Laguna Wilcacocha

Today was election day in Peru. Unlike in the United States, voting is mandatory here, and there’s no voting by mail, which means you have to go back to the town you’re registered in to vote. I’d known all that in advance, but it hadn't occurred to me that, with huge numbers of people taking buses back to their hometowns, things would be closed today. In particular, the hiking tour I’d signed up for was cancelled the night before. So, instead of hiking to Laguna 69, I went to the much closer Laguna Wilcacocha, taking a local bus and getting off at the trailhead.










Along the way, I met a variety of sheep, dogs, donkeys, cows, and a couple of ecology masters students from Canada, who I hiked back with, and who stopped to take pictures of dung beetles (my kind of people).



This was a much lower hike than yesterday’s (11,000 feet instead of 16,000), and I felt a lot better after than I did yesterday. Good thing, too; if I’d had a headache, all the election-night fireworks would have been unpleasant.