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The Llanganuco Lakes , at 3850m above sea level, are only 26km from Yungay (83km from Huaraz), but take a good ninety minutes to reach by bus or truck, on a road that crawls up beside a canyon that is the result of thousands of years of Huascaran's meltwater. On the way you get a dramatic view across the valley and can clearly make out the path of the 1970 devastation. The last part of the drive - starkly beautiful but no fun for vertigo sufferers - slices through rocky crevices, and snakes around breathtaking precipices surrounded by small, windbent quenual trees and orchid bromeliads known locally as weclla. Well before reaching the lakes you pass through the entrance to the Huascaran National Park (daily 6am-6pm; $2 or $20 for hikers and mountaineers), located over 600m below the level of the lake; from here it's another 30 minutes or so by bus or truck to the lakes. The first lake you come to after the park entrance, is Chinan Cocha , named after a legendary princess. You can rent rowing boats here to venture onto the blue waters ($0.8 for 15min), and buy a picnic from the foodstalls, at the end of the lake. The road continues around Chinan Cocha's left bank and for a couple of kilometres on to the second lake, Orcon Cocha , named after a prince who fell in love with Chinan. The road ends here and a loop trail begins. A third, much smaller, lake was created between the two big ones, as a result of an avalanche caused by the 1970 earthquake, which also killed a group of hikers who were camped between the two lakes. Immediately to the south of the lakes is the unmistakable sight of the massive Huascaran ice cap , whose imposing peak tempts many people to make the difficult three-thousand-metre climb to the top. Surrounding Huascaran are scores of lesser glaciated mountains stretching for almost 200km and dividing the Amazon Basin from the Pacific watershed.
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