Peru

I posted all the Peru and Machu Picchu photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/HeidiH8000/ (click the Peru album). Most of the pictures of the trek and of Machu Picchu were taken by Marty, our fellow hiker. He had a fancy-schmancy camera that he kept around his neck for the whole hike, and it took better pictures than my little point-and-click anyway, so I just let him do the picture taking.

Dad and I met in San Francisco and began our 36-hour journey to Cusco. We left San Francisco at 1 a.m., had an eight-hour layover in San Salvador (where we couldn't leave the airport but we were able to take a nap in the terminal). Our next flight took us to Lima, where we had an overnight layover (about seven hours) in the airport. We could have gone into Lima and stayed in a hotel, but instead we spent the night in the airport. I had read a little bit about the Lima airport, and it sounded like we could get into the gate area and sleep on the chairs there, which sounded better than taking a cab 45 minutes into Lima, getting 4 hours of sleep, waking up early (our flight left at 5:30 a.m.), and hoping our cab was on time to get us back to the airport. However, the way it turned out, we COULDN'T get into the boarding area and had to spend the night either in the food court or on chairs in the ticketing area (if we were lucky enough to find a chair available...there were lots of people spending the night in that airport). So by the time we got to Cusco (around 7 a.m.) we were REALLY tired!

We got checked in to our hotel, and they gave us some complimentary coca tea while we waited for our rooms to be ready. The coca tea is supposed to help with altitude acclimatization, since Cusco is at about 11,000 feet. But for me, it just made me have to pee all day long, so I didn't drink it again. Neither Dad nor I had trouble with the altitude, at least not in Cusco, but we met other people who had trouble acclimating. Marty, who was the third tourist on our trek, said that as soon as he got off the airplane he was short of breath, nauseated, had a massive headache, and felt like he was "drunk without the benefits." But for me, all I noticed was that my heart was beating faster than it normally would after I walked up a flight of stairs to my hotel room.

We had to go down the street to sign the final paperwork for our tour, which was going to begin in two days, and then we went back to the hotel to take a nap. I was glad they had our rooms ready for us at 8 a.m.! The hotel was charming. It had a big courtyard with tables and chairs, where people could read books and sip their coca tea. The rooms were basic but clean and comfortable. And the hotel donated its profits to help the street children of Peru, so we felt like we were doing a good deed by staying there!

And Cusco itself was a very charming city. I couldn't get over how clean everything was! There was no trash in the gutters, no candy wrappers or drink cups or newspapers, no dirt! The people of Cusco really take care of that city. At one point I even saw a lady outside her shop mopping the sidewalk, which explained a lot. All of the sidewalks looked like they were mopped. One of my favorite places in Cusco was a big indoor market (not a sealed building like a supermarket, but a just structure with a big roof) where they sold everything: produce stands, prepared food, juice, blankets and clothing, medication, you name it! Seeing the raw chickens lying on tables, unwrapped and unrefrigerated, almost made me not want to eat meat while I was in Peru. But then I decided that if salmonella wasn't killing millions of Peruvians, I would probably be fine too. And I was.

We spent two days in Cusco, as required by our trek guides. They wanted us to become acclimated to the elevation in Cusco before going any higher. I got to eat a guinea pig, which now I never have to do again. The day we left, we had an orientation meeting with our guide, and we met Marty for the first time. Marty was great! He's from Vancouver, Canada (as opposed to Vancouver, Washington, where I used to live) and he's an avid backpacker. He had just completed a 7-day trip along the Pacific Coast before coming to Peru. He knew a lot about plants and birds and kept telling us what kinds of plants were were looking at. Marty was also a walking first-aid kit, carrying (and freely sharing) the kinds of supplies that Dad and I hadn't bothered to bring but later wished we had. At our orientation, our guides, Augusto and Marcelino, gave us a list of additional things we should purchase in Cusco before leaving that afternoon. We did a scavenger hunt around Cusco for a few hours, picking up Gatorade, a headlamp, extra batteries, heavy-duty bug repellent, and other things like that. Then we met back at the office to take a van ride to our trailhead.

