so we were kind of all scattered along the trail. This suited me just fine since I quite like to be on my own when I walk so I can soak up the view to my heart's content. I just kept taking breaks to make sure I could still see the person behind me. Which cannot be said of those in front of me.

When we made it to the 60% ascent, I had slowed down considerably as I could hardly breathe. So at some point I couldn't see anybody in front of me and the people behind me seemed to be going even slower than me so they were also out of sight. All this would have been fine if the trail up the ascent were clear. At some point however, the dirth path had disappeared and there were huge rocks which made it very unclear to see a path. Soon I came to a point where there were very steep mountains in front of me and the only way to get to them was to climb the rocks with my bare hands at said 60% slope.

I yelled out at the people in the front. No answer. I yelled out at the people in the back. No answer. I tried to see if I could spot other hiker groups. Absolutely no one. Trying not to panic, I started climbing the rocks. I could easily have slipped and fallen. I could easily have broken a bone. It's a miracle I didn't, especially considering I am capable of slipping and falling on absolutely flat surfaces. It took about 20 minutes until I finally spotted some people in the distance. A 20 year worth of 20 minutes! I made my way towards them, in the hopes that they were indeed on the correct path. Once I had made it there, I yelled out at Rikki in the back: "Rikki, where are you?". The answer came: "In Santa Cruz". Yeah, Rikki's funny like that.

Once I made it to the path, I also saw the guys in the front who seemed like little dots up in the distance. They seemed to have made it to the top a long time ago and directed me towards them. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it to our pass of 4,750 meters and I have the picture to prove it!!

So much for today. Hope to wrap this up in the next post. Bye for now!