Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

After having lived at above 3000m since Cusco and above 4000m (roughly) since the Altiplano, we thought we´d try and see how much higher we could go. Fortunately around San Pedro there are several vulcanoes that go up to 5500 or even 6000m. Easy fixed.

Finding a guide was just as easy, but he pretty much scoffed at our recent Inca Trail and Cordillera Blanca experience (latter only up to 4800m, defn not high enough), so an “easy one” (5480m going by my GPS) called Lascar was selected. The other cool thing was that each morning it still emits a little smoke and we could see into the crater from the top. The walk started at 4900m so we had a little bit of a head start, but still…

Well, we weren´t disappointed. Physically it was quite a challenge and at a height where I´d say hiking is not really great fun any more (think: one step, one or two breaths, one step, one or two breaths, etc… and add a few breaks and breathless gasps in between), but the views were hard to beat. Apart from being able to see the whole crater(admittedly very smelly, ie sulphuric, ie rotten egg gas), we could see all the way along the chain of vulcanoes that previously we´d only seen from San Pedro and in most other directions. Very, very cool. A few more photos might´ve been taken. Sleep was quite good that night too.

Next time we go up this high will be in Nepal (Annapurna Circuit), so I guess an interesting side effect was that we now know we´ll be able to actually complete it (highest point is at 5419m, ie a bit lower), which is always good to know before you fly half way around the world and hike for 10 days to get somewhere