Ahhhh, a decent night of sleep! Finally! And Matt woke up, having slept all night too, not having to run to the bathroom… He seems to be feeling better. 

We didn’t jump out of bed super early, but we headed to breakfast by about 7:30. Matt was able to eat, thank god. 

We went back to the room to chill for a bit – we decided yesterday it would be in our best interest to lay low a little bit today so we can hit it hard again tomorrow. 

We finally headed out and wandered in a different direction, which was entertaining. We found the REALLY nice hotels and the grocery stores. You know, where the people live.  Oh, and we found a really cute little artisan market that we wandered into, too. 

Eventually we made our way to San Pedro, where I’d seen a hat I really wanted to get. I can’t believe it, but we found it. I got me a really cute hand knit alpaca bucket hat. Yay! 

Afterwards , we made our way back to the Plaza de Armas and found some lunch – I really could have ceviche and pisco sours every day for lunch for the rest of my life. 

We exchanged some more cash, then went back to the hotel to chill for the afternoon. 

Eventually, I (at least) got hungry, and we went to the local brewery for dinner. 7Vidas actually had a decent IPA, hilariously enough called “Black Cat.” My sandwich de lomo was pretty good, too. When we were finished, we went back to the hotel and had an early night… 3:53 am alarm for tomorrow. 

As usual, I woke up a few minutes before the damned alarm…  We got up, grabbed our stuff, and walked outside (at 4:11 am)  just in time for a guy to yell, “LAURA LUHN?!?!?”

We got in the van, picked up the rest of the people on the tour, and we were off!

It took about an hour and a half to get to the breakfast spot, where we had a fairly good meal, buffet style, and some coffee… Then we continued up the road (now unpaved), which got worse the higher we got. 

Eventually we made it, got out of the van, and started walking.  The first little bit was super easy, just walking out a road. Then, we got to the point where you could rent horses, and that’s where it went STRAIGHT uphill… It reminded me of Belcher, which I love to hate most of the time back home. 

Up, up, up, and up a little more we went. We finally made it to the last turn, and all of a sudden, we were there! Humantay Lake most certainly lived up to all the hype. It was absolutely spectacular, with glaciated peaks behind it and a couple trickles of water dripping down the sheer cliff… I don’t even have the words to describe it. And it was so BLUE! Our guide explained that, yes, some of it was minerals, but mostly the color was the light refracting in the water and turning it that gorgeous shade of blue. He also mentioned that trout live in the lake, and that it’s a protected area…  I’m still trying to wrap my head around what we saw today. 

The hike back down was pretty anticlimactic, and we got back in the van to go to lunch, which was a another buffet at the same place as breakfast was. It was also pretty good. 

The van dropped us off in the middle of town, and we walked back to our hotel. We dropped our stuff and went in search of some pastries or something for dinner. We (finally – we were so damned tired we couldn’t do anything right) found some empanadas that we took back to our room with us. 

We showered, got our shit together for tomorrow, and ate our empanadas in bed. I think I was out by about 7:00 pm….

Here’s the video: