June 16th:

Today we went on a glacier hike!! IT WAS AWESOME! We woke up around 7am and took an hour long bus ride to base camp. I was wearing all of the shirts that I own, my pajama pants (thanks mom) under my jeans, along with a pair of borrowed snow pants. We began climbing the mountain at around 9/9:30. Huancayo is already 10K above sea level, and the peak of the glacier was another 5K--needless to say the altitude on the way up the mountain was killer. We had to take many breaks because our lungs wouldn't take in the oxygen we needed. It was a 3 hour hike to the base of the glacier. Once we got to the glacier we spent about two hours climbing up and sliding down. Our coordinator decided it would be a good idea to explore the crevasse with one of the other volunteers and they nearly fell in....maybe they didn't know those things are dangerous..

I have many many pictures of the glacier and the hike to it. The view was possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen. The hike back took much shorter time, since our lungs had adjusted and we were on the decent. We were all hungry, exhausted and cold. John said it was "most definitely the hardest thing he has ever done!" but this was before he told me he was so tired he might cry. (I was embarrassed, but trekked on :P).

When we finally got back to the base (prob about an 1.5 hike from the glacier) we were fed trout and potatoes. We loaded our bus and all passed out on the ride home. We were too exhausted to do much more with our day.