Huaraz and the Santa Cruz Trek

After Cuzco we breezed through Lima, which did not seem particularly interesting to me, and headed up to Huaraz. Huaraz is situated at the mouth of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest mountain chain in the world outside of the Himalayas. Lima is only 800m high, whereas Huaraz is 3800m so we had to spend a couple of days there acclimatizing again before setting out on any treks (otherwise it might be dangerous). One curious thing about altitude is that doctors say no matter how much time you have spent at high altitude, your body does not develop a permanent tolerance. Every ascent is like it´s the first time. Thus, even though we´ve been at 2500m or above almost for three months, we had to wait a bit. After a couple of days of planning and relaxing, we were ready to go on the Santa Cruz trek.

Someone told me that National Geographic once named the Santa Cruz trek the second most beautiful in the world and I read in one of the guidebooks that the German Apline Club names one of the mountains along the route the most beautiful in the world. It is definitely stunning. We began at about 2900m and worked our way up to a 4760m pass on the third day, which was tough but not nearly as difficult as the Salkantay pass for me. We worked our way through a valley towards the most incredible view of the Andes I´ve ever seen and some of the guide books consider the best in the entire mountain chain. I just sat up there on my own for about 20 minutes, hiked down a bit and soaked it all in while eating a sandwich. After the pass it was a gentle walk for a few hours to our campsite. The next day was supposed to be easy but the write-up we were using neglected to mention that the buses back to Huaraz from a nearby town we were hiking to stop running at around noon. We were told that at 11:30 about an hour and a half away from the town, so it was a mad dash in the rain to get there as fast as possible. Fortunately, we found a bus and went down the most harrowing road I´ve ever seen. It must drop 3000m within a nail-biting hour and has to be one of the greatest engineering feats I´ve seen in my life.