";s:4:"text";s:4122:" You will see staggeringly beautiful scenery, including the endlessly stunning Laguna Alkipo, you’ll climb to 5,000m on Alkipo pass, camp without crowds on the first night, and get up close and personal with some high-flying picturesque peaks in the Cordillera Blanca.On the second night, you will camp at Ishinca base camp at 4,390m and be surrounded by views of the incredibly vast glaciers of Toccaraju.
It’s considered to be one of the best alpine treks in the world.You can do this hike solo, or with a guide.
While hardcore mountaineers delight in climbing the “most beautiful mountain in the world” Alpamayo, or the highest mountain in Peru, Huascaran, backpackers and trekkers have to “settle” for circling around these peaks via passes rising to well over 4500m.The Santa Cruz trek allows vistas of Alpamayo (although not the “most beautiful” side of the mountain as that is the climber’s face) as well as Huascaran. We have no complaints about the trek, the cook, or the equipment that was provided to us by Climber Land, but our guide was, unfortunately, one of the worst guides we have ever hired in all of our travels. You can also camp at the top for a gentle acclimation if you so desire.
The prices given below are what we were quoted during our July 2018 trip and may differ depending on when you travel and who you talk to.
It is filled with hiking and trekking tours from beginners to advanced mountain enthusiasts. Peru Trekking, Walking and Climbing Holidays. Tours Laguna de Llanganuco S/ 60.00 You should also be aware that many agencies selling the most popular treks, such as Santa Cruz, Laguna 69, Pastoruri Glacier, and Laguna Paron simply farm them out to a few main operators, mainly Genesa and Galaxia.So sometimes when you book with a well-reviewed company you are just paying for them to sell you a tour operated by one of those other not as well-reviewed companies for a cut. There were times where the 3 of us paying guests ended up on top of cliff bands with no clear route down and our “guide” was nowhere to be found. He explained local flora, pointed out features of the landscape, and helped us understand the Quechwa farmland we were walking through. The guy working the desk at Climber Land (if my memory serves me well his name was Ivan) obviously over-promised and under delivered when he said we would be getting an “English-speaking” guide.To be clear, we’re not just talking about someone who isn’t strong in English, that is something we would not complain about since we both know how hard it can be to speak another language; we mean he barely knew any words and didn’t understand us when we spoke to him V..E..R..Y S..L..O..W..L..Y. Secondly, Ivan told us it was “non-technical” and straightforward trekking, which ended up not being entirely true and both of these things would prove dangerous as described below.While on this “guided” hike, we never travelled together as a group and our “guide” would start walking as soon as we caught up thereby foregoing the common knowledge mountain courtesy of the “F*** you stop.” I have asthma for jeebus’ sake, I simply can’t run up mountains at over 4,500m.
... HOTEL IN HUARAZ PERU STAY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE BUT NOT FAR FROM THE BUSTLING CITY OF HUARAZ.
You can do this trek with a guide or on your own, beginning the trek by getting a bus to Yungay, then onto Vaqueria, which takes about two hours as you meander up steep winding roads. One thing that stuck with me for slightly macabre reasons, was when I asked which lake I was looking at out in the distance he said it was unofficially called “new lake”.
After Alkipo-Ishinca, I came down with a bad cold so although we really wanted to do Pisco peak and were sufficiently acclimated, I didn’t think I could handle the 12-hour, 1,500m one-day elevation gain.Instead, we figured we would do some of the day hikes mentioned above, such as Paron and Pastorui, but we remained open to be persuaded to do something else.