Day Seven - Lake Churup

This morning we were woken up at 2:30am by a fiesta going on down on the street below. Our room was not at the front of the hostel, and we could hear this as loudly as though they were playing the trumpet down my ear!! Had we not had a 6:45am start to go to our hike, it would have been fantastic... As you can imagine we were less then impressed!!

When we reawoke properly at 6:45, we were both a bit groggy getting our stuff together for our trek! We arrived at the tour office and met the other two who were joining us, a lovely couple from Australia - they looked a lot fitter and more prepared than we did!! We hopped in a tiny taxi that Pete had to lie down in the back of and headed up the mountain to Pitec at roughly 3,800m. It was pretty warm but quite windy. We payed 65 Soles to a seemingly random man who gave us our national park membership and we were off.

Honestly, I don't think either of us were quite prepared for this! Our guide Nelly was fantastic, making sure we had plenty of stop, but the first 45 minutes were very tough and steep, especially in the powerful midday sun! The trail started to level off and we were overjoyed thinking we'd almost made it - how wrong we were!! The final slog was really tough. We were literally rock climbing with ropes up the final stretch to the lake. Being scared of heights, this was an extra challenge on top of the altitude and heat!

We finally made it to the top and saw the like looming in front of us, such a welcome view after 3 hours hiking at 4,450m!! We had our Philadelphia in hot dog bun sandwiches that we'd made the previous day and revelled that we'd actually made it without dying!! Our lunch break was brief and then we were off again, heading up to go down!

This wasn't so bad as every step you felt like you could breathe that little easier! My feet were a bit sore at this point, a slight concern considering we had 4 more days to go after this!!

When we arrived down, our taxi was ready and waiting and we headed down to Huaraz, a lot less chatty than the way up due to exhaustion!

We got 'signed off' ready for the next day by Orlando and headed back to the hostel to collapse! My hiking shoes are 'breathable' meaning when I took them off, my feet were literally black! After showering and lying horizontal for a couple of hours, we packed our bags for the following day, and headed out for dinner.

We chose a little Italian close to where we were saying, I've been a bit obsessed with Peruvian Carbonara, it's great! A couple of young boys were hanging around the restaurant, obviously very hungry and our waitress beckoned them over, sat them down and gave them some food from the kitchen. This was really touching and I thought how this would never happen in the UK. I've found the Peruvian's to be an incredibly friendly generous nationality, and most of the time, people are very genuine!

We headed back to the hostel more than ready for bed and slightly nervous about the following day!