Chile Chapter 3: Lauca National Park and attack on Volcán Guallatire
In this last part of our travel there was an unfortunate reduction of our explorational activities, due to me getting sick. First we stayed longer in the hostel in Putre, then we moved to the 20-house village Parinacota at 4300m of altitude. There I was able to walk around a little bit, probably due to the great lunches and dinners served by the local cook Albertina. The next step was a walk along Lago Chungará, where countless birds swim in the reflection of one of the world's most perfect volcanoes: Volcán Parinacota (6330m).
The climax of our journey was planned to be the ascend of the 6060m high Volcán Guallatire. So we rented a guide to take on this difficult climb, and after a one-day delay due to an over-active Carabiniero (you need permission to climb!), we gave it our best. At one point it looked good and we believed we'd reach the summit, but then I just ran out of energy. We made it to a saddle at 5800m above sealevel, which was very dissapointing at first, but really my limit. So in retrospective I'm actually quite proud we made it that far!