Ausangate Trek - Day 2

 Day 2: Ananta Pata - Quesiuno - Ausangate Cocha - Abra Palomani - Sorapata

The views that we will see are absolutely amazing. They are something that you will always remember.

Our day starts very early. After breakfast we start our trek towards the community of Quesiuno (4376 m / 14,357 ft.) where you can see the immense green valley chock full of herds of Llamas and Alpacas. We will continue our hike uphill for two and a half hours, enjoying beautiful landscape. We will arrive at Ausangate Cocha (4500 m/14764 ft.) where a delicious lunch awaits us. After lunch and a well-deserved rest, we will continue with our day, ascending to the highest point of our entire walk. After almost two and a half hours of steep ascent we will arrive at Abra Palomani. From there we will enjoy a fine view of impressive Laguna de Chocolate. We will descend along a path full of fabulous sights which encompass some of the most beautiful mountains of the Vilcanota Range. After a steep descent of almost three hours we will arrive at our camp known as Sorapata. We will be able to enjoy a delicious dinner and to check out the vast number of stars visible in the Andean sky.

•Difficulty: Challenging

Walking distance: 9 km / 5.59 miles

Walking time: 6 hours

• Maximum altitude: 5,200 m / 17,060 ft.

Woke up to a lovely day.  Everything was covered with frost, though.  But the sun was out, and the blue sky was gorgeous. They actually woke us up with an offer of hot tea in our tent (but I don't like tea so I didn't ever like to drink it. Sadly, there was no cold water to drink usually-- you filled up your water bottles with boiled water, and they had boiled water for tea every night.).  They usually set out hot water for us to wash in, too. All the meals were really big and filling. Like we'd have cinnamon porridge and crepes with fruit.

We stopped for a while at a little spot where there were 2 or 3 women who came out and rolled out their blankets of weavings and ponchos and bracelets and everything. We ended up buying one for Wyatt, and it may be more authentic but it was definitely more pricey than buying at the San Pedro Market in Cusco.

So cool.

Then they brought Navy the emergency horse to ride for the next really high pass.

It looks not steep at all, but let me tell you--it was a significant climb!! Ethne and I almost died. :)

You can see Jethro up there--he made it!

And we all made it! Tomas gave his horse coca leaves. :)

We sat and rested for a while. Tomas played his flute for us, which was really cool. There was one guy we had watched hiking far ahead of us--he was from Colorado I believe, and he was doing the trek all alone. Other than that, it was just us.

Here we are with the little sign that says 5200 m. The highest point of the whole trek.

Laguna de Chocolate

I think it was around here that Wyatt and Hazel were talking, and I hiked by them for a while, and Wyatt was telling Hazel all about things that were going to happen in her future life.  I think he started out by asking about how many kids she wanted, and then he went off on all kinds of things. He said that she and Kirby were going to have 12 boys and all of them were extremely bad/naughty, and then there was something about Kirby winning the Tour de France, but then they found out he had taken steroids. And just random hilarious things. Obviously Kirby died a horrible death... Hazel said it was a comedic tragedy. 😂 Wyatt was quite creative and hilarious.

Some of these areas, and the ones from the day before around Rainbow Mountain reminded me and Hazel of Iceland and the Landmannalauger area.

We stopped here for a rest. See the paintings of the rainbow mountain and the mountains that we were looking across the valley at?

Tomas loved Navy and always made sure she was doing well and taken care of while she rode. 

A very soggy part.

The only bad thing about having Navy ride the emergency horse was that then the other little kids were pretty jealous and wanted turns. So some of them had some turns occasionaly.

Almost there.

Made it to the campsite!  Everyone is pretty beat.  Apparently, especially Hazel. :)

Taking some naps.

Brett would usually help set up tents, because he felt absolutely silly if we were there and just sat around not helping. Because he's perfectly capable of setting up his own tent! haha

There were bathrooms there (always nice) and there were some other campers, so I started chatting with them. One of them was French and the other was French Canadian, and there was one more who I think was also from France, but a different place. None of them had known each other before-they had just met at a hostel or something. Anyway, the Canadian was pretty chatty, and he was asking me about my kids and how old they were, and he said that when he saw the kids start coming around the corner into the camp he couldn't believe it! He's like--there are some steep parts and a lot of miles-- I barely made it all the way here today, and I'm 23! (or something, I made that number up) Anyway, he was impressed. :) Then he was asking about what it was like having the guides, since he was just doing it by himself, and I said it was great, and how they feed us super well, and we have trout and potatoes or yummy sauces and veggies, etc etc., and you could see his eyes sort of get this glazed look and he was like, "we just have ramen and other freeze dried stuff." haha. I almost felt really bad and I wanted to invite him to come eat with us, but I couldn't really do that. I might be making this up, but I do have a vague idea that maybe the cooks did share some of the leftovers with them the next morning.

Then he asked me about whether we were cold or not, and I said most of us had been great so far, but Brett had been a little bit cold because he brought his own tent from home and it wasn't rated for as cold of temperatures. The guy was saying how freezing he had been at night and how he had stuffed all of his extra clothes down at the bottom of his sleeping bag. And he said, "I don't know if that does anything at all to help, but I tried it anyway!" haha  And I told him that I had slept the first night completely dressed in all my layers, coat, winter hat and all. And then I think it was the next night that our guides gave us hot water bladder thingees (what are those called?) to take to bed with us, and let me tell you, that was luxurious!

We ate dinner--  (lomo saltado--so so so so so so good!!) (which was actually lunch, which didn't make a lot of sense, and it was that way most days--hike the whole day's worth of hiking, then have a late lunch and then an early supper. oh well) and then because it was so cold, everyone just went into their tents. In fact, I believe Brett INVITED everyone to our tent to play games. So then all the boys and Ethne and Navy were inside our tent, and we were trying to play some card games, but it is quite squishy in our little tent, and everyone started getting loopy and acting like crazies, and then Brett was like-- what are you all doing in here, anyway?! hahaha. It was fun. :) And it did warm up really quickly with all those bodies in there.