Getting very high at Laguna 69

Three hours on a bus, three hours climbing a mountain at 4,800m altitude and this is my favourite picture of the beautiful Laguna 69 near Huaraz, Peru.

It was so hard to breathe on the way up and my legs turned to jelly, but we eventually made it, and the journey was so worth it. The glaciers started breaking off while we were there, making a sound like thunder. It was awesome. And the cloudys broke apart while we were there to give us a patch of blue sky to rival the colour of the water.

On the way down I had fun telling people coming up that they had 45 minutes to go when really it was five – it was so tough that a lot of people don’t even make it to the laguna.

When we got home I had a stinking headache from the altidude, so I went to bed with a cup of coca tea made by Hannes and my intended nap turned out to be a 12-hour sleep.

The next day we went to the market for ingredients and cooked up an awesome shredded chili chicken. Later in the afternoon we did some more volunteer work with a really tough crowd of kids – there were about 40 of them and it was a rough neighbourhood but an interesting experience.

That night was my bus to Lima followed directly by a (very delayed) flight to Cusco. Post on Machu Picchu and getting sick in Cusco coming soon…

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