Cordillera Blanca and South

I washed yesterday! mmmmm
So I started my hike last Monday from Colcabamba to do the classic Santa Cruz trek that goes east through the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range 8 hours north of Lima, it passes up a long vally in to incredible 6000m snow capped mountains. The scenery is mindblowing and all the mountains are so ragged and aggressive. The track topped out at a 4800m pass which I got up 3 or 4 steps at a time, and my completion of the pass coincided with the a Mexin group of mountaineers/ trekkers, who I fell in with that evening and were a great relief to my solitude, feeding me and generally being good comany (english speaking at least).

So being on my own in a country I barely speak the language of is presenting its own set of emotional challanges, I am finding my thoughs endlessly returning to the things I miss, friends, family and home comforts. The last few days have been better though, and I hope I continue to move more towards the moment.

My route over the next 10 days seems sparsly populated, but beyond that the route goes through alot more larger towns. It will be intereasting to see how it goes with very little outside contact, and then in to a more built up area, I wonder which I will prefer...

All the towns/ hamlets I pass through are built with hand-made adobe bricks, and are either bare, painted white, blue or have political slogans in white, red and blue (allways) concerning mining, local voting or loving the earth. I would love to know who paints all these on as they are very uniform in apperance and message.

Well I am thinking of eveyone who reads this (too much for my liking!) and I think the test will be the next 10 days. x