Aug
28
Written by:
Natalie
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Last night we changed tent buddies - Chloe and I were now budding up! I was secretly grateful that I was still in the bigger tent, although I knew my time would come. By the time we had started walking this morning the sun was up, which was fantastic because it meant I was warm and that I could shed a few of the layers of clothes I had on!
My knee injury was starting to get noticable in the mornings...I had a small amount of niggling pain through out the night. I tried to put the pain out of my mind. I had walked well yesterday, and was feeling good, so I was confident that today would go well too.
The first part of the walk (there are may parts of the walk...) had quite an up slope. The track thread its way through two large moutains- with a view like this it was hard to think about how difficult the trekking actually was. For the last day or so we had a separate trekking team, a group from Israel, hot on our heels. And today we were walking the track with them.
After abour an hour of walking I could see the pass staright ahead. It was up at 4650m and in comparison to what we had climbed in the days before, this looked very achievable! The ground was different though, instead of grass it was loose shale which made walking a little more tricky. Generally by mid morning, my knee would have warmed up, and aslong as I watched my step I could walk on it without pain. Thankfully this morning my knee was feeling good and I had a lot of energy...I could see the pass in the distance and decided to pick up the pace. I found that the perfect balance with my knee was to not stop walking and go at a pace that suited me. It was hard going, but it felt really good to be doing some challenging fitness is such a beautiful location. The pass itself was decieving - what I thought was the apex was indeed just another steep ascent to the pass. It was atleast another 2 ridges to go before the actual pass. Closer to the top of the pass, the track changed from skimming the side of the moutain (about 2 boots wide) to a proper track. After one last bit of effort, I was at the pass - the view was fantastic. I felt like I was ontop of the world looking down! The mountain in the distance was massive, covered in fresh snow, it looked like the perfect ski slope. We all stopped for about 30min to catch the view and our breath. The group from Israel eventually joined us at the pass....it was weird because generally everyone is really friendly, but we didnt really talk to this group. Our peace was soon broken when one of the Israleis took out an I-Pod with speakers and started playing music quite loudly.....that was our que to get up and continue the trek!
The remainder of the walk was down hill, past a big lake called Viconga. It was a weird looking lake, not like the rest I had seen on the trip...it almost looked as though the side walls had been tampered with because they were unusually vertical. Jade and I decided it looked like one of the mining groups may have had something ot do with that. At the bottom of the lake we meet up with 3 local children who lived near by. Of course what they wanted was`"caramelo"....the local way to say chocolate. They were so cute that we gave them all we had.
Camp was just around the corner, past a gushing waterfall and in a rolling meadow. The best part about camp (besides the fact that the arrieros had everything set up for us!!) was the hot spring near by - which was the first thing we jumped into as soon as our packs hit the ground. It felt so good to wash my hair and have clean skin. The scene was quite picturesque.... 5 girls in a hot spring, surrounded by towering mountains, blue skies and donkeys grazing near the spring with not a care in the world. I cant describe how much of a wonderful feeling it was to feel completely warm all at once. That feeling went from one extreme to the other very quickly though. No sooner had we gotten out of the hot spring a big thunder storm rolled through the valley and dumped a heap of snow and rain on the camp. Peering out from the mess tent I could see the hot spring still steaming away in the distance. Thats´s the beautiful thing you learn from the moutains, not even a thunder storm can change what is meant to be.
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