I arrived on a Saturday morning in Huaraz and around the breakfast table I immediately met my future hiking team for the famous Huayhuash trek! It is considered one of the best and most intense hikes in the world, so I basically HAD to do it!

After residing for a month in Trujillo at sea-level, I found myself within 30 hours in the Cordillera Huayhuash at an altitude of 4,400m! This was kind of a hard-core acclimatisation for my body, that suffered of frequent small head-aches during the first two days. During the next six days, we constantly hiked at an altitude of 4,000 to 5,000m between the most stunning scenery's! We were surrounded by a range of 6,000+m mountains, crystal-clear lakes and various kinds of fauna (a lot of sheep and shepherds) and flora. In total we had to walk around 130km and climb over nine passes with an altitude between 4,700 and 5,000m!

Another weird thing about this hike is that you constantly have to pay 'protection money' to campesiños (farmers). The Cordillera Huayhuash is not a national park, so the locals can do what they want and charge you whatever they want in exchange of 'security' from.. themselves! Last year a guy died of a gun-wound, because he refused to pay. And it is not infrequent that hikers without an organization get mugged along the way.

After this legendary hike I decided to take some rock-climbing and high-mountaineering survival classes to prepare myself for my ultimate goal of this trip: climb the Nevado Sajama, aka highest peak of Bolivia with it's massive 6,542m of altitude!

Huaraz was really hard on me, so I needed a couple of days to relax and recover and I decided to do so in the Huacachina oasis near Ica in the south of Peru. I believed this place was a kind of laid-back hippie resort, but eventually it turned out to be this Peruvian posh holiday destination! I still managed to relax and have a awesome time dune-buggy riding and sandboarding in the dunes around the oasis. It was also a big coincidence that at the time I was reading 'the Alchemist' from Paulo Cuello. The ones who read this book know that it is about a shepherd from the mountains of Andalusia that goes on an adventure that brings him to an Oasis in the Egyptian desert.

I left Huacachina totally fresh and ready for some new hiking! This time my destination was the Colca Canyon near Arequipa! This is an exquisite location for hikers and condor-spotters! The canyon is considered the deepest in the world, but I think the one next to it might be deeper. (I don't want to feed you wrong info!) Once again we stayed, down in the canyon, in a superb oasis! The last day we had to hike out of the canyon, which would be a perfect training for me to see if I can hike fast enough to summit Nevado Sajama!

In my hostel in Arequipa I met this woman from Arica (north of Chile), which was my next destination! She was kind enough to be my guide during my short stay in this lovely sea/border-town. My main mission there was going up to the Bolivian border to have a first sneak-peak of the massive pile of rock an ice: Nevado Sajama that I was supposed to climb a week later! The other purpose was to hike around the Parque Nacional Lauca up there, but due to intense winds and cold I decided to go back to Arica and catch a bus to the city of peace in Bolivia.

The bus ride was definitely top three worst ever! It left two hours late (3am instead of 1am) and we waited for six hours at the border for it to open. Eventually I made it to La Paz, the city where my final mountaineering adventures in South America started! After one month of hard training and 100% sobriety, I was more ready than ever to climb two 6,000+m mountains in 6 days. You'll hear in later stories if I made it or not..

Hasta luego amigos! The mountaineering stories will follow soon!

Peace and love from La Paz!

G. on the road!