After getting the night bus to Huaraz, we arrived at stupid o'clock in the morning, around 5am. We took a taxi to our hostel and by the time we got there it was around 6am. We weren't hopeful that we could check in early, but they said your room will be ready in about half an hour, bonus. So we had to wait in reception until they cleaned our room. It was freezing cold, well Huaraz is high up surrounded by mountains, and we were tired, so couldn't wait to check in. While we were waiting I saw a little cat outside so went to stroke it, meanwhile another little cat came running up to me and sat on my lap! I wasn't even sitting down, so I sat on the chair outside and the cat stayed on my knee. It must have been freezing cold and wanted some warmth, so I let it sit there until we could check into the room. When it was time to go to our room, I tried to get the cat off my knee and it didn't want to go, but bed was calling, so I put it down and we checked into our room. 

We must have had a good few hours of sleep and felt fully refreshed, so we went out to explore the local area . We walked around Huaraz and it's actually a lot bigger than I first thought. It's an Andean community, high in the mountains, yet it still has a busy bustling town centre, whereby you can see the snow capped peaks in the background, I liked this place. The main reason we've come here is to do some trekking in the Cordillera Blanca mountains, which is the second highest mountain range outside of Nepal, and the highest one in Peru. We'd heard the mountains here are beautiful, so wanted to check them out for ourselves. There are lots of tour agencies throughout the town, but our hostel also arrange tours, so we'll speak to them first before we get some quotes. It's not that warm today either, which is how I expected to to be in a mountain town, so it will be a lot colder climbing the mountains. Once we'd done enough walking around, we found somewhere to eat, had some dinner and went back to the hostel. We watched a film as we don't have wifi in the room, which is pretty annoying for me as I'm trying to catch up on the blogs. The hostel seems like a good one, there are loads of people staying, so I'm sure there will be plenty of people booking treks from here . 

Today we got up and asked the hostel about their trekking options. There is a Lake 69 option, which is a day hike, Santa Cruz is a 4 day trek, and there is a day hike to a glacier. We found out that the prices were fairly reasonable and were torn between doing the 4 day Santa Cruz option and the Lake 69. I really wanted to do the 4 day hike, but as we have to be at Machu Picchu in 2 weeks, perhaps it's a bit too much doing a 4 day hike within 2 weeks of the Inca Trail. We opted for doing Lake 69. The guy who works at the hostel said it's quite a tough trek, so he said if we wanted to do the other trek, do this one first, and if we felt ok, then we could do the Santa Cruz trek. We agreed upon that, so we booked the trek for the next day. After we knew we were booked on the trek, we went back down the town. While we were walking there, we bumped into the Australian couple we'd met in Huanchaco, well they did say they were coming here a day later than us! We found a shop called radio shack that sells headphone sets, so because our connection for Rosetta Stone broke, we needed a new headset . We found one that was suitable and bought it, as we need to practise more Spanish. Today, I thought it was going to be cold like yesterday, but it was actually baking hot, which I was surprised by. I'd dressed for the cold weather, so it was too hot for me to be out too long. We went back to the hostel to get our things ready for the trek. We're being picked up at 6am, so it's another early morning start. Luckily, we are coming back in the evening, so we don't need to take any overnight things with us. We got an early night ready for the trek tomorrow. 

I don't know what it is about me going on early morning treks, but whenever we book them, I always have trouble sleeping. So this morning when my alarm went off at 5am, I was not wanting to get up early. To top to off we had a barney over I can't even remember what and I said I don't want to go now, so John took it upon himself to get back in bed! I told him we can't afford to not go on the trek and waste money, so he soon got back out of bed and got ready to trek . Neither of us were feeling it this morning, so hopefully when we've woken up properly we'll have a better attitude. To get there, it's about a 2.5 hour drive from Huaraz and we stop for breakfast just before we arrive, so we can have an extra couple of hours sleep hopefully. 

Lake 69 -  Huascaran National Park

The bus came to pick us up on time and there were a few people waiting at the hostel although nobody felt like talking this time of the morning. We walked down to the bus and were the first ones on, so sat near the front. The rest of the people soon got on the bus, from what I could gather, it seemed that we had a group of non English speaking people, a large group of Israeli people and others from different countries. I doubt we'll be trekking with them anyway to be honest. We weren't really briefed on what was to come while on the bus, but apparently we won't have a guide on this trek and the bus taking the group there is just our transport . Everyone will complete the trek themselves and meet the group back at the bus when they finish. The trek is suppose to take 3 hours there and 3 back. While we were travelling there, we slept for a bit, but I was too cold. It was freezing when we got on the bus this morning, so I'm glad I've got my coat and gloves. The scenery while driving was full of snow capped mountains around every corner, so the more sleep you had, the more you were missing out on. We were driving up and up and on the edge of some steep cliffs, I hate these mountain roads as you are forever snaking from one side to the other and it's a sheer drop right below you. After about 2 hours driving, we stopped for our breakfast in a lovely restaurant with views right across the mountains. Everyone got out of the bus and sat down for breakfast. I had some cocoa tea with a roll, so hopefully the cocoa leaves will help with altitude sickness. John didn't have the tea, but just had a roll. Everybody here seemed to be sticking in their own little groups and didn't make any effort to speak to anyone else . It suited me fine as I was still feeling a bit moody, although John and I were back to normal now. They called us back to the bus, so it was time to leave. 

