Tuesday 17 May
Up at 5:30 after a semi-wakeful night but not too bad considering: the thin air mattress, the cold that snuck in sometime during the night (rectified by snuggling into the very thick sleeping bag), the snoring pig, and the dog fight in the middle of the night!
It is cold as dawn lights up the sky; still need a torch to pack. Breakfast is nice: a local drink called cuáker which is made from wheat with cinnamon, sugar and water and is welcomingly hot plus potatoes and omelette. We warm our hands around the hot cups. We are eating lots of papas (potatoes)!!
Climb to 4100 m - a lot of puffing and discarding of clothes as we go. We pass little villages and kids descending to school. Only Chechuan spoken in these parts.
Long climb from here to highest point on the pass today 4500 m. I was cursing Alois on the way as I hauled a pack full of warm clothing; I had been thinking he'd overstated the case for it being cold; but at this high point, it was very cold and I didn't regret my heavy parka for a moment.
Here we can see Lake Pachacutec and snow-capped Mount Pitusiray.
We are definitely up with the llamas here!
We stuffed around at this point chilling out (literally) while Alois did his Chechuan offerings to Mamapacha and we built a stone tower. Basically, this is just 'buying time' to allow the horses and cooka to get ahead to organise lunch.
We have more climbing for a short time, then the most scenic walk along a pass.
So here we are at lunch after a very tricky descent that went on and on - slipping and sliding on a steep track - the most amazing scenery: jagged mountain peaks (sometimes shrouded in mist - or low cloud?) and the most beautiful lakes. This beats the lakes in Bolivia 'hands down'!
Lunch is a lovely vegetable soup and a tray of vegetables and macaroni plus a slice of potato (!) stuffed with tuna and vegetable tortillas. Cooka out-does himself!
We rest some more: the sun is in and out but when out is quite hot. We have 1.5-2 hours walking to go.
The next village is Quisuarani (3,700 m) which is the next campsite. This is a larger community and not like the remote, small traditional community we stayed in last night: it is well known for its high quality weavings.
We are basically camping in someone's backyard and the tents have been erected in a shelter where the clothes are hanging on the line - and we are on cement! Hmm, looks like being a long, hard night ahead. We went 'bush' last night and the toilet here TOP tells me is GHASTLY so I'll be going 'bush' here too!
Dinner was good again - vegetable soup and lunch left-overs served cold but followed by a hot delicious peach liquid dessert which we drank straight from the bowl with our hands wrapped around it for some warmth.
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