Three day Trek

The three day trek we went on was gorgeous the first day we spent walking down an incredible valley walled on both sides with massive granite mountains. The field which was the valley had tremendous stones stuck into the ground after falling hundreds of feet off the cliff walls. Down the center of the valley ran a large valley fed by glacial lakes and waterfalls. With in the Valley there were hundreds of Cows and horses left to roam this incredible expanse in freedom.

By the end of the day I was ready to sit down for the rest of my life, with every upward step I thought I might be sick and I was exhausted from our long day of walking. After lots of patience and encouragement from Eve I finally made it to the camp site. Being at 1500 feet however made sleep difficult and we all were frequently awakened. Around 4:30 in the morning Eve woke and was telling Tim to stop making so much noise when she realized the noise was not coming from inside the tent. Tim poked his head out into the darkness with his headlamp to report that we had a cow grazing nearby. By 5:30 we had an entire herd surrounding our tent high up in the mountains. The heavy breathing and occasional calling of the cows made sleep nearly impossible.   

When we crawled out of the tent we found that all the cows were looking at us, creepy is the best way to describe it. We soon found that one of the bulls was rather aggressive as he began running after Eve while she was getting water. Another one a black and white cow soon became Tim’s least favorite as she charged him while he was peeing and thought about doing the same to me. She was also in the habit of knocking the other cows around or running up and stabbing them in the butt with her horns.

After packing up camp we spent the rest of the day looking for a pass we never found, cold from the breeze and light snow we walked back to the valley from the previous night and set up camp on a ridge of soft grass with an incredible view of a glacial lake below us. When the tent was up and dinner was done we began to play a game of cards, a few rounds in and we could hear THEM. After trying so hard to find a place the cows were not we had ended up camping in their bedroom and literally inches from their fighting ground. The trembling earth as they charged one another was quite frightening but as the sun set they soon went to sleep.

 In the morning we saw that it had snowed. A ring of hoof prints was visible encircling our tent along with large patches of grass where the cows had slept in all I counted 19. That morning we packed up and made our way back down the incredible valley and back to Huaraz. We then ate at a French restaurant and crashed into our uncomfortable beds.