Quiz results answers and more

Well, well, well!! The long awaited and now very late quiz results.

Results first........

Question 1. How many countries in total have Joe and Sue visited since leaving Dublin last October?
Answer 1. 10....... We changed planes in Germany, landed in Singapore, travelled in Malaysia, passing briefly through Brunei. Stayed with our friends in Australia, two weeks in the south island of New Zealand, crossed the Pacific to Chile, climbed and hiked in Argentina, travelled through Bolivia and finally ended up in Peru.

Question 2. How many shoe shops in Bolivia and Peru did Joe get laughed at, before he could find a pair of shoes big enougth to buy?
Answer 2. 12 shoe shops, I was eventually successful in Cuzco, however they only had white plimsoles that fitted!

Question 3. What is the current total weight of Joe and Sue and their rucksacks?
Answer 3. 205 Kilos, Joe and rucksacks weighs in at 113 kilos, while Sue and her bags fetches 92 kilos!

Thanks for all the responses, Barry Long was the only one to correctly get question 1 correct, while the Cillian, Tess and Oliver team were closest on questions 2 and 3. This leaves team Cillian, Tess and Oliver winners and a prize will be posted by the end of the week! (it takes three to four weeks in the post so be patient!)

Also thank you (Paddy, Lesley, Oliver, Tess and Cillian) very much for the quiz you sent us. Please find the answers below.

Q. How many pheasants has Molly caught in the fields around Woodenbridge?
A. We think 3

2. How many fat pancakes did we cook for breakfast?
A. 11

3. Who's going to win Euro 2008?
A. Sorry we´re late here but we thought Germany or Spain, this is based on World Cup performances.

4. Name 3 of Bob the Builder's friends?
A. Lofty, Roley and Scoop. Oliver might be interested in the following site? http://www.bobthebuilder.com/uk/

5. How many doors (not including cupboards / fridges / cookers etc.) are there in 36 Fitzwilliam Square (not including the stables)?
A. This was difficult......
Top floor....6
Kitchen and Guest Room....3
Return Loo.....2
Dad´s Office and meeting room........4 (we allowed 2 for the sliding dividing doors between the two rooms)
Paddy´s office......2 (double doors)
Ground Floor......4
Tooth hall.....6 (including sink double doors)
Basement flat.......6
Front and back garden........3 (coal holes and play house)
Back basement.......4
This gives a grand total of 40!!!! that is quite a few doors for one house!

And the last question....
Identify who wrote each of the above questions?
Q.1 Paddy, Q.2 Tess, Q.3 Cillian, Q.4 Oliver, Q.5 Lesley.

How many bed mattresses can you fit on a tricycle?

Click on the link below to see how close you are!
http://www.box.net/shared/yppt5rpggo

Cajamarca & Celendin

We left our big bags to holiday in Trujillo while we packed a few things and got on a night bus to Cajamarca. At about 2700m Cajamara is warm and sunny and remembered as the scene of the capture and execution of Antahualpa, an Inca Emperor in 1532. Antahualpa had beaten his brother in battle and before heading to Cusco to take up reign he stopped in Cajamarca to soak his wounds in a hot pool. He had 80,000 soilders with him and they were all down the town eating cake celebrating the victory. Francisco Pizarro had been marching for weeks with a bunch of soilders too (less than 200) and wanting to meet with Antahualpa, they too stopped in Cajamarca. Word was sent to Antahualpa who said goodbye to his rubber ducky and got out of the bath to go to town to meet Pizarro. The Spaniards had arrived in town first and hid themselves to ambush the inca warriors. Some sort of multi-lingual exchange occured which involed the spanish making demands and waving the bible. The Inca king, sorry that he had not got his soilders out of the bakery was captured in a bloody battle that seemed to last less than an hour but saw thousands of soilders killed. They had never seen horses, never mind fought against steel swords. Their top commanders were killed first, which left the soilders disorganised. Antahualpa tried to bargin for his release, and holding his arm aloft in the room where he was kept prisioner he marked the wall. This was to show the height of gold he would give Pizarro, and 2 rooms of silver, in exchange for his release. The Spaniards were delighted with this offer but killed Antahualpa anyway. From this day on the inca empire crumbled. We went to see the ranson room which is still standing and also bathed in the famous hot baths, but not Antahualpas one. (Looks like the water has been changed since but still a bit grotty!!)

