Day 9: Laguna Paron

Unlike our previous three expeditions from Huaraz, we didn’t build in a rest-day after yesterday’s bike ride, and in fact were waking up at 5am. But, we wouldn’t be pedaling our bikes anywhere. Instead, a van was taking us on a multi-hour drive to Laguna Paron, a turquoise alpine lake. Rett had set up the tour (communicating with the company via WhatsApp), and at ~US$14 per person for six hours of driving (including up an insane mountain road), it was a complete no-brainer vs. any other method of transport to the lake.

We got picked up at a designated corner a few blocks from our AirBNB, close to the appointed time, but then spent more than an hour picking up the rest of our group from various hostels around town (sometimes waiting a long time for people who never showed up?) There were 20 of us in all, and it was interesting that foreigners were definitely in the minority. There was a group of three young Israelis, one woman from UK/China, and one from Bolivia, but then all the rest were from Peru, the majority of them from Lima.

Our guide spoke to the group in Spanish, and I was pleased that with his ample gesticulations, and my pre-knowledge of much of what he was talking about, I felt like I understood about 70% of what he was saying. He even tried to teach us all a bit of Quechua, his native language, so I thought it was pretty amazing to be learning a foreign language via an intermediate foreign language that I barely know! I could even predict a joke that he made when explaining that the name of the nearby town of Carhuaz has a Quechua origin: “en Quechua: ‘Qarwash’…pero no ‘Car Wash’!!”

After 40 miles driving north on the main highway down the Salta River Valley, we turned into the mountains at Caraz (not to be confused with Carhuaz!), and as we switched back up the gravel road and left civilization behind, I began to doubt if Rett had misunderstood something about us stopping for breakfast. But around 9:30am, we pulled into a country restaurant, similar to places we’d seen on our day rides. In the semi-enclosed space that surely owes its existence to these tours, we ordered some bread with eggs and hot dog, and coffees, and flan (not included in our tour, but just US$10).

Then it was back in the van to begin the real climb. The lake is 10 crow-flies miles from Caraz, but sits 6000 feet above it, so that distance is nearly doubled with all the switchbacks. We had to pay a S/10 (~US$3)/pp entrance fee at a gate (this may be a “local”, unofficial, yet-accepted gate, since the normal, official fee to enter Huascaran National Park is S/30 (~US$8). After the gate, the road surface turned terrible, but our excellent driver managed it impressively, and we neither went tumbling over the edge (though it felt close a few times!) nor felt shaken to pieces. We amazingly saw a couple of bike tourers heading down, on a road even worse (and far more remote) than the one we did yesterday!

We reached the end of the road (recently shortened from the official parking area by a landslide/washout), and were given two hours of relative freedom to explore. Everyone in our group elected to hike up to the Mirador (viewpoint) first. The lake is at nearly 14,000 feet, so even though the hike up to the viewpoint is “only” half a mile long and 400 feet up, it was slow-going in the thin air and then across the boulder-field. Which means that this was our best-yet altitude-acclimatization excursion.

The pictures can then tell the rest of the story far better than any words can. I will say that I can’t imagine many places where I would be willing to suffer 10 hours of travel for 2 hours of the experience, but Laguna Paron is one of those rare places.

After our two hours we all piled back into the van, with Rett and I eating our packed lunches. On the return we stopped again at the same restaurant, where other people had pre-ordered lunches; we were glad we didn’t need to wait that long. When we got back to Huaraz, we got off near the center of town and went to a somewhat-gringo-ish place for a pizza dinner.