Collota, PE to Laguna Huachacocha, PE

5.6 mi / 3.6 mph / 1600 ft. climbing
Home: Laguna Huachacocha Campground

Our tree- and mountain-shaded campsite at 12,500 ft. was down to 40°F by bedtime, and 32°F when we woke this morning. “Warm” enough that our water didn’t freeze! The light traffic on the gravel “National Highway” dropped to nearly nothing overnight, so it was easy to sleep, even on our not-entirely-flat tent floor (the mattress slid down a bit, but not too bad).

Cooking breakfast at our wild camp in the pines. The road is the bright area down the cliff at the top-left of the photo.

Bringing all of our stuff down the terraces back to the road was a lot of work, though less than bringing it up! We could have saved ourselves all that effort by just continuing to push up the hill yesterday to tonight’s easier campsite, but I think it’ll end up being a lot more enjoyable taking our time.

I let Rett take off while I was still loading up my bike, so this was an attempt to see if I could spot her on the road ahead. No, but it gives an idea of the landscape the road is perched on.

There she is, waiting at a curve in the road.

And there is me, catching up!

In 2019, Timothy Tower said the gravel on the first half of the climb (what we did yesterday) was better than the second half (today’s ride). Six years later, I don’t feel like there is much difference, partly because I think yesterday’s section was likely worse than it had been in 2019. And up higher, where loose stones troubled Mr. Tower, it seems like years of traffic has likely shoved a then-recently-spread new layer of stones out to the edges, leaving the tire tracks more rocky and bumpy than slippery. But it’s also possible that today just didn’t feel as bad as I was expecting because we were physically and mentally fresher, due to breaking the climb into two days.

We were even slower than yesterday, setting our second-consecutive slowness record, but I attribute that more to the decreased oxygen at higher elevation, and the increased grade. Today’s unfathomable 284 feet-per-mile of climbing was yet another breaking of a day-old record. Our pre-Peru record was 152 (that number once seemed insane), and we’d only exceeded 100 feet-per-mile 9 times over nearly 500 days of riding. Now we’ve exceed 200 four times in just seven days of riding in Peru! Riding through the Andes is some next-level shit.

One of the several places today where I filled and filtered water. The hoses again are capturing water from higher up to deliver to lower properties; I don’t know if I should interpret that as “we source the water from higher, because it’s contaminated down here”, or “eh, anything along this stream/waterfall is good water”. Either way we’ve been filtering (or boiling) drinking water 100% of our time in Peru.

Nothing beats snow-covered mountains, but seeing them naked reveals a lot of details.

Rett sunscreening while I filter water. Also a good view of the rockiness of the road.

Continuing the climb, with the road winding up the right side of this valley.

A pretty good place to stop for a snack.

The only other time I remember seeing an imposing wall of white mountains like this was when looking toward the Himalayas from Shimla, India.

Here we really get to see some wild twisting and folding of rock layers deep in the history of this mountainside.

Another Machu Picchu-looking mountain, in front of a very non-Machu Picchu-looking mountain.

Our target was what seems to be a Peru rarity, an actual “campground” at Laguna Huachacocha, a lake at 14,000 ft., high in the paramo, an unusal alpine ecosystem that fills the band between the treeline below, and the snowline above. Of course there would be no running water, campsites, staff, and certainly no game room. But it would be easier to camp at than an entirely-wild camp, with the near-summit elevation being the only potential issue (from both a temperature and oxygen perspective).

The first view of our destination at Laguna Huachacocha. From left-to-right, the buildings are: a crumbling stone/thatched-roof hut, a large and worn palapa, the blue pit toilet building, and a locked building currently holding a few wooden rowboats. Up top is a new chapel dedicated to Ugo de Censi, the priest who drove all the wood-carving in Chacas.

#FindRett riding past the Don Bosco Vaqueria (a remote cheese factory also started by Ugo de Censi’s operation), where Timothy Tower used his charm and Spanish skills to spend the night.

Rett rode down the Laguna Huachacocha access road/path straight to the farthest palapa (new within the last couple years, so I guess that’s where we’ll be setting up!)

The toilet is a hole in the floor, but again, that’s still a lot better than digging your own hole, in full view of Father Ugo de Censi!

A sign helpfully notes that this is the “Photography Exhibition Area”. It’s not really clear what body installed and maintains the unusual bit of infrastructure (it’s not in a National Park), but we’re glad for it!

Looking back to Don Bosco Vaqueria from our campsite.

Our tent, next to the large palapa, well above the lake. We had to clear a small bit of garbage and cow poop, but overall it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting from previous reports. Two of the garbage cans were overflowing, but the third one still had space!

Because the lake wasn’t at the base of a glacier, and was more just a depression in the landscape that happened to collect nearby water into a huge pond, my impression was that it might actually be a fairly sad and dismal place to camp (the reports of garbage and poop surely added to this impression). But as usual, everyone else who raved about it was right, and I was wrong. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as our Punta Olimpica camp, of course, but it definitely had its own form of epic beauty. Especially because the more-open bowl allowed the sun to shine longer into the afternoon across the landscape. When we pulled in, there were a couple of Austrian guys in a campveran who had come up from the other side of the pass, but they soon cleared out, and for the rest of the afternoon and evening, we had the whole lake entirely to ourselves (except for a four-wheeler doing something miles away up the road on the other side of the lake, which sounded inexplicably like someone mowing their lawn for an hour).

We had pushed past lunch-hour to get to camp, so as soon as we got the tent set up, we had some tuna/avocado/cracker lunch. I had a brief stabbing pain in my stomach that incapacitated me for a bit, but it passed after 20 minutes, along with my fears of finally getting our first digestive issue in Peru. I was then able to continue work on fixing the zippers on our tent, which I had started last night. The zippers had started opening up in the middle after pulling the slider closed, which I thought was a problem that could be fixed by just squeezing the slider a bit with pliers. I had done it once a year or more ago, and while it had worked last night on my door, I was having no luck on Rett’s side today, which had reached a point of 100% failure. It was really frustrating and for a period it looked like this might bring an end to camping in South America for us. But finally I realized that I was squeezing only the front (leading) side of the slider closed, and when I squeezed the trailing side, that immediately took care of it. Phew. Hopefully it lasts.

Then it was straight into dinner, this time Rett’s Thai-inspired peanut-noodles. By 7pm it was 36°F, and while the wind had thankfully lightened with sunset, this would be another night to bring the water filters into the sleeping bag to keep them from freezing.

We could have a party of 50 under this palapa!

Plantago Rigida, a characteristic plant of the paramo biome.

A couple of rickety palapas even sit in the water. And right down by the lakeshore it was level enough to pitch a tent, and much more wind-sheltered than our higher location.

The lake water, with a non-zero amount of cow pollution in it, surely wasn’t as pristine as an alpine waterfall, but it looked better than I expected, and with filtering/boiling, caused us no issues upon consumption.