The ride in the van took about 8 hours, with a stop for dinner along the way. We met up with our two cooks, Dionysos and Moises. I know I'm spelling their names wrong, but it's close enough. There's something poetic (or Greek) about having a cook named Dionysos. So first we drove UP a mountain for about two hours along the windiest, twistiest road I've ever been on. And then we drove DOWN the mountain for another two hours. Just trying to stay in my seat was hard; I was constantly trying to hold on to something to avoid getting thrown back and forth. The van had seatbelts and everything--it was perfectly safe--I just kept slamming into the guy next to me. I wasn't in a position where I could see out the front windshield but Dad and Marty were, and apparently the driving made them nervous. (Dad, now you know how we feel every time we get in a car with you.) After we got back down the mountain, the paved road became a gravel road and we bounced along for the next few hours. I don't ever get carsick, but I was feeling a little queasy by the time we stopped for dinner. We stopped in a small town at a little restaurant where they actually slaughtered the chickens out back...I saw them. The food was great, though!

Then we drove the rest of the way to our campsite. When we got to the campsite, Dad and Marty and I just stood around watching while the cooks and the guides set up all the tents and do all the work. I never did get comfortable with watching everyone else do the work while I was just supposed to sit around and benefit from it. I really wanted to be doing something to help out. But these guys had a system, everyone had a specific job, and my job was to stand there and watch.

The next day we got up around 6:00, had breakfast, and got ready to start hiking. Yay! A journey of 40 miles begins with a single step. We also met our two horse people, Lucrecia and Juan. I don't know the right job title for people who care for the horses...horse groomers? horse gurus? Anyway, the horses carried our tents and stuff, and Lucrecia and Juan took care of the horses. This brought our group up to nine people: Augusto and Marcelino (the guides), Dionysos and Moises (the cooks), Lucrecia and Juan, and Marty, Dad, and me. And now it was time to start hiking.

We started hiking up for about an hour to some Inca ruins in Vilcabamba. When the Spanish began their conquest of Peru and the rest of South America, the Inca (meaning the king) and many of his people fled into the mountains to Vilcabamba. They built a civilization there which lasted for about 40 years until the Spanish found the last Inca, brought him to Cusco, and killed him. These ruins were from that 40-year period. There were similar settlements all over the mountains of this region, but this was the royal city.

Then we hiked to our lunch spot. The cooks had gone ahead of us and set up tents for cooking. First they served us an avocado salad, which was delicious. And then they brought us soup, which was also wonderful, and Dad, Marty, and I thought we were done. But THEN they came out with the main course: meat, rice, veggies. There were three full platters of food for the three of us, plus Augusto and Marcelino! This is how things were at every meal, especially lunch and dinner. One morning for breakfast, they brought us a frosted cake! We were in the wilderness, with just a camp stove, and they made a cake and frosted it! The food was all delicious, of course.

So instead of describing every step of the journey, with all the rocks and trees and grass, I'll just let you look at the pictures and blog about the highlights. We started Day 2 by heading up to our first pass, at 14,100 feet. We started out in a valley around 10,500 feet, so the uphill slope was relentless. Marty was having a really hard time with the elevation, and he was frustrated because normally he's a strong hiker. He was embarassed that we kept having to stop to wait for him to catch his breath. Dad finally rushed on ahead of us, but I mostly stuck behind with the group. I'm a slow hiker anyway, and I liked looking at the scenery. I think the elevation affected me by making me giddy. I wasn't short of breath (any more than I normally would be after climbing straight uphill for 4,000 feet) but I was finding everything really funny. And finally we made it to the top of the pass! Yay, us! It took about 3 hours to climb to that point.

