Huaraz day trips Sep 2025

Getting to Huaraz is a bit of effort from Sydney. Two days of travel – a long-haul flight to Santiago, an intra-continental flight to Lima, a night in an airport hotel, and then a domestic flight to Huaraz. We eventually got to the first destination of our trip. My optimistic schedule had us going hiking the afternoon we arrived – we soon realised that was craziness. Not only were we contending with a 16 hour time difference, more importantly we’d gone from sea level to over 3,000m in one short flight. That I’d booked us an apartment not only on the upper slopes of town, but also 3 flights of stairs up the building, gave us more than enough of a workout for the first day!

The next day however we set out on our first acclimatisation walk.

Laguna Wilcacocha

7 September

Laguna Wilcacocha is a mere 6km return walk, rising to something I’d seen described as the “Wilcacocha Pond” in a blog – so my expectations for scenery were not overly high. If it wasn’t for foreigners needing to acclimatise I doubt this walk would get much attention. But as it is relatively close to Huaraz, and climbs to 3,720m it makes for an excellent first acclimatisation walk.

The first challenge was getting to the walk – we used the details from this very helpful blog to make our way to the Mercado Central de Huaraz and locate a Line 10/E colectivo (minibus). With S/2 clutched in our hands, not sure when or how we paid it*, we piled in with all the locals and hoped we’d end up in the right place. Twenty minutes later, feeling very accomplished, we were deposited at the trailhead.

From there it was pretty much just up and up and up. It was hard work with the altitude so very slow going! The higher we got the better the views of Cordillera Blanca. The route was mainly just winding up tracks/roads through a village. We felt somewhat at home as we wandered past stands of Tasmanian Blue Gums (which we saw in many places through South America).

When we eventually topped out at the ‘pond’ we were all ready for a rest to let our breath catch up with us. There were great views of the range, so ignoring the pond we gazed out on the mountains for an hour or so.

This was our first experience of the dogs of South America. We were somewhat nervous of them given the non-zero risk of rabies, but generally they just looked hopeful that we were going to share our lunch (we weren’t). The interactions between the dogs and the geese around the lake were far more vigorous!

It was a pretty hot day, and we were baking on the trail on the way down as there is little shade and you’re in the full sun. We passed many people on their way up who were not having a good time of it.

Our colectivo ride back to Huaraz was quite exciting – we’d thought the driver on the way out had been going fast, but by comparison to the trip back he’d been somewhat sedate.

*I’m not sure when the locals paid, but the kid managing the fares seemed somewhat used to hapless tourists doing this route and just took our money when we got out.

Laguna Rocotuyoc (Pacchoruri Valley)

8 September

The early morning peace was shattered by a council worker wielding a whipper-snipper on the median strip below our apartment at 6am. Once we’d worked out what was causing the racket we were somewhat relieved. The grass was cut about as low as it could go – so we were confident it wasn’t going to need any further attention while we were there.

The trip to Laguna Rocotuyoc is more of a bus trip than a walk, but the important thing is gaining altitude. We were picked up at 8:30am and after collecting everyone, headed out on the road past the airport. We stopped at a café where it was unclear to us what was happening. Our Spanish-speaking guide had little interest in communicating with us and eventually gave us ’20 minutes, tea, coffee’. We weren’t interested in tea/coffee so just hung out outside with various other English-speakers from the many tour buses that had all stopped at the café at the same time. Just as we were about to leave a guy from Canberra (from a different bus) says “You know why we’re here, right? to pre-order lunch to eat on the way back”. Right… well, I guess we weren’t getting any lunch.

From there it was 1.25 hours of driving up very windy roads to reach the trailhead at 12pm. The trailhead was at 4,500m and our ‘hike’ followed the shore of Laguna Rocotuyoc to another small laguna which feeds it.

The shoreline track undulated somewhat and there was 50m climb to the other lake – 50 metres of ascent has never felt so hard!

The secondary lake was stunning – our first views of icebergs for the trip. If only we had lunch to eat while we sat and appreciated it – instead we had some manky apples.

At 2:30pm we departed, hoping that the lunch situation was incorrect given how late it was. But, no, 3:40pm back at the café and everyone else had their pre-ordered lunches. At least we weren’t really hungry! By the time they had all eaten we didn’t get back to Huaraz till 5pm.

The adventure for the day didn’t stop there. We were just about to head out for dinner (which we were pretty keen for given the lack of lunch) when power went out for the entire valley. We waited a bit but it didn’t come back on so eventually we decided we needed to go look for something to eat – we didn’t have anything in the apartment, unlike at home when you have a pantry to fall back on. After much walking, we found a place that was preparing kebabs on a gas burner so with much relief we got something in our stomachs!

Laguna 69

9 September

Another bus trip but this time a 5:20am pick-up. To our surprise it was an almost full-size bus. To my relief the person who called on approach had some English, unlike the day before. We tried to settle in for the long drive but between uncomfortable seats, people not using headphones and general conversation I didn’t manage any sleep. We had a half-hour stop by police (?), but eventually got back on our way and after many winding dirt roads stopped for breakfast. The breakfast place had a very efficient system of taking orders and food appearing within minutes. The orderer struggled with Jo’s name – since there’s not really a J sound in Spanish.

Then it was back in the bus for more windy switchbacks. We had a brief photo stop at a lake and then we arrived at the trailhead around 9:30am. Our time budget for the day was 3 hours to ascend 700m/6km, an hour at the lake, then 2 hours to descend. We would get turned around if we weren’t tracking to that.

The track started flattish – and we needed to slow our pace, as despite the flat, we were already at 3,900m and working hard on the smallest of inclines. Unusually Tom was well in front of me and Jo – normally he’s lagging behind taking photos, but we were moving far slower than he was.

After the flattish section the track moves into a series of gentle switchbacks which Jo & I felt quite good on and we overtook a lot of people. I’d not yet learnt ‘permiso’ (permission?) was the more appropriate phrase, and spouted a lot of ‘disculpe’ (excuse me) the whole way up.

The track then goes into another flat section at around 4,300m which was deceptively hard as it did have a slight incline. The final 250m of ascent was up steeper switchbacks and was brutal. We all found the last section pretty tough, but made it up to Laguna 69 in 2 hours 40 minutes.

The sun even came out and we found a nice spot for lunch somewhat away from the hordes doing their insta-photo shoots.

We felt better once we were sitting down, but even getting up to take a photo brought on headspins. That’s what 4,600m feels like on day 4 of acclimatisation apparently!

Obviously the descent was far easier and I chatted with a random guy, Leo, most of the way down. At the bottom he wanted a photo with me to send to his parents!?

From there it was straight on the bus for a tedious 3.5 hour drive back to Huaraz. The bus was very warm and we were all feeling pretty rubbish by the time we got off. Unsurprisingly we were pretty early to bed that night!

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We had intended to get to Laguna Churup the following day but ended up having two rest days instead, so that we weren’t exhausted going into the Huayhuash Circuit.