Yunga Cruz Trek

7-10 May 2011

We´d been wanting to do a trek for a while and had decided on the Yunga Cruz Trek because hardly anyone does it. We decided to go with the same company that Lawrie climbed the mountain with, and that was a really good idea. We had an amazing time.

The first day we left La Paz on public transport that was filled to the brim with people and produce and made our way to Chuñavi and the start of the trek. We had lunch just outside of town and our guides, Patricio and Alberto (who’s 70 years old and still kicked our ass), got everything ready. We made really good progress and got to our first camp after only 1.5 hours of walking. We spent the afternoon wandering around and being amazed at our surroundings. Dinner was absolutely amazing, we got awesome quinoa soup and fake meat bolognese (everyone on the trek had to go veg because of Kitty!).

View of Nevado Illimani from Chuñavi at the start of the trek

View into one of the valley on the trail

Very rugged landscape

On the trail

Pond near our first campsite

Pond again

Our campsite the first night

The next day we had a huge breakfast spread and set off around 9am for about 6 hours of walking, where we climbed for the first bit and eventually started heading down to (but not quite reaching) the forested part of the Yungas. We had a fire that night, which was really good because it’s really cold more than 3000m above sea level in May.

Another view of Illimani

On the trail the second day

Lawrie on the edge

Kitty, Lawrie, Patricio, Alberto

Amazing views

More mad landscapes

Small waterfall near our lunch spot

View from the trail

Our campsite the second night

Lawrie playing tricks on the camera

Lawrie and Patricio around the fire

The third day was really tough. Once we got into the forest, we encountered really steep descents on uneven, slippery ground but then the track would ascend again and we weren’t making any progress downward. At the end of the day, we still had a 500m vertical descent and we ran out of light so ended up camping on the hill and not down at the river as planned.

We woke up above the clouds

More clouds...

Illimani again

Start of the forested section

The rainforest was stunning

More forest...

Beautiful waterfalls

Landslide that we had to climb around

The trail

One of the wider parts of the trail

One of the scariest parts - walking along a
75cm track with a 1000m drop on one side

Narrow and overgrown track

Blister at the end of the day

Chulumani at night

The fourth day was tragically funny. We wanted to be in Chulumani by 10.30 so we broke camp at 8 and headed off down the hill. Everything was fine until we got to the road and our guide couldn´t find the walking track. We kept on taking these funny detours and backtracking until we just gave up and caught a taxi for 20Bs. We arrived at the bus stop and couldn’t get on the next bus because it was full so we bought tickets for what we thought was the next bus leaving. As soon as we’d paid, a bus showed up heading for La Paz with seats free but the other bus driver assured us we’d be leaving in an hour or so. As it was early, we chilled out and had some beers. An hour passed, and then two, three, until the driver told us that there were roadworks and the road would only be passable after 6pm. The busses that were leaving earlier would have made it through when they opened the road at midday. So we waited 6 hours in total and left at 3.30 for what we thought was a 3 hour bus ride. We didn’t actually make it back to La Paz until 9pm, which means it took 5.5 hours to travel 120km – the joys of public transport in Bolivia. Despite all of that, we had an amazing experience and it has definitely been one of the highlights so far.

Drying coca on the side of the road

Coffee beans

Terraced coca field next to a banana field