Trekking in the Cordillera de los Frailes: Part 1

5 am in Sucre - deserted streets. Just us heading to our pick up

 at Condor Trekking.

Breakfast at 3,600+ metres. Brand new Church built for the community at start of the Inka Trail.

Gorgeous Jan a few minutes down the Inka Trail. Check out those stones. Most from centuries ago, the local community now maintains it for tourism.

Moon over moon landscape: Bolivian Andes are impressive everywhere.

Water break along the trail toward Maragua. Lucille and Antoine (in back right) were part of our group fro day 2 and 3 as well.

Jan makes friends easily everywhere :)

Waiting for the local bus: Antoine, Lucille, Johnny (our guide who is about to go spend a year in Germany), and Jan.

Here are a few first impressions from our 3-day trek in the Cordillera de los Frailes, including that 1/2 day on the local bus back to Sucre today.

We went by car up to about 3,600m only to hike downhill on the Inka Trail for a few kilometres. We picked up a path along a river and then up into Maragua ´Crater´, a small village where we spent the first night. The hike went by a gorgeous waterfall around 2,800 m where we had lunch and then we got to hike uphill to get back up to about 3,100 m. That sure made for some heavy breathing on my part. But of course, that´s what I need to acclimatize to altitude gradually. Sleeping in Maragua - and then in Potolo for our second night - at about 3,100m also is part of that. Sleeping was actuallyt remarkably easy after long days hiking.

Condor Trekkers´ guides, David and Johnny, were great. Knowledgeable, kind, fine cooks and fun to be around. We will post pics from Jan´s camera shortly. With mine now officially out of battery, we took shots mostly with hers.