Huaytapallana - Hike to the Glacier

Yesterday while I was working on the website, Leslie came to talk to me after she had given Emily, the new woman here from England, her Spanish lesson.  She said that Angela and Pilar had gone out to Plaza Constitucion to see the people celebrating the last days of carnival.  That meant that everyone was going to be throwing water at everyone else.  When Pilar came back, she came and told me all about it.  She said that people were throwing water at the dancers, the musicians, at people walking by, basically everyone.  We've had people throwing water at us all month and it hasn't been the most pleasant tradition here.

Lauren and I went for a walk before dinner to get some snacks for our hike.  Dwan had asked about going to the glacier and Lauren has been dying to go, so we recruited Mabel to take us.  After dinner we watched Shrek The Final Chapter, which was a good laugh.

This morning we had to wake up fairly early, which is normal for Lauren and I, because we wanted to leave the house at 8.  Everyone else in the house has been busy preparing for the group of fifteen students coming from Appalachian State University, which I just recently found out is in North Carolina.  Our taxi came to get us on time.  You would think it would be a truck or SUV that would take us up the side of a mountain, but it was just a Hyundai.  At one point he asked us to get out of the car because he had to go across a couple bridges that had rocks on either side.  We had to push the car for a bit to get it across.  Lauren said she wished we had a picture of that.  :)

The taxi took us up to a restaurant high up on the mountainside.  There were dogs and chickens around the restaurant and inside there were a couple kittens.  Lauren was petting the kitten, but when I sat down next to her, the cat jumped into my lap.  We had to pay for our lunch before we started hiking so that it would be ready when we got back.  Lauren and I ordered lamb soup and Dwan got trout.  Mabel didn't order anything.  I tried to put the cat down so we could set off, but every time I set it down it would hop back into my lap.  I really wanted to take him with me.

We set off and it was pretty foggy.  It had a peaceful feel to it because there weren't any sounds but us.  Mabel told us that Huaytapallana has a meaning in Quechua.  Huayta means flowers and pallana means gathering.  She says that in April there are a lot of flowers on the mountain and people come to pick them.  This is also the mountain that Pilar had told me a legend about.  How the man called Huaytapallana was turned into a mountain because the father of the woman he wanted to marry turned him into a mountain so he wouldn't marry his daughter.  The streams and water running down from the snow and glacier are his tears and they formed the lakes that were his sons.

On the way up Huaytapallana at the beginning of the hike.

It was cold walking up, but the hiking warmed us up quite a bit.  We stopped at a place where you could see snow in the mountain off in the distance and alpacas were running past us.

You can see the snow-covered mountains peeking out of the fog behind me.

The llamas started running right at me!  :)

Mabel said that people come up there to perform ceremonies and that she had brought some coca leaves so that we could all perform our own ceremony.  There were rocks piled on top of each other in various places around us.  She gave us each a handful of coca leaves, told us to look for the best one in our hand, and to place it under the rocks she had piled together.  We all did as she told us and this is supposed to bring us luck.  Sounds good to me!!!

Putting our coca leaves under the rocks for our little ceremony.

We kept walking.  The terrain was rocky and muddy and I ended up sticking my foot in mud a few times right after we started walking.  As we kept walking, it would snow off and on.  It was a really beautiful landscape of rocks, snow, lakes, and fog.  One of the lakes we passed Mabel said was the Laguna Celeste.  Celeste means light blue in Spanish.  The lake was an unworldly bluish-green color.  It was really beautiful seeing that with the backdrop of snow-covered mountains.  She said that there was a myth that a mermaid was living in that lake.

The Laguna Celeste is in the background.

As we neared the glacier, there were patches of snow on the ground.  We stopped to write some things in the snow and Lauren made a little snowman.  She put raisins on it for eyes.  It was super cute.

Lauren and her snowman with raisin eyes.

After that point, we had to trudge through more patches of snow.  Mabel and I were laughing as we sunk deep into some of the patches of snow.  She fell on her butt a few times and at one point I was ready to throw in the towel because we were sinking deep into snow and the only other options was walking to the side of the snow where there were small rocks that looked like they would slide you right down the mountainside if you stepped on them.  Lauren and Dwan were ahead of us and Lauren yelled to me that we were almost there.

Mabel making her way through the snow.

Once we got there, it was quite impressive.  Mabel said that more of the mountain used to be covered in snow and the glacier didn't have many holes in it.  I had been starting to feel the effects of the altitude.  Mabel had asked if we wanted to buy altitude sickness pills, but we had said we'd be okay.  Wikipedia says that the highest peak for the Huaytapallana glacier is 5557 meters, which translates to 18,231 feet.  I'm not sure if we were at the highest peak, but we definitely were high up there.

The sign once we got to the glacier.

We took pictures at the top and explored a bit around the glacier.

Me and the glacier.

Mabel and Dwan started to have a snowball fight, and Lauren told Mabel that if she got her wet, she'd put snow down her shirt.  :)  Dwan was exploring further than the rest of us.

Dwan exploring further around the glacier.

Lauren was hoping that we would hear the glacier cracking while we were there.  We had heard it cracking during our hike.  It had sounded really loud in all the stillness around us.

A glacier at Huaytapallana.

When we were hiking back, we passed another group of hikers.  Mabel said she thought they were from Lima.  One of them asked me if it was cool (chevere in Spanish) and I told him that it was.  I'm not sure if it's harder for me to climb up or to go down on a hike like this.  I was definitely the caboose though.  :)  It was hard on my lungs going up and going down, I was afraid that I was going to slip on the wet rocks, twist an ankle on a loose rock, or step into deep mud.  I felt like everyone else had a bit of mountain goat in them as they hopped around on the rocks and ran on some of the less rocky parts.

It started to rain on the way back.  My feet were already cold and wet from having to go through the snow and the rain added to the wetness and coldness.  I was so happy when we finally saw the sign for Huaytapallana that was in front of the restaurant.

In the restaurant, we sat at a big table.  Lauren had a cat on her lap when I sat down and it came and sat with me.  Apparently these kittens really liked me.  The woman served us the lamb soup and Dwan had to wait a bit for his trout.  Our driver also came in and had some soup.  Since were were wet from the rain and tired from the hike, the soup hit the spot.  I had started to get a headache from the altitude, but the soup helped to lessen the pain.  The broth was really tasty, but we were trying to figure out how to eat the big chunk of meat with only a spoon.  Mabel said we should just eat it with our hands.  I was able to bite off chunks just using my spoon only using one hand because my other was holding the kitten.  I gave the kitten some of my meat as I was eating.  Another kitten that I wanted to take with me.  When I had finished eating, the kitten was sniffing my bowl and she took what was left of the meat down onto the floor with her.  Unfortunately, we were so hungry, that I didn't take a picture of the soup.  :(

The taxi driver had started the engine running to get the car warm for us.  We had to get out at the same spot as before and give the car a bit of a nudge.  Mabel and I were dozing on and off for awhile, but when the radio came in better, Lauren and I started singing along to the music.  Mabel had been saying that I looked sad up on the mountain and that I had finally woken up when we started singing.  I really wasn't sad on the mountain, just concentrating on not slipping off.  :)

Back at the house there was a party going on in the middle of the street nearby.  They were having a birthday party.  We ran into the house and saw some new faces of the university students, but Lauren and I were set on taking a shower.  The students went out for awhile, so the house is still calm.  We just ate dinner and are thinking about putting on a movie.  Tonight we're supposed to go out dancing, but Mabel kept teasing me that we were going to be too tired like we always are on Saturday nights.  I really want to go tonight though, especially since it's Lauren's last Saturday here.