We all returned to the bus and carried on through the mountain scenery. There were many little waterfalls flowing and small rivers that ran down stream. One thing that I saw that was quite disturbing was what looked like a horses head, just the head tucked away from the road. I don't know what happened there, nor do I actually want to know! We carried on driving and I tried to forget what I'd just seen. By now it was becoming really hot on the bus, so everyone started to strip off layers. It seemed that our driver didn't really know where he was going and had to ask for directions, so eventually once some young boy had led him on the right path, we came to the entrance for Huascaran National Park, which is the entrance site to the Cordillera Blanca mountains. We all had to pay an entrance fee of around $5 soles per person. Once we'd all paid the entrance fees we carried on driving through the national park . We drove past a stunning lake, which was a lovely deep blue colour and there were some cows nearby. It was quite a big lake and I wished we could have stopped to get out and have a look, but the bus carried on until we reached Lake 69. 

Once we'd drove up and around loads of mountains, whilst taking in all the views, we'd arrived at our destination. Lake 69 is located at The Pisco and Chacraraju Mountain and lies at a mere 4600 metres (15,092 feet) above sea level. This time unlike our Cotopaxi Volcano trek in Ecuador, we'd actually be walking up to the whole summit to get there. The trek is rated as moderate to difficult because of the altitude and the last section just before the lake is supposed to be really hard, so I don't know how i'll find it, but i'll give it a go. So we all got off the bus once we were at the start of the hike and they told us to meet them back at the bus when we finish. So off we departed by ourselves to start the trail, we descended through a river and over a bridge to start what was a gentle hike through flat grassy terrain. I thought that it seemed pretty easy, but I'm sure it'll get harder than this. We carried on walking through fields, passing the odd donkey and cow. Once the flat path came to an end, we started the incline working our way up the mountains taking in the breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains. 

It's suppose to take up to 4 hours to get to Lake 69, so after about 2 hours 3/4 we made it up to the top of the glacier lake . I struggled nearer the top, due to lack of oxygen and the path was much steeper, but all the same I made it. Once we were there we walked around to admire the views. The lake was a lot smaller than I thought, much smaller than the lake we had seen on the bus. However, the size of the lake did not lack any of the beauty, it was a lovely turquoisey blue colour. The lake sits below some glaciers that fall into the lake and stunning cascades of waterfalls flow into it too. We sat there to admire the views and had some lunch. The air was thin up here and it was pretty cold so we didn't want to hang around for too long. So we took some pictures, and after lunch, we decided to make our descent. Going down was a lot easier than going up and it was a lot warmer than at the top of the lake. The descent only took about 2 hours, but when we finally made it back to the bus, boy was I glad to see the bus and sit down. We stopped to admire some of the views as when going up, I couldn't remember seeing some of the things as I was in the zone, so wanted to fully appreciate the scenery around us . We were one of the first ones down, so had to wait for everyone else to come back. I think we were waiting for another hour for the last ones to come back. By now, I was getting so sleepy and hungry, so just wanted to get back to Huaraz. We had a 3 hour journey ahead of us, so we weren't going to return until about 8-9pm at night. It's been a long tiring day, but worth it for this beautiful rewarding hike. I'm so glad to not be camping here overnight! When everyone was back on the bus, we set off back to Huaraz again, by now the sun was starting to set and there was a beautiful sunset over the mountains. I couldn't resist any longer and drifted off to sleep for a while. The journey seemed to take forever and eventually after over 3 hours, we made it back to Huaraz. Unfortunately we were not dropped off at the hostel, so had to walk back. We decided to get a Chinese as there was one right by where we got dropped off. That saved us coming back our again after we walk back to the hostel. When we got back there, we crashed out, we were exhausted! I think I'm going to ache a lot tomorrow . 

I woke up today and my whole body ached really bad. We had a very lazy morning and had a long lay in. I really couldn't face going out or doing anything today, so I literally didn't leave the hostel once! John went out to get me some food and we also had to book our night bus to Lima for tomorrow night, so I sent John on a mission to do that too. He came back to the hostel having successfully completed both tasks. We just had some Peruvian KFC type thing for dinner and just watched some films. I felt like a bum doing nothing, but I needed some recovery time! God knows how I'll feel after the Inca Trail! I'm glad I didn't sign up to the 4 day Santa Cruz trek. Hopefully my legs won't ache as much tomorrow. 

My legs felt much better today, which was a good job as we have to pack our stuff to check out of the room. We're catching a night bus to Lima at 10pm, so we're just going to hang around the hostel common areas until we leave. I'm hoping to catch up on some more of my blog too . We packed everything up and checked out and asked if we could leave our rucksacks in storage until tonight, which they happily obliged to. We went to the supermarket to get some food to sit in the square and eat. Once we'd finished, we walked back to the hostel and went to sit in the bar area, I said to John I think there is football being played, so he was keen to go in. Once we went inside, there was a Chelsea match being played, it had Spanish commentary, but he happy all the same. There were 2 English guys in there watching it, so this was a good conversation starter. We ended up chatting to these guys for the whole day. They were really nice lads and John was happy chatting about the football to them. I tried to do my blog but it just wasn't happening! Another girl came in the room, she was a Canadian girl and she was nice too, she kept offering John food and beer, so he was happy. The guys suggested that we all go for dinner tonight, we had time to kill until our bus, so we were up for that. They went out for a few hours, in the meantime, we had to book a hostel in Lima so I spent a few hours searching for one. They were either too expensive, not in the right area, or in a dorm, so it took me ages to find one. We settled for Kokopeli as it's in Miraflores, a bit more than we wanted to pay, but it looked nice. When the guys came back, we all went for dinner in a little restaurant. There was another girl who joined us, she was from Israel, she was nice, so we all had a lovely meal and killed a few hours. By the time we left it was nearly 9pm, so we had to get a move on to catch our bus to Lima. We all left and went back to the hostel so we could pick our stuff up and said our goodbyes. We left for the bus station, so next stop Lima for a few days.