Oh the Places

After a long day at Machu Picchu, we had lunch in Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of the site. From there we took the nearly two hour train and then a two hour bus back to Cuzco. I was seriously worried our hotel would run out of water with us all hopping into much-needed showers at the same time, but no. I took the most amazing shower of my life.

Fresh and clean we all headed out to dinner with our guide, Javier, at this delicious place above a shady market and tattoo parlor. Then about half of us decided it was high time for a night out. We went with Javier, who I thought would know the hot spot in town, but instead we headed to “club corner” where we got mobbed by 10 or so club promoters until Javier worked out some deal and we ducked into this crazy-themed discoteca (I forgot you aren’t supposed to call them “clubs” because club can also mean brothel). Everything is so surprisingly eccentric is Cuzco!

Several boozy drinks later we made our way back to the hotel.

Day Eight:
I tried to iron out some issues with my hotel for that night. I had to change hotels but I wasn’t supposed to and blah blah blah confusion but basically they were supposed to come get me at 10, didn’t happen, so I headed out with the ladies after breakfast for shopping. We spent the morning gathering souvenirs and I finally found the perfect blankets I’d been searching for for my parents since I missed my chance at the Pisac market. Then we dropped into the Pre-Columbian Museum before buying chocolates and then having lunch at Jake’s Cafe, basically the English-mecca. After lunch we did a bit more shopping, stopped at Starbucks (don’t judge) and headed back to the hotel. I was bombarded with questions by a group of ill-prepared Australian girls who were heading out on the trek the next day. “Can I smoke on the trail?” “What kind of pants do I wear?” “Is the third day hard? The third day is my birthday.”

I said a quiet thanks to god for not putting me with those idiots.

That night we all met up for drinks and then dinner at Cicciolina. It was by far the best meal of the entire trip, and maybe one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I don’t remember what exactly we had for an appetizer, just that it was amazing. For my entree I had a squid-ink pasta with prawns and a creamy sauce and I about died. Dessert was caramelized bananas plus a sampling of the many chocolatey, fruity dishes that everyone else had ordered. It was perfect. I particularly loved someone’s balsamic strawberries with pisco ice cream.

And lots and lots of pisco sours.

Day Nine:
On my last day in Cuzco I met everyone for breakfast at Jake’s Cafe. We then said our goodbyes as most of them headed off to tour the Amazon or hopped a flight back home. I spent the morning hanging out around the city and reading in the square until it was time for my flight to Lima. My layover in Lima was eight hours so I thought I might as well go into the city for a bit. I had lunch/dinner at the LarcoMar, basically a huge, modern shopping center built into the cliff-side overlooking the ocean. It was perfect. Ceviche and more pisco sour. I hung out in the shops for a bit until I heard from one of the members of my group saying that he was in the shopping center as well. So we had some more pisco sours and hung out until I had to catch a cab back to the airport.

14 hours and a layover in Houston later and I was back in Seattle.

I miss it there already. Alex and I are having pisco sour night tonight.

The day I came all the way to Peru for.

Day Seven:
We woke up at 3:45. In the morning. AM. Yes. 3:45. I packed up my things and shoved a few pieces of bread in my half-awake face and lined up with everyone else around 5 at the checkpoint, which opened at 5:30. Once we were through, it was an easy peasy two hour hike to Machu Picchu.

Except that it was raining.

I had sort of expected it to rain the whole time so up until that point I was feeling very lucky. But when I woke up in my tent and heard the rain thudding against the canvas I was less than thrilled. At least it wasn’t the first day?

So we trudged through the rain, which eventually let up, wearing our plastic ponchos over the top of our gear. I think it would be better to call them sweat boxes because that is exactly what they were…steamy bags that kept the rain out while heating you up so much that you were drenched in sweat anyway. Yea…I was real attractive.

AND FINALLY! After what our guide called the oh-my-god-steps, which were actually not difficult, just frightening because they are straight up, like scaling a wall, we arrived at the Sun Gate. From the Sun Gate you should be able to have an amazing panoramic view of Machu Picchu, but all we had was clouds. We waited and waited and waited for them to clear while countless groups went past us, down the trail to the site. There were a handful of times were it seemed like it might burn off, but nothing.

