10-day Cordillera Huayhuash Trek

We had talked about doing the Cordillera Huayhuash Trek in the Peruvian Andes for a long time. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful long distance treks in the world!

The trek covers about 150km and winds in a circular fashion around the massive peaks of the Cordillera Huayhuash mountain range. We did it over the course of 10 days and 9 nights, each day we had to go over a high alpine pass between 4000-5000m.a.sl. The nights are spent in tents.

So after arriving in the town of Huaraz, which serves as a gateway to the surrounding mountain ranges, we took a couple of days to prepare for our upcoming adventure. We did two acclimatization day hikes, supplemented our gear with some more warm layers and found ourselves a tour company to do this trek with. Unfortunately we learned, because of the recent political troubles in Peru a lot of tourists had decided against coming and they were struggling to put together enough people for a trekking group. So even though we would have preferred to do this hike as part of a group, it didnt seem possible, so we ended up going by ourselves with a guide/cook and an arriero (donkey driver), as well as 4 donkeys carrying tents, food and all the heavy gear.

We discovered very quickly how much this trek would kick our ass, both physically but also mentally. At night temperatures dropped below the freezing point and the first couple of nights we would wake up several times just shivering. We quickly had to adapt and started wearing literally all our layers to go to sleep (I think I was wearing 6 layers including my thermals and puffy jacket and beany etc), filled hot water into our drinking bottles and stuffed them down our sleeping bags and borrowed the arrieros warm poncho to cover ourselves. This ways, the nights were manageable although very movement restricted under all these layers.

During the day thankfully the sun always came out and provided us with gorgeous weather and amazing views. The scenery was regularly jaw dropping with huge glaciers and jagged peaks looming right above our campsites. Our guide cooked us some delicious food along the way as well, but the altitude did make itself noticeable at times with a bit of loss of appetite and stomach aches. Overall we fared pretty well with the altitude though thanks to our prolonged time spent at high alitude over the last couple of weeks and months.

The challenges kept coming though. On day 2 Hadleigh was flying his drone and it got taken by some winds, lost connection to the remote and dropped out of the sky from high altitude. Unfortunately, we did not manage to find it again. On day 6 we started our days hike ahead of our guide who was finishing up with packing up the tent as usual. Usually he would catch up with us quickly but not today... we made it all the way to the pass and waited for him there. When he reached us, he announced that our 4 donkeys (they are free to roam around the campsite at night and graze) were missing and might have been stolen during the night. Therefore all our luggage was still down at the last campsite. He said we needed to turn around and go back down and this might mean the end of the hike for us. We were honestly half disappointed but also half relieved that our hardships might have an early end. But halfway down the mountain, we encountered our arriero with the donkeys coming up. Apparently they had just strayed farther than usual. So now we were left with summiting the same mountain we had just come down a second time and continuing our journey.

There were two moments of respite during this hike, on day 5 we were able to swim in some thermal pools and on day 7 we had one night in a normal bed in a small village. Both pleasures were highly appreciated and enjoyed!

After 10 days we arrived back in civilization. We were tired, sunburned and Hadleigh had 3rd degree chafage on his thighs but we were also really proud of ourselves and saturated with amazing views of mountain vistas and starry skies.

We proceeded to go to Lima for our last week in South America. It has never felt so good to be at sea level, breathing heavy, salty air, sleeping in a soft bed and having a hot shower with great water pressure. Oh, and we made the most of the amazing food in Lima and even managed to go to Central (Nr 1 rated restaurant in the world currently) for an amazing 12-course degustation meal. A real treat :)