The Sant Cruz Trek is a very popular 4 days, 3 nights trek through the Andes.

Day 1 - We were told to meet at the travel agency at 6am. We get there a little before 6 and wait. Six o'clock comes and goes and we're still waiting. At 630 we start trying to call them thinking this is typical South America. Finally a guy comes over fom another company and says that we are with them so we go and meet the other peple on the tour. We finally leave an hour and a half behind schedule on a bus that takes about 4 hours to get to the start of the trek. On the bus ride we stop in a few places to look at some awesome lagoons. The bus ride reaches the highest point of our journey over 5000 metres. There were 11 people, 2 guides, 1 cook and 5 donkeys. It was cold and raining as we start trekking through the snowcapped mountains for our first 4 hours 10 kms. Camp was at 4250m. They cooked up an amazing meal and the french guys we were with pulled out a bottle of wine to top it off! It was good to get to know everyone, although we did have one rather embarrassing moment when the someone turned to us and asked 'So how languages do you guys speak?'. This may not seem too embarrassing but in a tent where everyone except us can speak at least 3 we felt a bit dumb. Needless to say the answer 1 1/4 took a bit of the heat off. We had an early night so we were good to go the next big day.

Day 2 - Early start at 5.30am today but it was helped with the 'wake-up' tea of cocoa leaves that got delivered to our tent by the guide. It was the biggest day where we hiked to 4500mts. It was pretty hard hiking that high and we made it in about 4 hours. We chilled at the top of the mountain for about an hour had lunch and took in the amazing views of the tourquise lakes and snow capped mountains then had a seista. It only took us about 1.5 hours to trek down and arrived at camp about 3pm where our tents were set up and the cook has some tea biscuits and fruit ready. We had a little nap in our tent while it was raining outside because Junior had a little bit of altitude sickness. Another awesome meal then it was back to bed for an early night.

Day 3 - Today we had a great view of the Paramount Pictures snow capped mountain and trekked to a beautiful glacier. It was amazing. We even saw 2 avalanches while we were there. In the arvo we trekked for about 4 hours around a couple of really cool lakes and my feet were killing me so as soon as we got to the camp for that night I soaked my feet in the frezzing river. As a treat for the last night we got pop corn as our afternoon snack which was a bit exciting. That night we played a crazy french adaptation of the card game Uno with the group. They had made up heaps of weird rules and it was funny trying to get our head around them. After a few wines and rums the conversation inevitably turned to tipping the guides etc. which turned into a major for some reason. Junior and I just sat back and watched the arguement over a few dollars for a bit then went to bed for final night.

Day 4 - Today we got to sleep in till about 7am which was nice had a great pancake breakfast. We only had to walk about 2 hours which was great as my feet were not feeling the best. It was also good to finally beat the afternoon rain showers. It was a 3 hour bus trip back to Huaraz and everyone was so tired we slept for most of it. We booked a night bus as soon as we got back to Huaraz so we could get a move on to the south of Peru.

We booked with MountTrek and paid $100 USD but all the companies group together to get a full bus. If you are looking at doing this watch out who you book through and use only a recommended company.