This being a bit of a whistle stop tour, we left the next morning to travel to Celendin. Settled in a lovely hostel we wandered down town and through the market. A lovely town with very few cars and well preserved and freshly painted colonial buildings. The plaza, immaculately kept with lovely flowers and a huge catherdal fronting onto it, being enjoyed by the locals , sitting in the sun. We have seen a lot of hats on this trip and Im sorry to not have more photos of them. In this town they had wonderful sambreros. Hand made by the ladies and sold to the hat shop for finishing off. On Sunday morning everyone was in their finery and in town for the market. At 6am the livestock market starts. At 7am the hat market. It continues through the day and by the end of it the streets are full of contented shoppers cluthcing hens, dragging pigs, carrying reeds to make more hats and much more! It is so enjoyable to wander the streets and admire all the lovely fruit and vegetables, neatly arranged in piles. We went to visit more hot springs in a lovely valley nearby. The springs were at the bottom of a wonderful lush valley with the trees heaving with fruit. This time we really got stuck in and baked in the mineral enriched mud for a while before getting in with the locals for a wash! The scolding hot water bubbles up in pools beside a river. So, you can sit in the river and build a wall so that you trap sone of the hot water coming from a pool and mix it with the river water to enjoy a nice hot soak. We were very taken by Celendin. I hope to do a slide show of photos the next time I am at a computer.

North to Trujillo, Chan Chan & more

With bellies full of "bomba de manzanas" we took an over night bus from Huaraz to Trujillo. We found a hostel to leave our bags in and headed down town to find a juice bar! Trujillo has a lovely large Plaza de Armas with fine colonial buildings. As with every town in Peru we have visited, digging up the road and piling up rocks and sand was the order of the day. So, instead of noisey cars the plaza was full of men in trenchs, piles of mud and stone and bits of pipe. There were in fact some of the biggest footpath holes that we have encountered and in certain places a bridge had been installed to enable pedestrians to cross with minimal peril. How thoughtful. On a lighter note we found that Cafe Ameretto had particularly fine cakes and all in generous slices!

Our hostel, Casa de Clara, is home of a tour guide and her British husband. We decided to take a tour with them to see some local ruins. These ruins however were pre-inca and made of mud not stones!!! Our first stop was Chan Chan, home to the Chimu people and the largest adobe (thats mud, to you and me) city in the world. The ruins consist of nine seperate compounds with 9m high walls covering an area of 20 kmsq. Each one with a narrow entrance, which leads along a corridor and to a maze of passageways. Inside were rows of storage rooms, administrative buildings, temples, platforms and a central plaza for flag waving and general important stuff. Each compound also housed a huge raised platform that contained the burial chamebr for the king. Many of his noble men were buried around him. This inner citadel was surrounded by living quaters of the the kings servants and important folk. It seems when the king died, he was buried in his compound and a new one was built for the new king. Thats a lot of time building sandcastles!!! We went to vist just one compound and just before they covered the original art work with fibreglass copies to preserve it.

Our next stop was the Huaca el Dragon, a small pyramid also built of adobe. The sand reliefs are in very good condition and samples can be seen in the photos.

We returned to our hostel where our guide and hostess made us a tasty lunch before driving us to Huaca del Luna (pyramid of the moon). Built by the Moche people, it is a huge construction with many different platforms and accompanined by the Huaca del Sol ( pyramid of the sun). The Moche seem to have been a very violent people and many pictures of slaves naked and with ropes around their necks adorn the walls. Also the remains of many sacrificed adults .The inner layout of the pyramid had changed a few times while in use and so many adobe walls with wonderful coloured pictures in relief have been perfectly preserved as they were hidden behind a newer wall. We also saw a collection of clay "bricks" used for construction. They are all marked with a special symbol, identifiying their maker. Archaeologists have also discovered a huge clayware workshop in the area between the two pyramids and works uncovering more still go on today.

Happy Holidays to some special blog commenters!

We would like to put a special word out to Namibia, advising it to prepare for the visit of Sonja, Vasco, Cillian & Tess! We hope that you all have a wonderful journey and really look forward to hearing about your trip on your return (Cillian & Tess could keep a diary). I am sure that the animals will be on their best behaviour and Cillian & Tess aswell! Do remember that although cute, hungry tigers should not be tickled under the chin!! If you come across some cheeky monkies have your umbrellas ready!! We will not be home to see you all until September the 8th. However this will give you time, Sonja, to print some pics which we look forward to seeing. Lots of love and safe travels to the four of you!!!

