This is about 20km into our backpacking. The fertile soil from recent glaciation sprang colorful life everywhere, even as the valley was changing colors for autumn. Little streams trickled here and there and fell into larger streams. Fording some of these was always a little sketchy when carrying a bunch of expensive camera equipment, but it was always worth it.

I can’t explain how often I stopped to take photos along this hike! I am sure it took about 4x as long as needed, but that was the point of the whole trip, after all…

If you zoom into the large or ( original size ), you can see the glowing blue glacier there, spilling out from between the edge of the Andes.