Awesome trip with Kate in the Peruvian Wilderness. Because it was rainy season and low tourist season, we literally had the entire trek to ourselves:)))
Day 0
First things first had to fly to Peru! I took a redeye from San Francisco and Kate did the same from Chicago.
Day 1
Once I made it there I met up with Kate and we dropped off our bags at Kate's host's house. Then we hopped on a bus. We got the front second floor seats! Which meant we had a 180 view the whole way up to Huaraz. We also made sure to go with one of the safer bus companies, and it eneded up being Oltursa. 9 hours babyyyyyyy.
Day 2
Once we got to Huaraz we chilled two nights in a hostel in a mixed bunk bed room for around 7 dollars each night. The hostel served us some really good toast with jam and butter and a banana. We took a walk around the town and I even had enough time to forget my debit card in an atm and promptply have it stolen :(. Great... Anyways we had some good meals. Kate's a vegetarian so I went for some more fish based meals for lunch, while Kate got a really good looking tortilla (basically an omelet with veggies in it). We also had some really good fried rice.
We also had fun just chilling at the hostel. We didn't take any photos, but that night was New Year's and it was the best fireworks display I have seen in my entire life. Everyone in the town set off their own spectacular fireworks so from the 5th floor of our hostel we got a 360 panoramic view of fireworkds going off in every direction.
Day 3
After New Years we tried to get some sleep and then woke up before dawn to catch a random van at 5:30am on a random street to Yungay for 5 PEN then connect with another van at 7:30am for 20 PEN to drop us off at our starting point- Vaqueria. We also had to stop with the second van to pay for the park entrance fee 60 PEN (you need cash for all these payments).
Got to Vaqueria by 12pm and then got right on the trail. Let me tell you, Alltrails is great! I mean you have to pay for offline access, but when you're in another country with no cell service you want to be abe to make sure you know your way. I just followed the alltrails map to get to the park entrance and we saw a bunch of animals on the way.
The elevation profile is below along with the trail and the distance of the hike.
This pig was so cuteeeeee. EOM
Made it to the entrance! There was just some random dude that was like hey, I run the entrance let me see your tickets. And then we just ambled in
I'll just let the views speak for themselves.
I think it's important to note that the last hour before arriving at our campsite for the night was roughhhhh for me. I threw up like 500ft short of the campsite, but I had to send it. Kate was super nice about it, but I think I scared her/grossed her out lol. I had never thrown up because of altitude before and it was not fun.
The views were great, but I then threw up before we went to bed and again in the middle of the night and was barely able to open the tent flap quickly enough... I still got a bit on our shoes though....
Day 4
Anyways I tried to muscle up the strength to make the high pass today, but I failed and we took like zero pictures except for this one of Kate, in which I'm sure she was thinking, why did I bring this idiot along. Also we stopped underneath a rock while it was raining and this huge bull came up to within a few feet from us and it was honestly a bit scary. Gored by a bull in Peru was not how I wanted to go I'll be honest.
Day 5
This time I was like naw I'm making it up the pass. Kate was probably like he better get up this or I'm losing my shit. It's her Colorado upbringing I think. She took the altitude like it was sea level.
I ate a bunch of sugar and caffeine and was hydrated and made sure to keep chugging up the omountain wiht no stops. I treated it like a race. I just kept going up and stayed ahead of the altitude. Then we made it!!!!! 15,617ft!
Then it was just walking it out. Pretty straightforward hiking from here on out. We also had some really nice dogs companions following us around:) and we had puppy chow from Kate's mom with a puppy!
I had some top ramen with my glow in the dark dino socks from my friend Lulu. We were just chilling with the dogs before setting up camp.
Day 6
Then we got up early and were rewarded with some beautiful reflections and loud rivers rushing past.
This marked the end of our journey and we finished around 11am @Cashapampa and took a 3h van ride back to Huaraz by 4pm (<= 20 PEN). Then we stayed another night at the hostel and tried to decompress a bit and clean up. In the morning we took an 8h bus back to Lima and went out to eat some burgers with our friends from MIT who had just arrived to also teach. I then went on to to do a solo trek to the Choquequirao Ruins and then Machu Picchu, which I also documented on this website.