Climbing Chachani (6075m / 19931 foot)

As described in the last blog, we are staying in the Casa de los Pinguinos and we update our blog for a special reason..
We started our expedition to mount chachani last monday morning at 08.30, being picked up by a 4x4 car. At Quechua Explorers (our tour agency) we met Alfredo (our tour guide) and we packed up tent and all other equipment we needed to bring to the mountain (incl. 5 l of water for each person). After a bumpy ride to the end of the street in the national park, we shouldered our backpacks and walked from about 5000m to our base camp (about 5200m) for about 2 hours.
Setting up the tent, unrolling our sleeping bags and waiting for "dinner" we spent the next two hours since dinner is at 16.30 (asparagus soup made by Knorr with nodules and spaghetti with tuna sauce) we prepared for the night... we went to "bed" at around 17.30 and to give you a feeling how it is: windy, cold and not very comfortable lying in a tent that is about 1.85 m long ;-)
the night was cold and not too long since we had to get up at 01.20 for breakfast and tea (coca tea) and we started our way up at about 01.45. Walking during the night, headlights on, following our guide (who seemed to have no problems at all climbing up the mountain since he was whistling on the way up) we climbed meter for meter up into the dark.
The fist highlight was after about 1.5 h since we cached up with the other group that has left 30 minutes before us :-)
At about 04.30 the second highlight: sunrise...and we saw that the summit is still some meters away
the third highlight was then, after climbing 900 m to reach a point close to the summit (about 6000m high) shortly before 06.00 am. From there, we climbed the last 75 meters up to the top (where it was pretty windy)! 
So all in all, we needed about 4h 30min to climb the mountain and we rushed down in about 45 minutes since there is a straight way down :-)

Packing our stuff

View to the top

On the top

On the top

view on the top

downhill

Our track on the GPS Tracker
So now, we relax this day in Arequipa and prepare for our next part. We adjust our plan and we head south, direction Arica (in Chile) to visit a national park there and from there we probably head north again direction of Bolivia. But we'll check the details once we know more!