Trek to Valle de Lares 6 - The wet way down

Right, so here we are, after 5 hours walking, starting to head downwards quite rapidly to the valley floor. Of course the weather changed only inasmuch as it was raining intermittently rather than snowing...



The Andean rabbit, cheeky little fella jumping nimbly from rock to rock, was one of the few examples of native wildlife we saw. This was due to our having to cut out a 2-day sideways trip up another valley where we would have seen more wild animals.




Low clouds, greenish-brown vegetation and a rather large lake - we're still quite high above it here, so scale is hard to judge.




At the end of the lake - which we walked past for about 20 minutes - someone spotted us and brought out the Alpaca clothes.



Thatched roof, dry wall, cancha enclosure next to it. Typical!




Gently sweeping down to the village of Qisuarani, where lunch awaited us around 2pm. 'bout bloody time after brekkie at 7am and 6 hours walking so far.




Our ambulance horse got some work for the last hour, since Shirly was tired and the path was quite muddy. No fun walking!




Since it had started raining when our pack horses, cook and arrieros arrived in Qisuarani, they decided to take refuge with a local family and cook and serve lunch for us in their dwelling. That was the rest of the sheep (head down) that must have made up quite a lot of their meals.




We elected to keep going all the way to the Lares hot springs after that late lunch. So another 3 hours walk along a dirt vehicle track, which didn't make for very inspired pictures. Looong day, and I couldn't really be bothered snapping many more pictures. We were all quite spent after arriving around 6:30pm, pausing for a hot drink before dipping into the hot pools.

It was definitely worth it, although only two long days at the end. The last three hours from Qisuarani to Lares weren't really enjoyable, but then again that did buy us a few hours in the hot springs.

Thanks so much for your great company, people!