Canon del Pato and Laguna Paron

After a quiet night in the canyon, we were able to see our spot in the light of day and realise how it would have been even better if we had camped further down. It's one of the reasons I hate arriving in the dark; it’s so hard to gauge your surroundings. I could have stayed here another night, but time was ticking and we needed to push on.

Now we jump back for a second. 

First we’re sitting on the beach in Lobitos. Then in our chairs on the campsite in Piura. Lee is angry and I am trying to point out the positives. Firstly the roof rack, then the paintwork. Having paid $1500 to ultimately get Ruby resprayed, we were not to happy to see how badly the paint was holding up. This was particularly apparent after we washed her. There were huge chips out of the paintwork and then hundreds of tiny white dots, that looked like bubbles. As we had paid to have the more expensive paint, with the varnish, and we had not driven far at all, it was pretty disheartening. We messaged Mauricio, he said it seemed like the paint hadn’t been mixed correctly. This is the problem when you travel, any problems and you can’t go back. From a distance, Ruby still looked great, but you didn’t have to get too close before you saw the chunks missing from the brand new paint. I was the optimist here. I still felt that for the price we had paid, it wasn’t too bad a deal. Naturally it would have been nice if it had been done better, but on the whole the quality of the repairs underneath were good and paint could be retouched. 

Back to the present day.

Before leaving the canyon that morning, we needed to (again) put air in our suspension. We clearly hadn’t got the tubing routed well and it had gone through the hose again. This in itself was not a huge problem, we were equipped to fix this. However, it was now my turn to be the angry one. The large puddle of oil under the gearbox was the cause of this. It was hard to tell how much it had leaked, as we were parked on gravel, but it looked like a lot. It seemed like just a month after paying for an entire rebuild we had a serious problem and what made me really angry is that it was a problem now, in the middle of what should have been a beautiful scenic drive. Now, instead of enjoying the canyon, I’d be thinking about the gearbox. Looking at the amount of oil, we’d be lucky to make it Huaraz and so we decided to forget the loop and head straight there in case we had a major problem on our hands. We fixed the suspension pipe again and pumped it up to the point that our compressor completely broke, clearly that would have to do. Not in the best of moods, I began the drive down the canyon. 

Despite being in a horrible mood, I couldn’t stay that way for long. The canyon was spectacular. We had topped up our oil, and so at least for a moment I knew nothing bad should happen. The road wasn’t terrible, but required a bit of concentration and soon I forgot about our mechanical problems and focused on the drive ahead. This route is famous for its small rocky tunnels that are dotted along this road as it winds along the edge of the canyon. 

While the drive was a little rough in places, especially where there had been a landslide, it didn’t stop me enjoying the fantastic views. 

As we had decided to do a shorter route, we had a bit more time as we didn’t want to go to the national park at the weekend. So after a couple of hours we found another beautiful spot to stop at for the night. Turning of the main road we crossed over the river and drove a short distance back down the other side. This was a spot made for tourists to visit and enjoy the canyon in the past, but it was deserted. It looked like a landslide had gone through here too and possible the area was to hard to maintain against the elements so the local authorities had given up. It was perfect for us though, we pitched up in a large flat space above the river, with the whole thing to ourselves. As we had crossed to the other side there wasn’t even any traffic going past us, just the roar of the river and the tinkle of the cat's bells as they ran around exploring their new spot. 

Considering it was the weekend too, no one came. We liked it so much we decided to spend another night. We washed our clothes in the river and did a few more of the small niggly jobs that needed doing. When we parked up I stuck a plastic lid under the gearbox to monitor how much it was actually leaking and it made me feel slightly better the following morning to note that there was barely any oil underneath. The closest we got to visitors was big lorries that precariously climbed the hill behind us at night. It seemed they were perhaps visiting a quarry or something up there and we watched the zig zag up the steep hill and then return. The road was so sharp that they were forced to reverse back up the hill in order to get around the hairpins and from where we were sitting it looked like the edge of the truck hung out over the cliff. I didn’t envy them that, I was more than happy driving our tiny little camper on a road like this. 

The next day, we headed on. The canyon continued. There was the odd tiny town here, but on the whole it was barren rock, on and on. We climbed higher as we continued, past a hydroelectric station and then through even more tunnels. We left the river in the valley below us as the road began to wind higher up the cliff face. 

Again, it was a beautiful drive with hardly another car which was good when there were so many single tracks roads and tunnels to deal with. 

After a while, the canyon opened up and we emerged the other end. We continued a gradual climb up to the town of Caraz. A pretty little place, we stopped off at the market for a few supplies to see last us until we passed back through. Then after a short stop, we drove back up and out towards Laguna Paron. While it is possible to camp at the lake, at an altitude of 4200m, we didn’t want to head straight there. There weren’t many options to acclimatise on the way, but we settled for a big empty spot to the side of the road about half way up. The distant snow capped peaks behind us that we would be driving too in the morning turned pink in the setting sun and we settled down for another free night. 

