21Nov

This morning Natura and I woke up about 06:00. We headed out about 07:00 and walked around the town somemore. We checked out the food market. Boy, these food markets will make you think twice about what food satitation is. Everybody is selling fruit, veggies, grains, everything. That´s not to include the butchers. Num, num seeing huge chunks of meat hanging all day. Seeing chicken piled high with no refrigeration. So many interesting things are excited to be seen at the market.

After we walked around the market, we went to a bakery and got a few patries for a hike we were planning on doing. We took what they call a camíoneta to this area. A camíoneta is prety much a taxi. You tell them where you want to go, negotiate a price and hop in the back of their truck. We settled on $10.00 for him to take us about 17km up the side of this mountains where we did our hike.

The ride up this mountain was so amazing. You are sitting in the back of this truck seeing where you have been. Riding up this stone road that seemed rather endless, you couldn´t help but to be struck by the beauty of the Andes. It also seemed strange that the road would even be there. I mean, it was stone the whole way up this mountain.

Our camíoneta came to a stop in the middle of nowhere next to this lake high in the mountains. We started hiking on this, now dirt road around these lakes and mountains. We thought we were going to do a 3.9km hike, but instead it turned out being a 14.4km hike. It was still great. We walked and walked and came to a turn that went a long way up this mountain. When we got to the top, there was a sign that read, 3.981m (13,061ft).

When we arrived back to our start, there was another camíoneta waiting for a few other hikers. We got a ride down the mountain, back to the city for $5.00.

When we got back to town, we looked for a nice little hole in the wall place to have almuerso. Yup, another great $1.50 meal that filled us up. Once we finished that, we went back to the hostal, and I took a nap.