Carhuazcancha

I went to bed at 11:30pm on Monday night with all my clothes on, on top of the covers, alarm set for 12:50am. At 12:55am, I set out to wait by the bridge about two blocks away in the dead of night with about five dogs barking furiously at me (luckily, there was no biting). Upon finding a deserted bridge I went to Ruth’s house, as she was supposed to be meeting me that night. I find I dark house and contemplate going home but decide to be persistent, I mean after all, how many opportunities like this come up? Ruth and I had set up a hike into one of the ravines “near” San Marcos called Carhuazcancha, from which you can see snow covered mountains of the Cordillera Blanca as well as beautiful lakes and waterfalls. So, I decide to knock loud once and then start walking so at least when the neighbors got out of bed to complain, I wouldn’t be there. Knock, knock … “¿Qué?” [What?] I hear inside. “Ruth, it’s one o’clock.” I say. “[long pause]…Oh!” Anyway, after a bit of scurrying, we were on our way out of San Marcos at 1:30am. Ruth was planning to “just wake up” at one. I guess my plan of “just setting an alarm” worked a little better this morning.
Ok, some of you may be thinking, “Isn’t it a little dark to go wandering around at that time of night?” The answer is: Yes. And, if you had seen where we were walking, you might be a little concerned. But, you didn’t see it, so ha. I told Ruth that I would bring my headlamp, which had gotten translated into a “light-up hat” to the others so they were all quite interested to see this and were duly impressed with the LED headlamp. Ruth’s sister asked if I could leave it with her when I left. I thought about leaving my new, expensive, headlamp upon my return home to the states for about 10 seconds. Then I said, “No.”
Ironically, I’m pretty positive that you can buy one in Huaraz. Probably the only place you could find one in Peru besides Lima or Cusco. This is because Huaraz is basically the trekking mecca of Peru so they have a lot of random services and stores that the hard core trekker / rock climber would enjoy, such as headlamps.
Anyway, because of the headlamp I could see animals (their eyes glowed with the light) from quite far away and we saw two owls sitting on the ground right off the trail (the first one thoroughly scared Ruth and the second one Ruth’s friend, Edgar, picked up and took it along for a mile or two. He said there wasn’t a place to put it. I kept saying the air was a perfectly good place to put a bird and he finally threw it in the air and it flew off) and every spider on the way there. Oh the joy.
At about five-thirty in the morning we arrive to the cancha of Carhuazcancha (cancha means field, or roasted corn but that doesn’t have anything to do with this story.) Ruth says, “Ok, let’s take a nap until sunrise and then eat breakfast!” What? So, we climb the wall to find two huts and we take a half-hour nap (which would have worked if it hadn’t been freezing and I hadn’t been sweating so I was just wet and cold). At sunrise we ate cheese sandwiches (saying that now, it kinda sounds weird, but it’s a normal breakfast here and I like it, actually, I picked the menu for this adventure…) and water from a thermos which was really hot and wonderful. Then, with our cold and stiff legs, we started the ascent. This is when I realized that campo Peruvians that work in their farms all day at high altitudes are about 77x more competent hikers than I am. All three of them speed walked along and I was left doing my best to catch up. At one point Edgar carried by pack for me, which was randomly heavier than everyone else’s and it still took me about two hours to recover. I’d never felt complete exhaustion like that before. There wasn’t anything specifically wrong, I didn’t have nausea or head aches or severe muscle pain (all which would have been reasonable because not only were we clearing altitudes of 5,000m [16,404 ft.] but we were clearing them, um, quickly) I was just wiped out. And now I must say, before you feel sorry for me, it felt good. I was thoroughly enjoying every minute…
During the day we saw five different lakes: Ichick Milpo, Jatun Milpo, Jacacocha (this means guinea pig lake, by the way), Ichik Potrero, and Jatun Potrero. (Also, Ichik means little and jatun mean large in Quechua.) Not to mention the smaller lakes we saw along the way. The lakes and the amazing views from of the different valleys we entered were spectacular. We hiked into the valley that connects Chavin and Huaraz, (Quebrada Huachesca? I think?) whereupon the landscape completely changed from the high mountain cliffs to a swirling pattern of granite and grass. The water in the lakes and streams varied in color from a bright rust, to deep maroons, to a deep greenish black.
At Jacacocha, we shared a lunch of tuna sandwhiches and a surprise from Edgar, Shinti and Cuy (roasted peas and guinea pig). Now, don’t be fooled, the peas didn’t look like anything I’ve eaten in the states. They were a pale beige and tasted like beans.
At 3:45pm we headed home from Jatun Potrero to San Marcos, dropping Ruth’s sister off in Olayan and Edgar in Apocara. It appears that I did not know the meaning of speed walking until we began the walk (run? sprint?) home. There’s nothing quite like hurrying down a steep gravel path to, well, give you really sore knees and a few blisters. I actually have a blister on the heel of my foot an inch and a half wide (sorry, I know that was too much information.) At 7:45pm, Ruth and I finally made it home to San Marcos, I then went into a coma for 11 hours from exhaustion.
And now I’m ready for more… :)