Trekking Love: The Santa Cruz Trail in Peru
“The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them.” – Amelia E. Barr
Huaraz
After leaving Lima I took a night bus 8 hours north to the town of Huaraz. I arrived at 5:30 in the morning, exhausted, and ready to hike. Huaraz sits in central/northern Peru, is surrounded by the Andean mountains, and is more than 3,000 meters above sea level. It’s a few hours drive from Huarascán National Park. Within this park resides the peaks of the Cordillera Blanca range and Peru’s tallest mountain, Huarascán at 6,758 meters.
Visiting trekkers have no shortage of choices here. You can opt for anything from a single day hike to the crystal blue glacial Lake 69, to a full multi-day/week mountaineering trek to the top of Huarascán and other nearby peaks. I love trekking, but hate freezing my ass off, so I booked a middle of the road trekking option with a little bit of everything. Namely, the four day, three night Santa Cruz trek.
The Santa Cruz route is just over 50 km and includes a walk through through Punta Union pass at 4,750 meters (that’s over 15,000 feet America!). While this pales in comparison to the highest mountains in the area, it’s still a good chance to experience hiking in elevation without going so high you need oxygen tanks and pick axes. It also includes an additional side hike to Lake Arhuaycocha at 4,450 meters. Most importantly of all, it’s a good amount of time to test if your personality is intriguing enough where people still like you after not showering for four days.
After my experience sweating like an oldie surrounded with a gang of college kids hiking the Ciudad Perdida trail in Colombia, I started this trek excited but mildly nervous. I was ready to get back out in nature and out of cell service range. But I was silently praying that I wouldn’t be stuck trekking once again with super fit, trail racing youths. I’ve enjoyed the company of quite a few 20 somethings on this trip who are smart enough to explore the world before they get bogged down with real world responsibility. But where are all the grown-ups who have tried and rejected adult-ing in favor of quitting their jobs and blowing their life savings accounts?? I’d like to run into a few of them once in awhile.
For the Santa Cruz trek, I hit the jackpot. I could not have asked for a better tour company, more beautiful scenery, or a more fun, social, hilarious, fascinating, grown ass group of people to hike with. I was sad to part ways with them at the end of the trek.
The Group
A quick introduction to the trekking group.
First there were the Poles. Four of them. All of them from Poland. None of them currently living in Poland. The sisters, Jo Anna and Gosha have lived and worked in Irish and England, respectively, for the last several years. You can tell they’re close and the two of them take a few week trip abroad together every year. They’re also a trip themselves. Especially Jo Anna who is a spitfire of hilarity and attitude. Their friends, Magda and her husband Rafal also live in London but are in process of moving back to Poland. Such nice people. I told Magda and Rafal that I planned on traveling to Poland later in the year. We exchanged info and they told me to in touch when I visit. I would love to.
The Poles also aren’t afraid of stopping every so often to take cheesy, campy pictures with a local donkey or mountainous background. I find this an incredibly endearing quality.
Moving on. Alan and Kate are a British couple who have been together for over 20 years. They’re the kind of couple who you want to ask their secret for getting along so well for so long. They’re avid and experienced hikers and campers, but this was their first organized trek. Even when hiking through altitude, Kate and Alan were always cracking jokes or getting to know someone on the trail. I don’t know how they did this because I couldn’t breath. Kate has has the most interesting of career changes from Nuclear Physicist to Optometrist. She’s pretty much the sweetest, and Alan’s never failing British dad humor was a welcome addition. I learned all about the town of Wigan as well as a few new British slang terms thanks to them.
The group also included two other solo travelers in addition to myself – Ryan and Liset. Ryan is from South Africa and is somewhere in his 30’s. He’s an engineer on a career travel break. He’s smart, friendly and a triathlete, but in an un-intimidating way. I don’t think I can mention Ryan without talking about his beard. After four days of trekking and not showering, I kept waiting for it to look anything but well manicured and sculpted but it never did. Some people just have good beard genes. He also has a wicked sense of humor made all the drier by a straight face hidden behind his facial mane.
Liset was my tent mate. She’s Dutch and and is in her late 20’s. She works in tech/marketing, and was working for Twitter in Ireland before quitting her job. She’s been traveling for about a year, and is about to wrap up her travels to head back to the Netherlands to live with her long term boyfriend. We had several lengthy deep life conversations in our tent into the ‘late’ hours (i.e. well past 9pm). I like her a lot. She gave me a lot of ideas of new places to add to my future travel itinerary. I lucked out in the roommate lottery.
