Huayhuash Day 1

Huayhuash is pronounced like ¨why wash¨, and it´s a question you too would be asking yourself after ten days of not cleaning yourself. We woke up at around 5 am to catch the bus to a town called Chiquian. Due to road construction, however (there was an avalanche or something), we missed our onward connection to the even smaller town of Llamac. Our guide and the other passengers managed to hire a collective taxi on their own, though, and, as luck would have it, the original bus we were trying to catch had broken down anyway en route to Llamac. So if we had actually been on time, we´d have been stuck in the middle of nowhere. When we arrived in Llamac, the misadventures continued. We had so much gear, we needed at least four burros, but the trekking agency only reserved three. So the arriero (burro guy) had to go rent another one. Meanwhile, we hiked over the first pass (about 4500 m) and down to our first campground (at 4000 m). It was cold!