So we headed down to the site. I was so full of excitement I could have cried!
We got there and had a victory beer (around 7:30 am) before starting the walking tour. It’s funny because there is this mix of dirty, tired people who just spent four days hiking to Machu Picchu, and clean people who just got of the two hour train now huffing and puffing their way up a flight of stairs. I was dirty and proud.

I’m just going to post some photos of Machu Picchu instead of trying to describe it. I will just say that it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Truly. I am floored just thinking about it and I am so lucky to have been able to go…I will never forget it in my life.

And that’s that.

I will say again that the hike was the hardest thing I’ve even done in my life. But it was also quite possibly the most fulfilling. I’m sure with time I’ll forget how bad it was because it’s so easy to just remember the photos above and the perfection of it all. I don’t know that I would do the hike again, but I will most definitely be back.

My deepest apologies. I spend 20+ hours at week sitting in front of a computer so it’s verrrry difficult for me to choose to do so lately. So here we go.

Day Five:
The second day of the hike was by far the hardest. We spent the first five hours going up. And up and up and up, climbing a total of 1,200 meters that mostly consisted of stairs. I stopped often. I thought my heart was going to explode at times (and not metaphorically). It was so incredibly difficult and I think everyone thinks I’m exaggerating but the truth is that I don’t really even know what to compare it to. The worst part is definitely the altitude, and at times I felt my body screaming at me for more oxygen but there just wasn’t any.

But then

You reach the top. It’s sort of awful because for the last two hours you can basically see where you are going the whole time, and you see all these little ant people up there, and it looks like a world away because it sort of is. But after one last miserable, uneven staircase, you’re there. Dead Woman’s Pass is the highest point of the trek at 4,200 meters. Whew!

See the littttttle people in the pass? Oh no? Yea probably not because that’s how damn far it is.

Made it!

And from there it is all down hill. The problem with this is that now your legs are so tired from the hike up that they shake non-stop the whole way down. So I went as fast as I could down each mismatched step to camp at the very bottom. And then it was nap time. Plus tea and dinner. I slept so well that night and I’m so glad because I didn’t sleep at all the night before.

Day Six:
Another early morning! This day was a combination of ups and downs and was all around difficult but we were over half way and just ready to get there. This was also the longest hiking day: 16 kilometers compared to 11 on the second day and 10 on the first. We went through two passes and stopped at several sites before arriving at camp around 4:00.

Headed here

View from the terraces in the photo above.

And once we got to camp same story pretty much: tea, dinner, gross bathrooms. Plus I decided it was high time to try and wash my hair. Which was a mistake. They give you a bucket filled with about an inch of warm water, so I dunked my head in, massaged some shampoo into my gross oily scalp, and then attempted to wash it out. The issue was that now I just had soap water so I could never actually get all the soap out of my hair, which just resulted in gross hair that had soap in it. Plus the organic stuff I bought (everything has to be biodegradable) doesn’t even wash out under the hardest of water pressure. So I will forever look gross in my photos.

Anyway! We were nearly finished with the hike. I had about 5 mosquito bites and a wicked sun burn but that was fine…we did the hard part.

The last night we also had a ceremony where we thanked our porters. I cannot stress enough what an amazing and difficult job they do. It would have been completely impossible for me to make this happen without them. So again, thank you, porters of the Inca trail.

Final day coming up.

I swear I’ll finish my trip posts. As soon as I’m not exhausted from school/work.

Day Four:
First hiking day.
I should start by saying that I’m not very outdoorsy, I don’t go hiking, I like to shower. I do enjoy camping, but mostly the romantic snuggle in a tent and make s’mores aspect of it. So I think I surprised even myself by signing up for this trip. I’ll say it again: it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically. I should also start by saying that I’m in decent shape and this hike seemed to be wearing on everyone in my group except the super-family from Canada.

The first day we left at 7:30 to start the hike. We dropped off our duffle bags with the porters and picked up our rental equipment. Our guide Javier had called this day “training day” so I sort of expected it to be easy but I was seriously wrong. It was just the easiest of the hard days. In total we hiked seven miles up and down through the Andes, eventually arriving at camp around 4:00. At camp we met all our porters, hands down the hardest working people I’ve ever encountered. They carry 40+ pounds on the trail and they literally run from site to site, setting up all our tents and cooking and making food. Absolutely no way could I have done the hike without them. After a celebratory beer and dinner we settled into our tents around 8. Real party animals.

