We woke to a landscape covered in snow, the frozen ground and all signs of life hidden beneath a layer of white powder. Due to the acute change in weather, we would delay our start on what was planned to be the final morning of our journey to the colorful Vinicunca. We packed the tent around…

Like the low rumbling of thunder after a sustained lightning strike, we woke to the sound of ice separating from Ausungate’s shelf, dispersing like shattered glass into a glacial depression filled with milky turquoise which fed into the hidden depths of the great lake before us. We quickly took to packing the site and refilling…

At five a.m. the older of the two caballeros turned on his lamp and began knocking around in the cabin. It was only thirty minutes before we had planed to get up, but out of principle I had to insist he quiet down and extinguish the light. After some convincing he did, but it was…

Just before dawn we tromped drowsily down to Plazoleta San Blas which was all but deserted at this early hour and hailed a cab to an obscure station where we would board a public bus for the Oncongate region of Peru. It was 5:55 am when we broke away from the terminal, our transport virtually…