Llanganuco Lake - Peru

Llanganuco

 

After an overnight bus ride from Lima up to the mountain tourist city of Huaraz, we met up with some colleagues and began a journey in their 4X4 across the White Mountains to Yanama. We planned our trip so we could stop for a quick bag lunch at Llanganuco. This is one of the most beautiful high mountain lakes you’ll find. It is nestled between two mountains, one known as Husacaran, a popular climb. Llanganuco real is two lakes, one named Chinoncocha, which represents the feminine, and the other, Orgoncocha, representing the masculine. Much of Incan thought stressed a balance between the masculine and the feminine, cold and hot, high and low and so one. The same here. The water was an aqua blue due to the high concentration of minerals.  This proved to be a perfect place to hide Llanganuco (GC1QPKE). Just as I finished the hide, a car stopped. They were Quechua folks from Lima coming back to see the land their parents had migrated off of and to do some filming for their video. These folks were a singing group from an evangelical church. Check out the orange outfits.This is the second geocache in the entire department of Ancash. You would have to travel several hours to the south to find the next cache. Going north you would have to travel several days by ground transportation to find the next one in Ecuador. On this trip it is my goal to place three new caches in Ancash Department. These are being placed in locations frequented by tourist. From Llanganuco we began the almost immediate climb by 39 switchbacks up to the pass in the White Mountains to cross the continental divide. It took another 1.5 hours to traverse the 18 switchbacks coming down the eastern side of the divide and into the town of Yanama where we spent the next three days.