I thought I would sleep so hard after the long tiring day, but I tossed and turned and finally decided to finish reading Mockingjay, which was a mistake because then I had to pee so bad but was half terrified to leave my tent. Shortly later one of my fellow hikers got sick and was up the entire night along with the rest of us. I don’t think I slept at all.

You see that pass wayyyy in the distance in the photo above? That’s where we were headed the next day.

Day Three:
After an early morning breakfast I packed up the duffel that I’d be taking on the hike with me and we left to tour the Sacred Valley. We first drove up to the tip top of Cuzco for the first of many Kodak Moments as Javier called them.

Our second stop was overlooking the Sacred Valley.

And from there we stopped by the Planeterra Project, which was sponsored by our tour company and teaches women weaving and knitting techniques they can use to produce goods and support themselves and their families. All the textiles were so beautiful and I was really impressed to see how much work goes in to a piece.

After that we stopped at the ruins of Pisac and the Pisac market. The ruins were massive and really impressive and at the market I ate the most delicious cheese bread.

We also stopped to try some local chicha…a fermented corn beverage. It was interesting. And eventually we checked in to our hotel in Ollantaytambo and hiked up the ruins there.

I was constantly floored by how beautiful and green Peru is. Everything is so pleasant. The next morning was the first of our hike days! I’ll update soon.

When I was about 7 years old I had what I think was a bingo set, or flash cards, or something educational with little squares filled with photos of different places all over the world. I couldn’t name what any of the other photos contained, except for one beautiful green, mountainous picture of Machu Picchu. And it’s probably the name that I remember most…Machu Picchu sounds very silly even now. My whole life I’ve wanted to go to this magical Inca site. So last month in the middle of an about-to-graduate/identity/future/relationship/life crisis, after realizing that this is my last spring break and maybe the last time I’ll really have to jet off to Peru for a four day hike, I found a tour and booked it.

And I’m almost hesitant to write about the experience, because nothing I say could do it justice, but here it goes…
The most difficult, rewarding, and fulfilling trip of my life so far.

Day One:
I finished my finals on Monday and was awake until 2 packing to leave for the airport at 5. After a long day of flying I arrived in the crazy Lima airport just after 10 that night and by the time I negotiated a cab and got to my hotel it was well after midnight. My roommate was asleep (I had booked an eight day group tour with shared room) so I quietly crept into bed.

Day Two:
Off to Cuzco! I met my fellow travelers in the morning: my roommate was a woman from Ireland, and also a young couple from the UK, a couple from London celebrating their 40th birthdays, two girls from San Francisco, a family of four from Canada, a man from Vancouver, and one other guy from Ireland. We would later be joined by two girls from Denmark. We took a bus to the airport and took a short flight to Cuzco, arriving around 1. From there, we met our amazing guide Javier who got us checked in to our hotel before taking us on a walking tour of the city. Cuzco is really incredible. After leaving the central marking, however, the sky opened up. Perfect time to duck in for lunch where one of the girls ordered guinea pig and I had some coca tea to deal with the altitude. We finished the tour at an Inca wall and that night me and some of my companions went to eat at the craziest restaurant, the Fallen Angel, which I won’t even try to describe except to say it was like a Dali painting met an army of cherubs.

We left for the Sacred Valley the next day.

Plaza de Armas

Cheese in the market

Fallen Angel

Have I mentioned that I could not be more excited?! Here’s what my hike looks like:

Friday: start the hike at 7:30, hike 10 kilometers stopping for lunch and Kodak moments, arrive at camp by 4:00

Saturday: (hard day) wake up at 5:30, hike five hours up 1,200 meters, have lunch, hike down 600 meters, total of 11 kilos, arrive at camp by 3:00

Sunday: wake up at 5:30, hike a total of 16 kilos through 2 passes, arrive at camp in the afternoon Monday: wake up at 3:45 (yes…3:45), and hike TWO HOURS TO MACHU PICCHU!!! Cannot wait.

After a crazy flying day that begun with a delay due to snow in Seattle (what?!) I finally arrived in Lima last night! But I’m back on a plane to Cuzco in an hour. I’m incredibly excited and I’ll try to update along the way, but I expect wifi to be sparse. Full updates and pictures when I get home! Adios!