Joe & Sue Welcome folk to South America!

A special HELLO and Happy Holiday to Dave Long who has just enjoyed his first week of holidays in Brasil!! Hope the sun is shining on Ipanema beach!

Also a "looking forward to seeing you" goes out to Brian, Saibh, Conal & Paul; hope you bring the sunshine with you!!!!

"Happy travels!" to Eimear who is also off to see Brasil.(not sure if we will see you. Have just checked Brasil map and its very very big!!!)

Best of luck with the monkey chasing to Brid & Jim!! Hope you make it safely from the jungle back to Trujillo.

Chavin, Combis, Yungay and the Alpamayo trek

I have tried to sit down and write about Chavin several times now, but I always seem to get lost looking at other things on the web! I think at this point I need to pass it and just write about more recent things, Chavin is starting to hold up the rest of the blog!

We had a fine day out at Chavin! its a complex of ruins on the east side of the Cordillera Blanca (the other side from Huaraz). The ruins (according to my book) were built roughly around 800BC and represent the oldest know civilisation in South America! It is famous for its labyrinths of dark underground passages, underground river channels, fine carvings and spooky heads as you can see in the picture. If you want to know more read it on the web! elsewhere than here!! I like http://www.stanford.edu/~johnrick/chavin_wrap/chavin/index.html

Back to Huaraz for a couple of days and there was more rain so we made the hard decision not to climb another mountain, too much snow we thought. Instead we decided to try another trek, so without further ado we brought supplies and boarded a `combi´.

A combi is usually a Toyata Hiace not to different from a painter´s or plumber´s van that we see in Dublin however they are fitted out with seats. A good Peruvian driver and conductor will squeeze up to 24 people inside one of these. Its the conductors job to open and close the door, collect the fares, tell the driver when the last person has been squeezed in and its safe to move off again and most important to call out the onward destinations of the bus. This is done rapidly and repeatedly in an incomprehensible manner. The drivers job is to overtake the next combi in front so that they can get the next passengers further down the road. I find its best not to sit too near the front of these buses for fear you might see the large amount of terror inducing near misses that happen on the bad roads on a daily basis.

After a squashed journey in our combi we jump out at old Yungay to see the memorial gardens from the 1970 earthquake. The 1970 earthquake measured 7.9 to 8.0 on the Richter scale and devastated the region around Huaraz as well as other areas. One of the worst hit towns was Yungay where a massive avalanche from Huascaran Norte (a mountain above the town) picked up speed, rocks and mud all the way to Yungay. Travelling at an estimated 100 miles per hour, 80 million cubic meters of mud hit the town burying everything on theat dreadful Sunday afternoon, killing 17,000 of the towns 17,400 residents. Remnants of a combi bus can be seen half embedded in the ground and the main squares palm trees survived as shown in the photo, behind the destroyed cathedral. They rebuilt new Yungay in a less exposed location, a kilometer or so down the valley.

From Yungay, we caught another combi to Caraz, from here we took a collectivo (communal taxi) to a town called Cashapampa and its here that our hike started.

We loaded up our rucksacks and started walking! One of the selling points of this trek for us was that there was hot springs (not the type that burn your back while your lying in bed!) but the warm geothermal water type at both the start and the finish of the walk. Much to our disappointment, it turned out that the hot springs near Cashapampa had run out of water a couple of years back for some unknown reason. It took us several hours to walk to our campsite that evening. For part of the way a local girl on her way home from school guided us through the numerous trails and fertile farms. She pointed us in the right direction and disappeared down one of the many lush and leafy side paths. We arrived in Hualcayan and pitched the tent just in time for noodles and so our hiking routine began.

The campsite was located just outside Hualcayan, a town of approx 250 people, beside the football field and below some old pre-Inca ruins that were to our eyes little more than piles of old stones at this stage. We cooked our dinner under the careful attention of the local children who were intrigued with all the weird and wonderful equipment we had, not to mention the prospect of sweets. Their older brothers played football on the adjacent field while we were treated to a beautiful sunset. A little seven year old girl walked by silhouetted against the evening sky dragging an enormous submissive bull behind her, where is the camera when you need it.

