In reality, how easy or difficult is it for foreigners to organize all logistics locally after arriving in Huaraz? Any comparison to reliability / quality / cost compared to a guide agency? Obviously, guiding agencies say they are way more reliable, but that's a biased opinion:)

How reliable were the porters/cooks/etc that you've hired yourselves? Presumably you also had to rent gear for them.

This would be for heading to a popular camp like ishinca valley, for two different climbs: one acclimatization 2-3 days (eg ishinca), the second a main climb on toclla or ranca (4-5 days).

I've read a few stories about things being late/unreliable/etc, but it's not clear how that compares to the status quo...

I was pleased with the porters from Huaraz. However I will admit that we had a stove incident where our faulty stove leaked fuel and caught the rock near by on fire. The stove was from the town of Huaraz. The guys were friendly, I enjoyed the food (there was one occasion where one of our partners was expecting more, but he was a picky guy), kept the pack animals from running away well, and were decently timely. Don't expect perfect timing but they should be satisfactory.

Thanks for the details Josh. Did you book them ahead of time, or just pick them up along the way? By imperfect timing, do you mean hours, half a day, or...?

We've read that those who hire also need to get all necessary camping gear for porters / cooks / etc (seems you also did, eg the stove from huaraz). Was that your experience as well?

We've never had an issue hiring burros for either drop of or pick up, though it is usually easier to contact one of the principal guiding companies make the arrangements for you as they us their reliable 'go-to' guys, and is only marginally more expensive. If you are using guys to actually carry your stuff themselves..perhaps you are taking too much stuff? Generally that's frowned upon, but comes down to a philosophical difference of fair means etc.

I will say that the only time we ever had any sort of difficulty at all was with a single arriero in a very remote spot indeed who made a poor attempt at blackmailing us for more cash in the middle of nowhere, and that this was exacerbated somewhat by the language barrier. Something beyond conversational level Spanish can work wonders

pjc30943 wrote:Did you book them ahead of time, or just pick them up along the way? By imperfect timing, do you mean hours, half a day, or...?

We arranged our trips with porters a day or two before each climb (typically meeting the porter on the morning of the climb). I admit that I don't speak very much Spanish, hence it was very helpful having a partner who was able to do the translating for us. In addition to this we met someone in town (native Peruvian who was a guide) help us coordinate the burros and porters. Going to the mountains was nearly perfect in terms of timing. If my memory serves me right, it was one occasion where it took 30 minutes longer than expected for having them return. The scenery was so awesome that I don't recall it being a big deal at all. In fact I was happy about staying slightly longer due to being mesmerized by the outstanding view of Tocllaraju.

I hate to say it, but my memory is not as good as it used to be due to a climbing accident last year (brain damage). I don't ever recall waiting with a thought of "will they ever come".

pjc30943 wrote:We've read that those who hire also need to get all necessary camping gear for porters / cooks / etc (seems you also did, eg the stove from huaraz). Was that your experience as well?

Yes, this is true. I recall it was mostly food, cooking tools, and the tent. I don't recall it being anything beyond this. In our case we never had our porter do anything technical, hence making the gear part a little easier.