My driver recommended a trip to Laguna Pachar. “It’s beautiful,” he told me. I took his advice, and on a recent Sunday we headed to the lagoon. We drove to Lamay in the Sacred Valley and took a right that passed by the church and the main plaza. The paving soon turned into a well-maintained dirt road. Twisting and turning, it was wide enough in some places for only one vehicle. It ascended through a variety of landscapes, going through several small communities. A gurgling brook descended all the way from the lagoon, its white-foamed waters cascading down the mountain side beside the road, sometimes farther off to the right. In one area, the brook spread out in a small valley, creating an oasis of green trees, bushes and grass. We met only one car crammed with riders, perhaps going to the modest Sunday market, which we saw in one of the communities, and several men on bicycles.

The road rose above the tree line. A few farms were scattered over the terrain. A cluster of houses came into view just before the approach to the lagoon. Each compound had multiple buildings with thatched roofs, grouped behind a stone wall topped with thatch. Several homes, boasting small towers in front of them, looked as if they had just stepped out of a fairy tale. Two dwellings had a wide stripe, one white and the other rose-colored, painted longitudinally on the upper part of the house on either side of a tall door, which rose almost to the roof line. The effect created was of a giant cross on the front of each house.

A typical compound with thatched roofs

Signposts signaling sharp turns were poised like motionless sentinels along the deserted road. It had taken us an hour and a half to reach this desolate, remote area surrounded by mountains. Silence reigned. Even the wind, which was blowing, was soundless. It was cold.

We parked beside the road to have our first look at the lagoon. It lay below us, a dark blue, elongated eye. We were high enough so that we could see it in its entirety. In the distance, rectangular stone walls decorated the barren land. Driving down a track that turned off the road, we parked the car near the lagoon. A barbed wire fence shielded the lagoon, presumably to protect animals from straying close to the water. We raised part of the fence and cautiously slipped between the wires.

The wind was rippling the waters of the lagoon. We could hear a persistent buzzing. At the edge of the lagoon, we saw the origin of the noise; swarms of tiny insects were hovering above the water. Looking up at a hill above the main dirt road, we saw a spot of color moving against the vast landscape. It was a woman, wearing her colorful native hat and dress, walking at a fast pace. She soon disappeared out of sight, leaving the land once again only to us and the car.

Woman walking across the landscape

We sat on large rocks, admiring the patterns of shadows the clouds formed as they traveled over the lagoon and the austere mountains. Spread on the ground around us were colorful flat rocks containing red, yellow, white and silvery blue minerals. After selecting two as a souvenir, our last stop was at a pool surrounded by a peat bog off to one side of the lagoon. The water was bright red from iron deposits, its color a sharp contrast to the blue lagoon and the blue sky.

The red pool and peat bog

On our way back to Lamay, we paused to ask a man standing beside the road where the dirt road ended. He replied in Quechua. My driver understands some Quechua, but the man’s answer was beyond his comprehension. We met another man who was walking from one of the villages at a much lower level and asked the same question. He wiped the dripping perspiration from his face before telling us in Spanish that it arrived at Challabamba near Paucartambo (a secluded town some 68 miles northeast of Cusco and 44 miles east of Calca, near Lamay.) We gave him a bag of avocadoes, a luxury that he could not buy locally. He packed them in the manta slung over his shoulders, all the while thanking us profusely.

When we reentered Lamay, I was unprepared to see people, traffic and rows of buildings of more than one story. I was still back in that timeless space that enveloped the mountains and the beautiful lagoon.
 

If you are interested in visiting this or any of the innumerable beautiful places here in Peru, contact our travel consultant, Morten Jensen, at mbj@livinginperu.com or 51-1-221-9998.

If you are interested in visiting this or any of the countless beautiful places here in Peru, contact our travel consultant, Morten Jensen at mbj@peruexperience.com, www.peruexperience.com or 51-1-221-9998.

 

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