The next day we got up early to try and avoid some of the hot sun. We spent the whole day hiking up a steep hill to Laguna Cullicocha from 3100m to 4600m. There was another fine sunset but we were wrecked from the days walk and observed it from inside the tent! Morning brought another beautiful clear day and we set off over two high passes and a long steep descent into the Osoruri valley. From here we hiked up past the Ruinas Pampas (some more old stones) and pitched our tent when we really couldn´t walk anymore. The hike, although shorter than our previous hike in the Cordillera Huayhuash, is certainly tougher. By the end of the third day we were both knackered. Our conversations were generally about food; what food we had, what food was left and what food we´d like to have! All this and we still have four days left!

The next day we enjoyed a lazy day, walking only an hour or two up the valley before camping under the North West face of Alpamayo. They call it the most beautiful mountain in the world. I´m not sure if I agree, however it keeps the tourists coming. We spent the afternoon talking about food with a German couple who, complete with their chef, five donkeys and two horses, had good stories of pancakes and eggs for breakfast. This we told them didn´t really match up to our porridge!

Morning brought two more high passes, one even had quite a bit of snow on it and lead us to a place called Huillca. We passed a group of botanists from Poland on a three week trip studying plants in the high Andes. We nicknamed these guys the bottomists as they spend nearly all the time with their bottoms in the air taking photos and scribbling notes of some type of moss or other! Huillca is situated in some fine pampa which we nicknamed the Serengeti Plains due to the amount of grazing animals. There are huge herds of llama, alpaca, sheep and even a few horses. The arrival of team Germany´s donkeys upset the natural order of things and caused havoc! Soon there were massive stampedes and I feared for the safety of our tent!

Early the next morning, as we took down our tent in the heavy frost, a poncho clad man appeared out of nowhere. He wondered if we had any spare socks, I looked down at his feet, he was wearing car tyre sandals with bulbous toes sticking out the end which were obviously freezing on this cold morning. Sue had a spare pair to give and he didn´t seem too worried about the health warning normally attached to Sue´s old socks! Another high pass and a long descent down to Jancapampa. No sooner than we had finished pitching our tent here, two small boys appeared running across the swampy pampa. They were clutching bottles of beer and coke and they knew we were craving both, their prices reflected our desire but we were delighted. They waited for us to finish our drinks so they can get their bottles back and I tried to teach them how to juggle.
That evening three teenagers on foot caught a horse with a lasso on the wide pampa. It took them about half an hour but it was a masterful display and great entertainment for us.

It was a long walk down to Pomabamba, our final destination, through a very traditional valley of old Quechua houses and farms. We joined up with an aqueduct which lead us into Pomabamba. We spent the afternoon here eating fried chicken, soaking in the town´s hot springs and playing table football on a street side stall much to the entertainment of the locals. Sue came out the overall champion which makes up for her desparate recent performances at cards and dice!

A night bus and a very bumpy road brought us back over the mountains to Huaraz.

Mandarina Man

Click on this link to hear the true voice of the mandarina man that Sue posted about a few days ago!
http://www.box.net/shared/76p7q4c80k

Urus and bad weather

So, having just about recovered from our hiking in Huayhuash, (¨just about¨ being the words to concentrate on here!), we nursed our sore legs, blistered feet and bruised shoulders with copious amounts of juice, food, coffee and beer here in Huaraz.

We had ideas of trying to climb a mountain, so after a little bit of research we settled with the one that Paramount Pictures borrows as their logo "Artesonraju".You may know this one as it flashes up before your film with a collection of stars forming a near circle above it. We calculated the daily food and rented additional equipment needed and as one final check before we leave we drop into an old friend who runs a mountain guides shop, here in town.

Poncho tells us how he had two distressed Spanish climbers show up in his agency yesterday back from our proposed route. They had tales of waist deep snow and how they had fallen down several crevasses and this he explained with a smile was only on the glacier. They did not make it near the mountain! Hmmm. There´s only one thing to do we think.

We ran to a nearby coffee shop, ordered beers and strong coffees and figured out where else to go. Leafing through reference books the coffee shop keeps in their library, we found a nearby valley with a couple of accessible peaks. Everything is back on track! Without further ado, we organised a lift and walked for five hours with heavy bags up the Ishinca valley. Sue had climbed a peak in this valley eight years ago with a friend of ours, Donal. On that trip the only people they met were two young boys below the age of ten herding cows on the high pampa. After several hours hiking we turned the last corner into the valley, exhausted and delighted to reach the campsite. To our shock we discovered 63 tents, an "Andean climbers hut" and several plastic sheeting stalls run by campasinas selling beer and coca cola. Wow we thought, we are not the only ones who think this place is special! We retreated to our tent while the mob outside talked about their "Andean exploits" and we muttered about the good auld days! We later discovered that this has happened to two valleys in the range "to improve accessibility to some of the easier peaks" while the others have been left for the more adventurous, ie hardly anybody.

