Day 15: Huancayo and a not-to-plan hike

All the signs pointed to a bad day. Being the superstitious person I am, I should've realised this and not been so disappointed when things turned out not-so-well.

Firstly, I'd had little sleep, and kept waking up every few hours. In the morning, I'd agreed to meet Sonia and Oscar at 7.40 outside a particular building - I got there at 7.50 due to leaving the house slightly late and having to wait for a bus. Then Oscar phoned - they were already at the tour agency building. So I started walking down that road - but I went the wrong way, and had to wait ten minutes for a taxi. Then Oscar phoned again - they were on the bus, waiting. Eventually I reached them, so I got on the bus. Still, it was another 30 minutes or so until we set off.

Our tour guide, Reese, spoke of numerology, of spirituality - I initially liked him, since I'm really interested in that sort of thing. We stopped off at a shop to buy bananas and coca leaves (I was reminded of a t-shirt that I got when I was 16, translated it said "The Coca Leaf is NOT a Drug") to help with the altitude. Then came our first hurdle - the bus got stuck in some mud. Even when we all got out, it wouldn't budge. Some locals came along with a spade to dig the bus out, but even then it could only go backwards. 20 minutes later, Reese came and gave us two options, either we could return to Huancayo, or we could take a different route up to the top of the glacier. This would take 4 hours each way. He then added that if we took this route, we could come back to the bus more easily. This made me agree - a 2 hour hike would be difficult, a 4 hour one impossible, but if there was the option of returning, then I was up for trying.

So we walked - Reese had said that we'd all walk together, but he set off quickly while we 11 hikers stretched out over about a half-mile of road. We walked up the road, then into some countryside, then past a trout fishery, then up into the mountains. It was getting relatively steep, and I started to feel ill - I'm not great with altitude change. Then we crossed a river, then struggled through marshland, and scrambled up a few rocks, then climbed up a hill. About an hour in, after many short rests, sweets, coca leaves, puffs of my asthma inhaler and some energy drink, I had trouble breathing, and soon I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep this up for another 3 hours. By this point i'd fallen right to the back of the group - Oscar and Sonia waited for me, and when I reached them we saw that I couldn't keep going. So Sonia went to fetch Reese. Ten minutes later neither she nor Reese had returned, so Oscar went to have a look.

So there I was, sitting alone on the mountain side, overcome with exhaustion. I've had my fair share of lonely times, but with not even a cow or sheep in view, the five minutes I spent alone on a mountain ranked among the most lonely.

Eventually Reese turned up, he spoke to me for a bit, admitted that it was a tough hike, and said that he'd get the group to come back and we'd go back. I argued that that wasn't fair, he said that the group would travel together. So he went back to fetch them, and soon we were back together. We went back the way we came, then when we crossed the river, Reese had another suggestion. It would take the same amount of time, he said, to take another route around the mountain to a town, as to go back to the bus. He took my rucksack for me, said that I should take as many rests as needed, and tell him if I needed to stop - then he walked off as quickly as before.

I spent most of the walk up - not around, up - the mountain with a Peruvian-American called Charlie, he was good about me needing to rest every few minutes. The views must've been stunning, but to be honest I was too busy trying to walk without collapsing. I'd have taken photos, but my camera was in my bag which Reese had, and he was long gone. At one point I realised that my inhaler was in the bag too, and panicked a little. Eventually after an hour, we reached the top of the mountain - this had involved more climbing and stomping through marshland, which I can just about do when I feel fine, and can barely manage when I'm exhausted. We walked a little along the top of the mountain, and finally began the descent. We could see the other hikers, and Reese was about a half-mile in front of us - so much for the group staying together. My breathing eased up on the descent, and fifteen minutes later I was almost back to normal.

The walk down the mountain was quite fun - Charlie and I talked in English and Spanish, the views were stunning (I wished then that I'd had my camera) - patches of sun hitting the mountains, streams trickling down the mountainside, little clay houses, children helping their mothers collect the corn from the fields, a youngster hauling in a batch of fish with a small net, a herd of llamas walking past us while their owner brandished a stick at them - it was quite good. A few times we got confused when we came to a fork in the road and had to ask locals which way the young people had gone, and a few times we had to walk right by the edge of the cliffs when a truck went past, but other then that the next hour and a half passed quite smoothly. By this point I was quite hot though, since I'd wrapped up warm expecting to be on a glacier.

4 hours after we'd set off, we got back to the bus - by this point the patch of mud it had been stuck in had become part of a mudslide - we could see the mud streaming down the hill off the side of the cliff - and at one point we had to move out the way of a falling rock. That was quite exciting, if a little nerve-wracking! Then finally, I was back in the bus. I felt exhausted, rotten that I hadn't been able to complete the original hike, and worse that the rest of the group had had to change plans too. And quite angry with Reese - I almost wish I'd told him that.

Half of the group got off the bus in Huancayo, the rest of us carried on to a restaurant. The proptions were absolutely enormous - Sonia and I shared an individual trout dish, and there were leftovers. There was a live band playing, Charlie gave them a message to read out, welcoming us the foreigners to Peru. I felt almost embarrassed.

At about 5pm we got back to Huancayo - I stayed in town a little longer, then took a taxi back to my house - Juliana says that the safest taxis are 242424 and 212121, so I had to wait a while until a 242424 came along. Then after a quick email-check, I went back to Hilda's house, munched a little on bread, then fell asleep almost straightaway, still not feeling too great about the day. At least I tried, though.