The Hike
I’m not going to bore you here with the minute by minute details of this trek. But I’ll give a quick and dirty outline mostly focused on visual aids (i.e. pictures). Suffice it to stay it was one of my favorite hikes ever and I won’t soon forget it.
The first day consisted mostly driving to the national park, followed by a short 3 hour trek in the afternoon. It was an overcast day, and we got lightly rained on. But overall it was a good introduction to the trail itself, and it offered time for the group to get acquainted.
The second day involved trekking through Punta Union and the highest elevation of the trek. It was grey and overcast, and I learned real quick this day what hiking in altitude feels like. Luckily I didn’t feel any of the symptoms associated with full on altitude sickness such as bad headaches and nausea. But boy, the air sure is thin at that height. The hike itself wasn’t that steep, but walking just 50 feet on an incline in high altitude can make you feel like your lungs are about to jump out of your chest. It’s no joke. I went back to my tried and true method of counting steps to keep me moving.
On this hike I also started singing myself a song/chant to keep my breathing steady and my focus away from thoughts of stopping.
It goes something like this:
“Put one foot in front of the OOoooo-ther.
One foot in front of the OOoooo-ther.
MOVE YOUR DAMN foot in front of the other.
And that’s how your ass is getting to the top.”
Yeah, I’m not winning a grammy any time soon. But I made it to the overpass just fine. And I wasn’t even last. Happily in the middle for most of the trek. So it works.
Before I knew it we made it over the overpass in time to build a snowman and have lunch. The thin air and lack of oxygen helped provide a feeling of elation. But I don’t care, this was the highest elevation I’ve ever trekked and it was invigorating. The group agreed.
We spent the afternoon hiking down a few hundred meters to camp below the overpass. I don’t love sleeping in tents. I can’t get comfortable sleeping on the ground, and I need to splay my limbs out in my sleep more than a sleeping bag allows. But with views like this, who’s complaining! Mountain sunsets made the experience much easier to handle.
Day three included a side trek to the glacial lake. We covered the longest distance on this day. Since the lake sits at 4,300 meters, it also included a short stretch of strenuous uphill hiking. This day was by far my favorite. The weather finally cleared and we got sunny blue skies for much of the day.
I got sunburned. Not even mad about it. The scenery was amazing. You can see several tall mountain peaks during the trek, including the mountain used for the Paramount logo.
By the time we reached the glacial lake, the group had gotten to know each other pretty well. We stayed for awhile taking campy pictures together in front of the lake. If you know me at all, you know I love that shit.
The third day ended with a trek down the mountain, through a comparably hot valley between the peaks, to our campsite for the night. By the end of this day, everyone was riding high on hiking endorphins and sunny weather. We tried not to think about the fact that we were done the next day. Although by now a shower would have been nice.
Once again we stayed in a ‘beaut of a campground. We were all tired by now, but the sunset over the mountains reflecting on the nearby river helped wipe out feelings of exhaustion. We also lucked out by having the clouds clear enough to view hundreds of stars in the night sky not usually visible under city lights.
Day four started with a surprise cake for Kate. It was her 50th birthday. I don’t know how the hell the chef Hernan made that cake at a campsite without a traditional oven or ingredients. But every day that starts with cake is sure to be a good day. I wish I took a picture of it, but I didn’t bring my phone in the breakfast tent that morning.
This was a short day with a 3-4 hour trek at lower elevation trekking mostly downhill to meet our van in a nearby town.
We ended with a beer before taking the van back to Huaraz. In Huaraz we had one last meal as a group near the tour company’s office, eating a giant plate of food and enjoying a few Pisco Sours on the way. Our trekking guide Cesar made the Pisco Sours and tried his hardest to get us all tipsy. He didn’t not succeed.
Moving On
The Poles had to leave Huaraz the next day. But Ryan, Liset, Alan, Kate and I were still in town the following day and met up for dinner. I caught a night bus to Lima that night, so I could catch a morning flight south to Arequipa. Alan and Kate had a morning flight the next day to Cusco. Ryan was heading to Lima and Liset was still working out her travel itinerary.
I’m so glad I met all of them. I was sad that we had to part ways. If only we could all clear our travel schedules and align our globe-trotting plans, I’m sure my last few weeks in South America would be made all the better. But regardless, I’m lucky to have met them and shared a memorable trek with one of my favorite groups of travel companions yet.
