One day tour to Pastoruri, that really lures us to Santa Cruz trek

We went to Huaraz of Peru after the Lima city for fresh air and mountain. It is a famous place for hiking, rock-climbing and mountaineering, but I have not known this at all. There is also a well-known 4-day-3-night trekking called the Santa Cruz trek, which goes into National Park of Huascaran, which covers the highland Cordillera Blanca. The highland is claimed to be the highest and the most beautiful in the world. We saw a lot of mountains and glaciers in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, thus were not sure if this highland would impress us and make us stay longer, given that we were behind schedule and had to rush north. Therefore we paid for a day trip to Pastoruri, which was famous for its glacier, mountain view and the unique plant of Puya raimondii.

The day did not start well as we were on time at 8:30am but we were sent to another agency and waited another one hour before the bus really started to go to Pastoruri. The guide spoke mostly Spanish as most of the participants of the tours where Peruvian. We did not expect much from the tour quality but only expected the natural scenery. After two hours of transport we were in the national park of Huascaran. The bus went up the valley to Nevado Pastoruri. It was quite dry like a dessert. We saw the lovely large plant of Puya raimondii, which grow like citrus.

There were also several scenic spots. The first one was a pool with ongoing gas like soda. We stopped by and the guide told us to put water to the head and the “soda water” was supposed to be good for the hair. People did as he said but I did not see the point and thus only took pictures of the mountains around. Another point was a pool with clear water. When we looked into it, it was a deep pool of clear water that we saw a green forest inside. No good camera can take what we saw. It was so green inside.

Then we saw a mural of ancient drawing, probably thousand years ago. Finally we arrived the entrance of Pastoruri, from there we had to walk an hour uphill to see the glacier. Frankly we had seen so many glaciers and were not much surprised by this one. On the way we walked back from the glacier, we were stunned by the snow-capped mountains in front of us.

 The mountains around the area were so beautiful that lured us to think about Santa Cruz trekking seriously.

Although the tour was a bit expensive (320 soles = HKD960), to me who were just recovering from flu and did not have much energy to plan a lot on independent camping, it was a good choice to have the donkeys doing the heavy loading. 

 In this day tour, we were impressed by the Peruvian mountains, which opened to us along the way. We were attracted by the mountains and wanted to see more in the Santa Cruz trek. 

Therefore we joined the tour. Santa Cruz trek, here we came.