We
are very excited about the idea of going on a two day trek, and
especially finding ourselves camping in the middle of nowhere. We take our blue backpacks. They are heavy and aren't suitable for hiking, so they hurt us. The first two hours pass between llamas and volcanoes. The good weather is there, and the beginning is flat. We arrive at the geysers, and it's love at first sight. We want to come back to sleep there tonight, and not to another campsite that we had seen. We can even swim in the river downstream the geysers, because the water is hot. The geysers themselves are nice, and there is something for everyone: blues, greens, reds, with stalagmites, with broth...
We continue our journey. As Floriane finds her bag really heavy, we hide it and lighten François' one from the camping gears. The climb begins and we've to reach a pass, we eat on the way. After this pass, we descend on a high altitude lake. There are rocks, and full of viscachas, these squirrel-rabbits that we had already seen once at Paso de Sico in Chile. We reach the second lake, it's very pretty and we're at nearly 5000m altitude. We turn around here.
The descent is going well, there is a small headwind. We pitch the tent next to a geyser, the weather is nice and the wind is gone. We decide to go for a swim with the last rays of the sun. It's great, one of the best shower since we left Europe! We're all alone, in this pretty mountain. The small problem of camping, because there must be one, it's the taste of water, slightly sulfurized! But hey, we have a good night, and the geysers let the temperature don't fall too much. The next morning, we take a new bath, then we go back to our hotel.
Floriane knits and sews, and François develops the website. In the evening, we talk with two other cyclists, Pauline and Alex, who come from Buenos Aires.
