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!

Hiking the Colca Canon

As mentionned in the last blog from earlier today (http://chrisgoessouthamerica.blogspot.com/2011/10/cusco-puno-high-altitude-training.html) we didn't have good internet connection the last few days, therefore we updated our blog not regularly. But today in Arequipa, we sit in the Casa de los Pinguinos and do our updates... outside is about 25 to 30 degrees, pretty hot! But back to the last week:
We stayed one night in the Patchamama hostal in Cabanaconde where we got an additional map of the Colca Canon with the paths you can hike and how long it takes approximately. Ready for it, we started next morning with direction of Llahuar (the other way what all tourist groups do).The GPS tracker traced most of the trail, but apparently the battery was not working at the end of day 3 / morning of day 4 so it misses the last path back to Cabanaconde, but ok..

Here you find the map!

So after 5 hours of hiking in the dry beauty of the canon, where a lot of cacti grow, but nothing else, we arrived the a lodge where we stayed the night. It's pretty basic: a wooden hut with a bed and (surprisingly) electric light. A cool shower can be taken and there is 2 hot pools (25 and 35 degree) close to the colca river. So we relaxed there and waited for dinner, before we went early to bed. The next day would be a bit tougher than the first one (descent of about 1200 meters only).

With pancakes as breakfast (06.00 am) we started with direction Llatica - Fure (about 2800 m) so we had to climb about 800m. Luckily, it's not too warm in the morning and the sun is not yet burning down, so we arrived in fure at 10.00, where we left our backpacks at a hostal and continued to the waterfall of Huacana (2 h there and back, additional 100 m up and down). After lunch, we continued up and down to the view point and further back to the colca river to the Oasis. The Oasis consists of 5 larger lodges where all tourists stop (they hike up from there to Cabanaconde, 1200 m uphill).

The next day, we continued our tour to Tapay (2900 m) where we planned to have lunch, but since this is not on the tourist trail, there is only few hostels and the only server dinner, no lunch. So we had to change the plan (we wanted to stay there till 15.00 to avoid the midday sun) and we walked back to the colca river. We stopped at a hostel, but nobody was there and we had to rearrange again... fortunately and incidentally, I met on the way down to the river, checking if there is other hostels in this "town", a lady with a dog and 2 donkeys. Fortunately because she hosts the Colca-garden hostel, which can not be found easily. She's very kind (we got lunch at 14.30) and we decided to spent the night there.
(Actually, at first it was a bit strange, following this lady down a little, narrow path, not knowing what to expect there... in TV stories sometimes end with: "and that was the last time where he was seen") ;-)
But it was actually a great evening at this hostel, we met a cool tourist group (guide, 1 Canadian, 1 Dutch, 1 Swiss) and we spent the evening talking at the campfire...
Our last day we started with breakfast at 05.00 with pancakes (btw. at the Oasis, you don't get breakfast at that time so the tourists have to start hiking without food...) and we hiked up to the top of the canon (1200 uphill) in about 2h 45minutes and we were not exhausted after :-) there was another group, but the looked very tired at the end of the trail :-)
In the afternoon, we went to see condors at the Cruz del Condor and we were lucky to see some pretty close (actually there is many of them)!

Last night in Pachamama with (actually really great wood-oven) pizza, we left Cabanaconde by public bus at 11.30. The bus was picking up people till it is "full". This means: people are standing in the aisle pairwise, hardly able to breathe, and nobody can move for or back anymore ;-) luckily, we had a seat but we were relieved when we left the bus at Chivay.
We spent some time in the hot-springs in Chivay to relax (around 38 degrees and a lot of sulfur that you can smell) and left the town next morning with another (full) bus with direction Arequipa where we are at the moment....

What's next? Chachani is planned for Monday (tomorrow) and then we'll see if we stay longer in Arequipa or if we head of to Bolivia...

Cusco - Puno: High Altitude Training

After a longer period without real internet connection, we are now able to update the blog again, so what has happened?

Firstly, when we visited Huchuy Qosqo we took also some pictures, here an example

The last day in Cusco we visited the Chocolate Museum (small but very nice) and we found an interesting figure: according to estimations, about 90 % of the Coca leaf production is not used for tea and other legal products but is used "otherwhise"  ;-) We wonder what this might be :-D But besides Coca, Cacao seems to be a fairly good alternative to get money, Switzerland is one of the top buyer from Peruvian Cacao and Swiss eat about 11.7 kg Chocolate per year...
In the afternoon we attended the City tour of Cusco, but we were not really happy with it: It was a mainstream show of sights around Cusco (the sights are awesome) where a lot of tourists in many small buses get carried to the places where the Peruvian ladies wait and try to sell "stuff" ("baby alpaca pullover's, gloves, lockets and MANY other things"), the tourguide gives a 5 min speak about what this is, you have 5 more minutes to walk around and take pictures, back to the bus to the next stop and finally you end up in a Alpaca Store for 30 minutes where you can buy more alpaca stuff... the funniest thing with this is: it works! at least 4 from our group did really buy something there.... :-) good business I guess for the sellers...

Cusco City - Not the Cathedral ;-)

Sacsayhuaman

So we decided to have an great dinner in the evening, but the restaurant we wanted to go was already full, so we went to the same one as we did the last time in Jan and had a very tasty piece of meat.

Well, what else...? oh, right I went to the barber to get rid of my beard :-) nice experience but I'm not posting a picture how I looked afterwards, just while he was doing his work ...

So we were ready to take the bus to Puno (actually we wanted to take the train, but a train ticket that cost's 220US Dollars per person was though a little expensive, so we took the 50 Soles bus instead). On the way to Puno we've seen a lot of different special things (old VW Beetle's, little remote villages, the train to Puno, road construction sites and many things more... ) and we arrived in the evening in Puno (a touristy city at the lago Titicaca).

Puno at Sunset

We had 2 options in mind, going to the Islas Taquile or visiting Sillustani, but apparently all tour opperators that visit the island stop at the "human zoo", the floating islands of the Uros... and since we didn't want to go with a tour like that, we decided to catch a cab in the morning that drives us out to the ancient tombs-hill of Sillustani. 
It's actually a really nice place and you don't need to come by a tour bus, since some of the statements that the guides said was just wrong! So we spent a day on this peninsula before we took a collectivo (8 people in a car) back to the main road and then a small bus back to Puno.

Sillustani

From Puno, we organized a tour to Chivay, the village with hot thermal baths and the entrance to the Colca Canon (where you have to buy a tourist ticket for 35 Soles, just to be there). We took a tour that stops at some places for pictures and you have a guide telling you some stories about this area (pretty good, although we declined the offer to try alpaca meat at 08.00 in the morning at a trucker restaurant).
At lunch we arrived in Chivay and after some food, we went to the "high altitude rescue team" in Chivay (similar to the REGA in Switzerland) where we asked for hiking information about the Colca Canon. One of the gave us willingly information and the other guy kept watching TV (what a cool job!) and we took a local bus to Cabanaconde (3287 m) where we spent the night in a Backpacker hostal (12 Soles per person, incl. breakfast) and where we got ready for our tour through the Canon... but this is in the next blog entry...