The pictures largely tell the story of this section of our trip; the leg we most enjoyed. Our days were spent driving up to various trail heads and hiking to high alpine lakes. We realized how fortunate we were to simply hop in a car and go where we pleased. Lucy was an all-star and had a better experience than most people have. A highlight was hiking to Laguna Llaca, a lake that’s not terribly easy to drive to that is fed by a receding glacier. A surveyor collecting data for his thesis at the University of Ohio was kind enough to talk to me about his project. He said that just this summer, a massive chunk of the glacier peeled off; the most significant change there in years. The effects can be seen in the photo following the picture of the piece of glacial ice on Betsy’s pink shirt. The glacial face you see was uniform across the top just this summer. For perspective, you can see a person wearing green sitting down in the middle of the photo. The entire time we were sitting there enjoying the quiet you could hear the glacier crack and pop. Additionally, the “white sand beach” in the photos was what we thought to be ground granite.

We happened to be in Huaraz during the national independence day of Peru. This would become a reoccurring theme on our trip; two other towns would have their individual independence celebrations while we were there.

With our time in Huaraz coming to an end, we were looking forward to what we thought would be an easy drive north to Huamachuco. It would not be so easy and our expected six hour day in the car would turn into a two day ordeal.