The next morning, we rose early and climbed the nearby Urus (5430m). Its a relatively easy peak and as we shared the summit with a girl from Slovenia, we wonder where the 63 tents full of people were! As we reach the edge of the moraine on the way back down we meet 30 odd people roped to their various guides all struggling horribly with the altitude. I encouraged them by saying its only an hour or two to the summit and their guide shakes his head and tells them its going to take a whole lot longer!

There was a long climb down scree to get back to the tent and we were delighted to get out of the sun by the time we get back. The afternoon is spent lounging and eating!

The next morning we had hoped to hike up to a higher camp in preparation to climb Tocllaraju, a couple of hours up the valley. By the time we had woken up most of the 63 tents were packing up and loading onto herds of donkeys; the clouds were down. Not only were the clouds down but we noticed that the snow had come down too. It had snowed heavily during the night. According to the donkey men, the weather was down for the next few days too! We certainly were not going to go up while everything else was coming down. So, we lay in bed, somewhat relieved, because the last thing we wanted to do was pack up everything and hike up another 500m of altitude. Besides, camping on the snow is never comfortable.

We waited for a few hours, thinking the weather might get better but it got progressively worse and soon it was lashing rain. We celebrated Sue´s birthday a day early, by eating her chocolate bar cake and playing endless games of dice. Our tent is too small for spending days in, waiting for better weather, so we packed everything up and headed back to Huaraz getting thoroughly soaked en route.


In Huaraz we met back up with Brid and Jim and the birthday celebrations continued in somewhat better style as the rain continued to fall for several days!

The Juice Bar

The juice bar in Huaraz is a favorite old haunt of mine. Years ago, it was just a street side counter, several high chairs and a crowd of people three or four deep blocking the street. Getting a juice was similar to trying to get your order in a busy Dublin pub on a Friday night. Behind the counter there was four or five hard working Peruvians lashing out the juice, a "Surtido" was the juice of choice back then; Papaya, carrott, banana and water. My favorite however was the "especial", similar ingredients but with a raw egg, condensed milk and malt as well as some mystery black syrup poured from a labeless bottle. This would come in a litre jug with a piece of plain vanilla cake called "keke" to soak it up. However, they would blend anything you wanted from the towering crates of fruit stacked behind the counter, that threatened to avalanche pineapple, papaya and bananas ontop of the assembled crowd.
Nowadays there is a small indoor area of plastic chairs and tables, the "especial" is the drink of choice, reflecting the Huaraz citizens new found wealth. The menu also includes chicken sandwiches, tomales and empanades at knock down prices. It´s a hub of activity with loud chat, the girls shouting out orders, old ladies begging, seven or eight blenders on the go not to mention salsa music blaring out of the TV.
Oh, Tess, they make a fine bananna milk too!

Huaraz & the Huayhuash hike

So, we arrived in Huaraz quite early in the morning and our first mission was to find a hostel. When we were here before we stayed in a fine and quiet house with a rather mad lady. The way to find our way home was to walk to Jesus in the main plaza and then two blocks on, turn right at the golden man. We were quite distressed to find that not only was the golden man missing but someone had removed the MASSIVE statue of Jesus. So, we settled for another odd hostel run by a guy called Even(HEHEHE). Eight years have passed since we were in Huaraz and the city has really grown. We went for a juice in our usual hang out, no longer a stall in a lane way, but a fine shop with 8 blenders on the go, crazy music blaring on the television and a steady flow of locals, guzzling fruit juices! Still the same price for a juice though, and a piece of vanilla cake.

We decided that our first trip out of Huaraz would be a bit of high altitude training. Two or so hours from Huaraz is the town of Pocpa which is the starting point for a multi-day trek around the Huayhuash range of mountains. Most of the mountains are above the 5000m metre mark, with many towering over 6000m, including Siula Grande(6344m) and Yerupaja (6617m). http://huaraz.com/map/huayhuash/

should give a bigger map.

