20 August: Huacahuasi to Mantanay

OMG. My feet were *frozen* last night! It was strange tho because the rest of me was toasty warm. I don't think I got much sleep. Have I mentioned how I despise sleeping bags?

We had breakfast and then met all of our horsemen, cooks etc. And then we set off on our hardest day's trekking. And honestly, before lunch was *hard*. There's a particularly steep bit going up over a mountain pass (see that gap in the mountains in the photo below, yeah that). But we made it, on our own, with no help from the horses (yes, we did have people on our trek who were carried by horses for most of the way). It was a real sense of personal achievement, which I kept trying to remind myself as @UselessRob & I struggled to the top.



And then, we reached the top. Posed for a few photos with the gorgeous Laguna Aruraycocha in the background and then enjoyed a bit of downhill before stopping for lunch beside the lake.

After lunch we had the most *awesome* walk of the trek so far. The vegetation changed completely and there were loads of gorgeous trees. @UselessRob and I did most of the walk together, unable to see the group in front or behind us. It's a surreal experience feeling like you're walking alone in this gorgeous landscape. And as we came upon the second lake (Laguna Millvococha), tiny snowflakes started to fall (clouds had come over during lunch). Honestly, it made the entire first half of the day completely worth it. It was truly beautiful and gorgeously surreal.

We arrived at the cold campsite at about 16h30. We are *freezing* and I'll admit I've stuffed all of yesterday's clothes into the bottom of my sleeping bag in anticipation of an even colder night.

I sat and chatted with @UselessRob in his tent because we were having our tea and snacks in our individual tents because of the cold this evening and then later we all went for dinner in the main tent. We did some special Coca ceremony after dinner, but by that point I was ice cold and ready for bed. To be honest these Lares Trek evenings were not at all what I was expecting. I was surprised they didn't make camp fires or anything. The most communal it got was us all sitting in the dinner tent, which was pretty broken and windswept (we thought it'd blow away at lunch!).

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