Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Hardest. Hike. Of. My. Life.

...but so worth the nausea and the worst headache I have ever had! Man, that altitude can get to you. Continuing in the Cordilleras , my two Canadian buddies (Carrie and Kaleigh) and I decided to hike up to Laguna 69, all the way up at 4800 meters in the Cordillera Blancas. This has to be the MOST beautiful place I have seen so far on my trip. And although it was an extremely hard (for me at least) 6 hour hike, it was definately worth it. And I guess it was also good practice for the 4 day, 3 night Inca Trail Trek to Machu Pichu that I have coming up!



Starting out nice and easy. In this picture there are some Israeli guys that started off the trek with us... and they were smoking cigarrettes the whole beginning of the hike! Ummm, enough said. Then, at the first turn, they proceeded to go the wrong way and ended up on the wrong side of the river. Needless to say, only two of the 4 actually made it to the top...On a big rock. With a weird tree with flaky red bark that reminded me of falafel. Up, up up...And up some more...this is right about when the nausea and intense headache started kicking in.Tadaaaaaa! Laguna 69, the bluest lake I have ever seen! So worth the hard work!!

Relaxing before the long hike down. We had packed a cute little lunch for ourselves, but my stomach hurt too much so I just had crackers. Boo.

After much debate among ourselves and the two Israelis who eventually made it up, we decided that the water was probably ok to drink. This is me going for it! I mean, how could water this pretty make you sick?

5 comments:

heather hughes said...

that is for sure the bluest water evar. boston misses you!

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say that smoking and hiking sounds like the perfect match I'm gonna go swim and eat a couple of burgers at the same time.jk. But seriously the picture with Carrie and Kaliegh and the mountains are pretty( I hope guy notices that I used the word pretty). Oh and can I have what you didn't eat during the picnic?

Anonymous said...

wow are you in some kind of post card with that water? looks pretty clean to me wish i could have a drink...i know im a little late on this post but whateva going write anyways...man it looks so greta down there...miss you much wish i was somewhere not here...email you soon!!!

Anonymous said...

WOW that is SOOOO PRETTY!!! im seriously jealous at this point. that water is more clear than my shower! LOL. Im glad you are having a blast and i wish you were home already! I MISS YOU! keep in touch!

Anonymous said...

so i havent talked to you in a few weeks and i probably should have stayed on the phone with you that night but i thought that wreck of a "date" that i was on was gonna be something more...(i hope u see the quotation marks and that should be the sign that it didnt go anywhere--tell you more when u get back...i hope that you are having fun...had a mojito for you last night and then fell asleep..."exciting" stuff going on here (again with the quotation marks) wish i was there, way over there or anywhere but here...miss you lots (but found another reincaration of you--she could be like your little sister--def not you so dont worry NO replacements just a sub letter lol) well my fingers are getting cold in the basement and im going go get my hair did for free!!!whoo--hooo!!! so call me when u get a chance hopefully b4 you get back and if nildo is already down there with you tell him i said hola...muah!!!