Day Ten - Trek to Lake Arhuaycocha

Today we were woken again by coca tea in our tents at 6.00 - just can't get used to the taste of the stuff! I slept much better as Rosy lent me her thermal and I had twice as many layers on!! We had a great breakfast of banana pancakes and then packed up ready to head off again.

The path turned very steep very quickly, essentially traversing along a stony track up the side of a hill. This eventually levelled out to a very open path leading up to Lake Arhuaycocha. Like yesterday, even though we kept getting closer, it still felt a long trek away!!

Unfortunately I did have a bit of a strop at this point, 2 hours after being told it was a 40 minute walk away!! I was struggling with dehydration today, and despite my good nights sleep felt even more exhausted! I found it quite a struggle to muster the energy to get up to the lake, but once we arrived it was beautiful! The glacier had melted vastly over the past 5 years as the snow crept up the neighbouring mountains and icebergs floated on the lakes surface.

We headed back down the valley and began waking along the valley basin for a long time. I struggled with the attack of the flies here, 5 or 6 of them at a one divebombing my face to the extend I was walking along like a crazy lady, puffing obscenities at the flies and waving my arms around like a lunatic! They almost drove me to tears they were that irritating - it's a low point when you start pleading with flies to leave you alone!

We stopped for lunch next to a beautiful little stream, and I donned my cap and my hoodie. Miraculously, the flies disappeared, however I was burning up inside my hoodie!!

I began to get really clumsy and felt like I was losing control of my legs as we continued the last stretch to camp. The terrain was sandy stoney which was difficult to walk on, and I felt like I was stumbling along in a bit of a daze. Brendan sat me down and gave me some water and sugar which seemed to help the problem drastically!!

We arrived at camp after the sun had gone behind the mountains and headed for some toasted muffins and butter in the food tent to warm up! Dinner was again amazing, our last meal! We had a lovely potato soup, Spaghetti Bolognese and then a treat of hot wine for dessert which went down a treat!

Brendan and Normande spent 20 minutes outside playing with their cameras as the Milky Way was absolutely stunning from our campsite. There was no artificial light for miles, and to his delight, Brendan finally managed to get the breathtaking picture you can see above - sadly I can take no credit for this!!

We settled down to our last night in tents, dreaming of our big comfy beds and showers the following day!