The first part of this long journey started with us crawling out of bed at 3.50am, putting our bags on our backs and walking to the bus station. The bus finally left by 5am and we arrived in Chiquian about 7am. Joe was not feeling the best that morning and my concern was growing for him the whole journey. We were lucky to have the very back seat on the bbbuuusss and he was looking pretty green. Joe had a snooze at the side of the road in Chiquian and we soon boarded another bus to Llamac and on to Pocpa, even more bbuuummppppyas we went up and down switch backs. Amazingly, Joe picked up a bit and by 10.30am were were marching up a hill for four and a half hours to our first camp!!!

So, for the next nine days we had a job to do; walk from one camp to another with our bags on our backs and stop on the way somewhere with a very fine view to enjoy a very fine lunch!!!! Most peole who take on this challenge make it a bit easier for themselves; they hire a guide to show them the way. They also hire some donkeys to carry their equipment and food. They then need an arriero( who usually work in twos) to look after their donkeys. Their guide and arrieros need to be fed and so they also need a cook. This then means that two people heading for a walk in the hills turns into six people, five donkeys and a horse

( in case of emergency). Joe and I were just two and happy. Yes, our bags were heavy, yes, we had a porridge/ smash / pasta combo for nine days, but we were happy!!! We walked every day for between 5 and 8 hours, with about an hour plus of breaks. After getting off the bus we walked from Pocpa (3650m) to Matacancha where we had our first camp and the misfortune of having our pots stolen from our tent at night! (We managed to buy a well worn one from a local). On day two we walked to Laguna Mitacocha, over a 4685m pass. We were lucky that it was a bit over cast and so we didn´t get fried in the sun. On day three we walked over a 4650mm pass to Laguna Carhuacocha. We passed some small stone houses and locals selling cola and beer. On day four we walked to Laguna Carnicero over a 4800m pass.

The days seemed to be getting longer as we moved along, never mind the severe amount of undulating terain that we were trudging along!!!! High altitude treking is not a walk in the park!! We did however pass out all other parties during the day, as we enjoyed the stunning views around us. So, different day, different valley of mountians. Some things stayed constant and that was our eating routine......

Awake with the sun about 6am. Sit up in bed and put on a pot of tea. ( a great addition to our equipment is our thermarest seats, turning sleeping mats into seats with back support- thanks Bod & Claire). Tea is followed by porridge and then its time to get out of the sleeping bag!! Pack up bags, take down tent and put on a brew of fresh coffee to enjoy with a biscuit or some chocolate. If we managed

to leave by 8am we were doing well!! Lunch is crackers, cream cheese, salami and onion. On arrival at camp we have noodles, followed by soup. A game of cards, and its time for dinner. Pasta or smash with tuna followed by tea and a tasty treat of chocolate. Pot of water goes on again to make a hot water bottle for Joe ( to subsidise his very cold sleeping bag) and then its time for sleep before we start it all again. Creatures of habit!!One of our pleasures in the mornings was watching the arrieros trying to round up the donkeys.They would wander far from the tents up the side of the far off hills looking for that really tasty grass.

On day five we were in for a treat. It was a short day but also brought the reward of hot springs!!!! We sat in the scalding water, soothing our bodies and chatted to the peruvian porters as they tried to not drown in the pool!!( an entire nation of non - swimmers!!) I however developed a bad sore throat and had to add gargling hot salty water to my food routine!! On day six we decided to really push the boat out and climbed to a pass at 5000m then down to the valley floor and up to another pass at 5100m. The view was wonderful with deep blue lakes sitting below threatening glaciers. We climbed

steadily down to another valley floor and just had the tent up before the rain came!!! You have no idea how tasty a bowl of noodles tastes after a day of hiking like that!! Day seven saw a bit more rain and another very long days hiking, taking us past the small settlement of Huayllapa with more downhill than up!! After breakfast on day eight, we crossed Tapuish pass at 4800m , went down to the valley floor and had lunch with a view of Laguna Susucocha. We then climbed steadily up again to Yaucha pass at 4840m and arrived at Laguna Yahuacocha with aching knees and backs, eager for more noodles!! Up at 4.30am on day nine, we had our last porridge breakfast before a four and a half hour jaunt to the town of Llamac. With a certain sense of survival and relief we feasted on egg sandwiches and beer before negotiating a taxi back to Huaraz.