Oh Peru! Part 8….A mountain lodge in The Cordillera Blanca- OMG!

“The arresting mountain setting, the superb terraces piled one upon another, made their due impact. We sat in silence and absorbed the mountains as the Incas of old would have done” Mike Blanks; sited in ‘Classic Climbs of the Cordillera Blanca Peru’

Our last 5 days in Peru were spent at the Llanganuco Mountain Lodge near the bustling town of Huaraz. The lodge itself is intimate with only 4 rooms for guests, a community dinner table, a cosy wood fire, a bar, potable water and even loos that cope with toilet paper! (sounds strange but this occurred to us as the ultimate luxury after nearly 3 weeks of tramping through Peru)….

The lodge is home to two Al Pacas-  Nacho- a psycho looking creature with a bad haircut and crazy, mutant teeth, and Bianca- with big brown pretty eyes and a fetish for a tickle under the chin. The resident dogs, two majestic ridgebacks; Shackleton and Dino, spend their days getting pats from the guests and lounging around on the grassed area overlooking a picturesque valley flanked by the Cordillera Blanca Mountains; a range that reaches across 180km and divides the eastern and western slops of the Andes from north to south… The views from the lodge are nothing short of spectacular…

The view from our room- Llanganuco Mountain lodge

Llanganuco is nestled at 3500m and Russ worried us all on our first evening by having another little altitude sickness ‘turn.’ No passing out this time but he was feeling ill enough to ask for 5L of oxygen…Russ being a man who loves a machine with numbers, borrowed the lodges finger-pulse ‘oximetry’ machine and spent the evening experimenting with ways of getting his levels up. Fast (bastrika for the yogis) breathing- nope..took his oxygen further down and raised his heart-rate. We tried a puff of ventolin- nope, no difference….deep, yoga-style belly breathing- success! He consistently managed to get his levels up to 98-99 which is normal at sea level! A few days at the lodge and we were all acclimatised and Russ used this deep breathing technique whenever he felt head-spinny with great success (those yogis knew their stuff !)   

The lodge was the perfect base for hiking. Our hosts, a gorgeous English couple, gave us a suggested trekking plan for our 5 day visit. It  allowed for acclimatisation and a slow build up from an afternoon stroll around the lodge on the day of our arrival to a 6 hour challenging climb to 4700m on our final day…..

Surrounding the lodge we found a pre-Inka stone temple, scattered ruins and skulls at the site where the Inka’s slaughtered the original inhabitants and in turn, were slaughtered by the Spanish conquistadors. We explored a large, clay lake and spend hours making little bowls and taking in the view of the silent, towering snow peaks that loomed above.

 

On our second day we caught a taxi (read: a bomb of a seat-belt-less car with a local driver who had the habit of crossing himself before every trip up the switch-back road that climbs deep into the Huascaran National Park and high into the range) Having said that- and despite my nerves about dropping off the side during every trip- these guys really do know how to drive. They also love 80’s music and the kids had to put up with me singing all my old faves in the backseat.

We entered the National Park and walked back down past an almost iridescent blue mountain lake. The Huasaran National Park covers an area of Peru that houses 663 glaciers over 692km. There are 30 summits higher than 6000m and 200 snow capped peaks higher than 5000m. There are 296 mountain lakes. The clear blue pools against the solid granite of the peaks is something to behold!

Day 2 involved another exhilarating and terrifying drive up to the Portochello pass at 4800m (even though I am not Catholic, I was crossing myself along with the driver for this one!) There are no barricades on the sheer cliff edges (dead drops of hundreds of metres) There are no lanes and rarely enough room for 2 cars. The method for avoiding a head on collision when cornering the sharp switchbacks? honking the horn to let any potential oncoming traffic know you are there of course! One 8.5km long section this road gains 527m of elevation and includes 28 hairpin turns….I sing along to the 80’s music to distract myself. We slowly edged ourselves closer and closer to the snow-line as the peaks of Huascaran, Huandoy, (both towering over 6000m) and Yanapaccha (5,530m) came into the breath-taking view…Once at the pass, (phew…) we followed an Inca trail back down (I am strangely fine with heights and vertical drops when on my own two feet- much better than in a car!)

Raw footage of the drive up to give you some idea…

Day 3 involved our first ascent- up to The Ice Falls of Huandoy at 4000m. We hiked straight out from the lodge, each step opening out the views over the Cordillera Negra behind and across the Callejón de Huaylas valley. The narrow gorge of Rajuriuri rises 1200m either side of the trail while the summit of Huandoy looms ahead over the ice falls. We met only a few locals on the trail- mostly heading back down to the village with mules carting large blocks of ice. The ice wall is constantly in flux so we were quick to snap the photo and get off

Day 4 was the walk we had been building up to. A 900m ascent from 3800m to the stunning Laguna (lake) 69 at 4700m. It was an arduous 6 hour hike there and back . Kai and Jaiya were little troopers and many of the struggling hikers we met on the track up were amazed to see 2 children plodding their way upwards and onwards. They learnt how to count from 1-1 million in Spanish on this trek…..The view was worth the effort of the climb in every way….

The Cordella Blanco is the highest tropical mountain range in the world and the gorgeous fauna and flora adds unusual texture and a colourful foreground to the striking scenes, deep valleys and jagged peaks.

We loved the community meals at the lodge and during our stay a steady trickle of new faces flowed across the dinner table.. one night there was a house full of Aussies and over the next evenings we shared our meals with a gentle couple from Lima, a Belgian diplomat and his family, a German lady too ill with altitude sickness to hike with her companions and a writer and photographer for a luxury lifestyle magazine based in New York. 

Kai engrossed himself in the book ‘Into Thin Air’ (the story of the doomed 2006 Everest climb) during our stay. Evidently reading about the dangerous side of mountain climbing didn’t put him off and he asked a lot of questions about every peak in the vicinity and wanted to know  how old he would need to be to climb Mt Pisco (5752m)

Chris our host and a keen climber, took both Kai and Jaiya bouldering for an afternoon and they returned suitably tired but even further determined to conquer summits. We watched “touch the void’ the movie about the disastrous climb by two British climbers in 1986. The fact that the incident took place not far from our lodge made the story all the more exciting to watch but still didn’t deter Kai especially from ambitious dreams of returning to Peru to climb peak after peak…

 

The trekking schedule suggested by the lodge was perfect for us. After two down hill walks we had acclimatised to the altitude and were ready for our first ascent on day 3; the perfect build up to the tough lake 69 walk on our last day.

In between hiking we relaxed at the lodge, wrote travel journals (and this blog) whilst swinging in hammocks and taking in the stunning view. 

Our flight back to Lima left without us 3.5 hrs early!!! Our lodge did not have a phone and the airline had been unable to reach us to let us know the change in flight time. So, instead of a 1 hour flight and an early meal in our favourite tapas bar in Lima, we endured an exhausting 8hr bus trip and a late night pizza shared on the bed in our hotel room….

So our time in Peru is over…..next post: Santa Marta, Columbia…then; the passage to Cuba and The Cuban Adventures!

 

This entry was posted in The Sail.