Really getting walking - Laguna Churrup

Our third day walk was up to Laguna Churrup.  We'd heard it was beautiful and steep and a good test of acclimatisation . . .

Being budget concious we caught the collectivo to a little village called Llupa, then started walking up the ridgeline towards the park entry, on the paths that have been there for thousands of years.

These paths takes you right past people's houses and everywhere you go you are greeted with a polite 'buenos dias' and a smile.  The people here are poor; subsistence farming on little plots, with a little herd of animals to take out grazing every day.  We got used to meeting old ladies droving half a dozen sheep, a cow or two, two or three donkeys and maybe some pigs.  They must think us so alien; trekking for our holidays!  A lovely old man we met while waiting for a collectivo kept telling us how dangerous mountain climbing is; I'm not sure my rudimentary Spanish managed to convey that we thought so too.

Once we had reached the park we could see that the real climb was ahead of us; the track climbed steeply up and around the mountainside.  The altitude started to tell and by the time we reached the last section we were both a little tired.  This section had a lot of scrambling up rocks and there were fixed ropes in places -very necessary.

It wasn't quite as steep as it looks

It was a scramble worth making - Laguna Churrup was beautiful.

A tumble of rocks at the north end lead straight up to Churrup itself

It was later in the day and there were few other people around.  We talked to and shared snacks with Benny and his brother, two local Peruvians.  The scramble down was interesting, then a long walk down to Llupa to catch a collectivo back to town.

Light falling on the flanks of the mountains