In theory, it was only around an hour to reach the lake. This was a 26km drive that would see us nearly double our current altitude and we set off at a leisurely pace the following morning. On the whole, it was a decent, if very dusty dirt road. Ruby was doing us proud as we approached the entrance to the park. Supposedly the entrance was 5 soles per person, but the guy wanted to charge us 10. His downfall lay in the fact he was unable to calculate how much this would be for three days. In end we negotiated for 50 soles which is about £10, although we could probably have paid less. It didn’t seem unreasonable considering that there was no camping fee inside. They raised the barrier for us and we continued on. 

The road up to this point had been a very good gravel road. Now that was gone and we had a rocky mess. Not that it wasn’t passable, but it was slow, bumpy and single track. On some hairpins it was a trade off between the engine power to keep going on the incline and the speed not to smash something important on the floor. On the whole, it wasn’t too bad (the sprinter route buses did it all the time after all) but it was slow going and unrelentingly up. 

We were doing pretty good until we hit a small stream, not far from the top. I slowly edged over the deep ditch and got into it without a problem. Here the engine stalled completely and refused to start. This wasn’t the best timing as no one could get around us and as we were in a ditch we couldn’t roll back out of the way. Lee tried to push, but he wasn’t moving our campers fat arse anywhere. After a little while another car arrived. As they couldn’t pass us they had little choice but help push us out of the ditch and to the side on a wider bit of the road. Now at least we could take a minute to get her going again.

It didn’t take long. A dirty air filter and failing alternator had combined together to give us this situation. I removed the pre-filter from the air filter and bridged out our leisure batteries to the starter battery to give her enough juice and enough air again. She fired up right away and we were free to continue the last few kilometres to the lake. The drive was less steep now and we wound along next to a blue river through a mountainside dotted with bright blue lupins. It was a beautiful place and soon enough we were on the last bend before we reached our destination. 

There is a hostel up here, small car park and a very small restaurant. We pulled up into the car park which sit above the lake and for our endeavours we were rewarded with this, utterly spectacular, view. 

While we could have stayed in the car park, we opted to drive a short distance down the little dirt track on the other side. Then we wouldn’t be sitting in the car park with the tour buses and would have a little more space. This has got to be one of the most beautiful places we’ve stayed. The only problem for us, would be the altitude. 

In order to try and help with the sudden lack of air, I made myself two litres of tea. I always find high altitude is incredibly dehydrating and so I decided this time that I would not only be drinking a lot of water but also no alcohol. This did help keep the tell tale headache at bay, but unfortunately we both spent a sleepless night at the side of the lake. 

Despite feeling a little worse for wear in the morning, we were determined to hike. We wanted to walk the length of the lake and hike up to the two smaller lakes behind, the latter of which ended in a glacier. In the end, we didn’t make it far at all. We got about half way down the lake when the path stopped. There was a small rock face that dropped off straight into the lake and then the path was visible once again the other side. We tried several ways to get around this, climbing the nearly vertical grassy cliff above until we got to a point where we both felt like we were about to fall in the lake from a great height and there was still no path in sight. Other people had clearly tried this too, but it didn’t seem to be a way around. We tried another route to no avail. Then we decided that people must just cross the rocks. We got about halfway before we decided that we didn’t like this either. We didn’t want to risk falling into the water with our phones and Steve and so we decided enough, was enough. We had spent so long trying to get around anyway that we didn’t really have time to finsih the hike anyway. 

As we headed back, I had the bright idea that we could just kayak down the lake and then pick up the trail the other end. This seemed like a much better plan and we decided we’d do that tomorrow. For now, we headed back. Lee went and bought some eggs from the slightly confused people at the restaurant and I then tried to make a lemon drizzle cake which went horribly wrong at this altitude, it does funny things with the fat content. We hoped this night, we’d be better acclimatised and maybe get some sleep. 

As I lay awake in the small hours of the morning watching the minutes pass, it was safe to say that this was not the case. Lee hadn’t done any better than I had and so despite our best intentions, after two nights without sleep, neither of us could summon the motivation to kayak anywhere. Instead, we decided we would do the short hike to the mirador that was just above where we were parked, before heading back down. 

It wasn’t a long hike, but at this altitude I was struggling. Slowly, we made it to the peak. To one side of us where the turquoise waters of the lake and to the other the rugged slopes of the glacier. It was cold and beautiful. 

Despite this lovely spot, I was more than happy to be heading back down to lower climbs. Aimee on the other hand didn’t much care for what we wanted. She saw us packing, and trotted happily off into the bushes not to be seen again. Despite the fact that she had an air tag, we couldn’t find her anywhere. We sat in the cold, waiting for her highness to reappear. Occasionally I wandered around with my phone to see if it would pick her up and after about an hour it did. After scrambling up the hill behind, I found her happily nesting in a small bush. At least she let me collect her, sometimes she knows when she’s beat, and head back to the van. Finally, we could start our slow bumpy journey back to our lower camp spot for a guaranteed and much needed, night's sleep.