Llama Trekking to El Pueblo Rosas Pampa

The people of Rosas Pampa

The lake that we hiked to for lunch.

The gang in front of the one of the waterfalls we hiked too.

Muchas llamas

Saturday our one of our staff members Alejo and his son Jason took all of us girls on a Llama Trek up into the mountains. We left at 7am and drove up into the mountains armed with bread and candy for the village kids. Our first stop was in a little town called Santa Fe. We got out at what looked like a deserted town, however once one kid came and saw us he must of called the troops because all of a sudden like 15 people came to greet us. The moms of the town all had hand knitted hats and coin purses that we could buy, I got an authentic peruvian hat with earflaps! We passed out some bread and candies to our new friends and loaded back in the van and continued up into the mountains. We drove to the town of Rosas Pampa. This town is about 2 hours away from Ayacucho, and is very isolated. We brought them bread and candy, since they do not have access to stores to get it on a regular basis. The town itself is made up of around 300 people and about 250 of them are kids. Alejo explained to us that it was common to have 7 or 8 kids in this town, because there is no TV there.

After getting a little bit acclimated and enjoying some Coca tea, to help with the altitude sickness. We started our trek up into the mountains from this pueblo. We walked for 2 hours to a beautiful lake where we at our lunch. The lake was breathtakingly beautiful! We were surrounded by lush green landscape and snowcapped mountains off in the distance. After lunch we continued further up the mountain to our highest point of 15,600 ft into the Andes. Once at the top Alejo and the van were waiting for us. On the way back down the mountain we stopped to visit this really sweet old lady who was kind enough to show us how they lived in the mountains. It is customary to have 3 itty bitty houses per family. One house is where the family sleeps. Another for the kitchen and a final house is off in distance is another one that is used to store llama poop. That is right, a house just for poop. Since they live above the tree line, there is no firewood to start fires, so they use llama poop. We left what bread we had left with her. She was the sweetest little old lady, who was so friendly but only spoke Quecha. I felt so bad that I couldn't communicate with her without the help of our guides.

It was a lovely day with all the girls in the house going on this beautiful and fun Llama Trek.