Huaytapallana Glacier...say that 3 times fast

There are actually quite a few similarities between the Peruvian highlands and Colorado. Sometimes we forget we've even left, and then we see a 3 year old sandwiched between her parents on a one person motorcycle and we remember we're not in Kansas anymore...and maybe Britney Spears should move here. (I digress)
The glacier hike was probably the one event that made Katy and Nate feel back at home (the words Jacqui and hiking don't go together regardless of the continent). For those of you that have hiked above Colorado’s timberline, it’s pretty similar in Peru...which means Jacqui almost died and our badass "we can handle altitude, we're from Colorado" attitude was severely tested.

Before...

As one of a series of “small hikes” in Peru (read: the most ridiculous three hours for just the ascent alone), we crawled to the top of Huaytapallana.  We went from 10,732 ft in Huancayo to around 18,232 ft in one day (thanks wikipedia). We started out at 7:30am peruvian time (8:45 in the US).  The "road" was not sleeper friendly and had a lot of issues with people flying into other peoples laps. They don't believe in pullouts for one lane roads in Peru, we wouldn't want to do anything silly like create enough space for vehicles to pass one another. This turned our drive into a lovely game of chicken-- whoever wants to get to the top or bottom the fastest wins!

This was the view out the window of the Van...

the other side was a cliff

After about an hour and half, we made it as far as we could in the van. We put our lunch order in and began our climb to the saddle of Huaytapallana. After about 2 hrs Katy and Nate reached the top of the saddle of the mountain. They turned around to take a million pictures with Jacqui and realized she was mostly asphyxiated halfway up the mountain. Nate in a totally not obnoxious way ran back down the mountain three times to tell her what a good job she was doing. At some point she wasted a lot of very precious oxygen to yell at him to stay at the top of the freaking mountain and stop taking pictures.

When she finally did make it, we rested in a "zona de medatacion." There is a local tradition when you reach the top of the mountain of drinking cane alcohol and lighting up a cigarette to help your lung capacity.

After...

 

While we didn't partake of that particular ritual, Jacqui called it a day and Katy and Nate enjoyed the nice flat climb to the glacier. The entire hike we were surrounded by teal blue glacier ponds, stunning views of mountain ranges, sheep, cattle, and big boulder fields.

Eventually we reached the glacier and decided to go sledding without sleds. Nate's fantastic little league technique made sledding down a glacier a little less painful.

Eventually we made it down for lunch/dinner. The lamb, chicken and vegetable soup was delicious and the ambience at the restuarant was just spectacular with a quaint little dead lamb on the table next to us. Also possibly the worst bathroom of the trip...we won't include a picture Eventually we made it down the mountain alive and slept like babies...exhausted slightly drunk babies...