Curried Haggis in the Andes: Rest days, mega meals and volcano climbing

So we arrived in Arequipa on 26th May with the intention of staying for 2 nights to rest and replenish our fat reserves after 12 days of hard riding. I am writing this blog 5 days later, still in Arequipa. What follows is a story of ferocious overeating and a couple of small distractions like cycling and hiking up a volcano.

The first day in Arequipa began with a ´large and varied´ breakfast buffet, as promised by reviewers on HostelBookers.com, at the House of Penguins Hostel. We went through mountains of cereal and bread with ease and were already looking forward to the crepes we had planned to squeeze in between breakfast and first round of lunch. We totally felt like village kids visiting the big city on the first full day in Arequipa. Small things like finding a supermarket that stocked ketchup and a variety of fresh fruit impressed us massively after frequenting countless tiny shops over the last couple of weeks that had less than the most basic supplies in stock. And this was before we stumbled upon a block containing Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut AND Starbucks right next to each other! Me and Toby unashamedly devoured a large Burger King combo meal whilst Andy slipped off to get a less Western meal. He won´t admit it but I reckon he waited until we were finished in Burger King and then had a supersize meal on the sly. I can´t remember for sure but we probably sneaked in another round of food before crashing for an afternoon nap back at the hostel before starting the hunt for more food in the evening. After two dinners (large meaty sandwich followed by garlic bread, pizza and a McFlurry) we were too full to go for the round of celebratory beers that we had been looking forward to so we waddled back to the hostel (Andy was limping from being too full).

On the second day, our stomachs had expanded a bit from the previous day´s overeating so we managed to shove even more food down our faces. I won´t go into the gory details but lets just say that we experienced a horrible combination of satisfaction, guilt and physical discomfort from eating too much (photos below show some of our favorite places in Arequipa).

By this point we realized that we were getting to a stage where we needed to plan the next phase of our trip and came to the conclusion that we should spend 3 more days in Arequipa exploring the massive volcanoes around the city. El Misti (5800m) was the volcano we chose to attack and we decided to try and cycle out to it to have a closer look. It turned out to be a pretty horrible ride, firstly having to negotiate the city traffic, then riding past massive dumps of garbage people had tipped off the side of the road, then being chased by a pack of dogs and finally riding up a really horrible sandy track going up base of the mountain! In any case it prepared us for our attempt to try and reach the summit over the next 2 days.

On returning back in Arequipa, we went about trying to find bits of kit to hire for the hike (boots, rucksack etc), organised a 4x4 to drop us off at the trailhead at 3400m and to get as much info about the climb as we could. In true Team Curried Haggis style, we got all the bits organised just in time and had a much needed grease-free home-cooked meal of spag bol before bed.

After an unnecessarily speedy 4x4 lift up the dirt track we had cycled up the previous day, we were at the trailhead and ready to climb by 9.30 am. The walk up to the campsite was fairly straight forward, with the biggest obstacles being small patches of thorny shrubs, a slight scramble up a rocky step and a slog up loose volcanic sand. It took us about 5 hours to get to camp including a long lunch break and we soon had the tent up and Toby was napping before too long.

On the way up we saw another group of climbers going up a ridge to our left and we wondered what they were doing on it since it clearly didn't lead to the campsite. About an hour after we got to camp a very breathless, coughing, tiring looking Dutch guy turned up at the campsite, followed by an equally exhausted looking Peruvian lady. They were the people we had seen climbing up the ridge and they did some sort of life threatening traverse from their ridge across to our campsite. They told us they had been lost on the mountain for 2 days and it was hard not to laugh as we listened to the story of this comedy duo who were hopelessly unprepared for the climb and unbelievably laid back given that they didn´t have enough water or any clue as to how to get off the mountain. They had attempted to summit the night before, failed, turned round, got almost to bottom before realising they had descended off the wrong side and climbed all the way back up to camp via the wrong ridge! We gave them some of our water, food and toilet paper, ate some food ourselves and were in bed by 6 pm ready for a 2 am summit attempt.

My motivation for trying to get to the summit had been pretty low from the start and the howling wind at 1am was enough to convince me to stay in bed whilst Toby and Andy went up to the summit with their head torches. The troubled Dutch/Peruvian duo, who had been sitting outside their tent all night, jumped at the opportunity to get into our warm tent as Toby and Andy left. I quickly realised that I would have been better off walking up the mountain in the cold than being in the relatively warm tent with the Dutch guy as he kept going on and on about his 4 year long gap year whilst I actively tried to sleep.

I can´t really describe the walk up to the summit in much detail as I was busy attempting to sleep but Toby and Andy returned to base camp at around 6.30 am after having got to within 1-2 hours from the summit, less than 500 m from the top. They had to the turn around because it was too cold (their water bottle almost completely froze) and they didnt have enough snacks to power them up. An alternate scenario that Toby describes involves being forced to turn around as some sort of Peruvian mountain lion tried to eat them, rather than the weather forcing them back. In any case, it sounded like a pretty valiant attempt and it sounds like this wasn´t a particularly good time to be trying to get to the top of El Misti (the other groups we had heard of attempting to summit in the last 2 days had all turned around at some point before the top too).

After a couple of hours of napping, we packed up the camp and were ready to go back down. The lost duo decided to follow us down to the trailhead to make sure they didn´t get lost again. The descent was really quick and very fun, with over half of it being a steep volcanic sand slope. The lost duo didn´t have a 4x4 pickup arranged and they decided to walk around 10 km to the nearest road, where they hoped to hitch a ride back to Arequipa. We kindly squeezed them into our 4x4 and we agreed that they would pay their share of the fare (about 12 pounds, instead of the 20-30 they would have had to pay if they had their own private 4x4). On arrival in Arequipa, we dropped them off enroute to our hostel and only realised after we dropped them off that they had in fact only paid about 3 pounds. We were extremely annoyed to the say the least, not just because we had to pay a tenner on their behalf, but more at the fact that we gave them our supplies, let them into our tent and guided them off the mountain (possibly saving their lives!) and they couldn´t even be bothered to pay their fair share of the taxi fare!

Back at the hostel, we showered and got into the usual Arequipa routine of overeating for one last time as we planned to leave the city for good the next day. Tomorrow, we take a bus to Juliaca and plan to ride around the Lake Titicaca region over the next few days and over to the border with Bolivia.