We arrived in this lovely mountain town with great plans to trek across the national park and maybe even climb a mountain. We leave having done a half hour walk spending hours on a bus to get there.
The problem was that it was just so hard to try and set anything up, unless you pay top dollar and book a tour. Every official we asked for information told us things were too far away, too hard, not allowed entry without a licensed guide. It all seemed so foreboding. After the event we finally managed to get a map and realised that it probably would have been really easy and there was absolutely no need for a guide what so ever.
We did manage a wee ramble near the tourist lake which was beautiful and made us want more, more more. The range of peaks nearby are all capped in deep snow and right up to the snow line are beautiful shrubs, flowers, trees and all manner of life that make it truly spectacular and so different from other mountain ranges that we have seen in the Andes so far. We got a collectivo up the tourist lake which is that spectacular turquoise blue colour that you only get really high in the mountains with freezing cold glacier melt water. It was ringed by pebbled beaches and pretty shrubs, with beautiful mountain daisies and all manner of flowers that I couldn't begin to name. So beautiful we are really sad we didn´t get to trek here and see more of the place.
