Santa Cruz Trek - Day 3 - Downhill then lots of flat bits
Compared to the second day, this one was relatively easy. We kicked the day off with a brief uphill climb to see views of Mt Altapayu (?), with the aid of binoculars we could make out 3 people just entering the snow portion of it, they still had a loooong way to go :)
The majority of the day was spent going a long a flat plain that I presume had been carved out by glaciers, it had that sort of U shape feel to the valley. Unfortunately my Spanish doesn't extend to 'Was this valley carved by glaciers ?' ;) There were quite a few other hikers travelling in the opposite direction today, I'm not sure why we hadn't seen many up until now. You can choose to do the hike in either direction, the trade off being a gradual ease in to acclimitastion to altitude (the other hiker's way) versus being able to see how far you have to the mountain pass and getting the hard bit over quickly (our way, which I preferred)
The novelty of this day would have to be that at the campsite there was a nice little stall set up with that magical word 'cerveza' :) After settling in to camp (and a quick wash in the stream before the sun went down) we wandered over, but took a few moments to distract the owner from his windmill-powered TV.
Our cold nights of sleeping were belittled somewhat by a Californian staying at the same campsite. He didn't even have a tent! He just had a massive sleeping bag which he zipped up so that only his nose and mouth weren't covered and slept that way. I was wondering if the cows, donkeys and chickens around camp would manage to avoid him as easily as they avoid tents, it would certainly be a novel way to wake up....