Going downhill, we sort of switched places. Marty was the downhill master, speeding ahead of everyone until he was quickly out of sight. Dad had a hard time going downhill, so he was slower. And I was in the middle again. But then when we were in a relatively flat area (like we were later that afternoon), I was the slow one. Dad and Marty kept asserting their alpha-male tendencies, jostling for the first-place position. Men! I was happy to bring up the rear. Besides, since one of the guides (usually Augusto) walked with the fast person and one of them (usually Marcelino) walked with the slow person, and I was usually in the middle when we were on the hills, I didn't often have a guide with me. It was fun to have Marcelino walking next to me that afternoon pointing out things that the others had missed, like a small cemetery at the side of the trail.

We were pretty wiped out that afternoon. When this picture was taken, we had about two more hours to go, and those two hours would be mostly uphill. We started climbing, and then the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. And then it started to hail. And then the lightning started a fire higher up on the mountain (many miles away, but we could see it clearly). I was feeling pretty miserable until the hail started, and then everything started to seem absolutely hilarious. I tried to keep my hilarity to myself, since Dad had sped ahead again and Marty was NOT in a mood to laugh. But it just seemed like the mountain gods were trying to curse us with everything they had, and we just kept going! When the mountain caught fire, I couldn't stop giggling. I blame the elevation.

Lucrecia was leading a horse for us, and we had been told that the horse was there to carry us if we were tired or if there was an emergency (like a broken leg). All day, our guides had been asking us if we wanted to ride. When we were about an hour from camp, Marty, who was looking pretty bad by that time, finally gave in and asked if he could ride the horse. But then they wouldn't let him! They said that it was unsafe to ride the horse in the rain (or hail) or when we were going uphill or downhill in the mud. Poor Marty had to keep going. When we finally got to camp, he and Dad (who had arrived about 20 minutes ahead of us) were both in bad shape, shivering, unable to get warm. I, on the other hand, warmed right up once I put on my thermal underwear. And we were all okay once we had some soup and sat in the warm cooking tent for a while.

Day 3 was just plain hard, all the way through. Part of the reason I put off writing this blog for so long was because I didn't like to think about Day 3. It was foggy all day, for starters, and it was raining most of the day, so the trail (when there was one) was muddy: the kind of thick, quicksand-like mud that would pull your shoes off. Walking on the grass wasn't any better because the grass was slippery and unstable, and we'd end up in the mud anyway. Remember in Lord of the Rings when Gollum is leading Frodo and Sam through the swamp, and they're hopping from one clump of grass to another through the water? That's what it was like, at a 30- to 45-degree slope uphill or downhill. We started the day by climbing to a pass that was 14,700 feet in elevation, which, incidentally, is higher than any mountain peak in the continental United States. We went up and up, and at some point it started to snow, which made it even more slippery. By the time we were getting close to the top (which we couldn't see because of the fog), I could barely breathe. Marty and I (Dad was far ahead of us) had settled into a rhythm where we would take 20 steps and then stop and take 10 breaths, then 20 steps and 10 breaths. Marty and I encouraged, cajoled, and threatened each other up to the top of the pass. It would have been a lot harder for me to do it if Marty hadn't been with me. We finally hauled ourselves over the top and collapsed on some boulders. Dad wanted us to gather around for a picture, but we ignored him. But after about three minutes of sitting on the top, we were cold so we had to keep moving. We thought downhill would be easier. Hah!

Marty sped down the slope almost like he was skiing, and Augusto went with him. I only saw them again two more times that day, when Augusto made Marty wait for us to catch up. Dad, who had a hard time going downhill, was far behind me with Marcelino. I was in the middle, in the fog, on a trail that was sometimes there but often nonexistent. At this point, Lucrecia sort of attached herself to me. I don't know if it was her idea or Augusto's, but she became my guide. She spoke no English, a little Spanish, but mostly Quechua. I spoke a tiny bit of Spanish ("Habla poco Espanol") and no Quechua. So we didn't talk at all. And it wasn't like we were really hiking together. I would walk through the fog towards the place I had last seen her, and then walk a little farther hoping I wasn't lost, and then Lucrecia's red coat would appear out of the fog. She would let me get to within about 20 yards of her and then she would start walking again. (I think I spooked the horse when I got too close.) It was like playing a video game (an adventure game like Zelda) where you're supposed to follow the bird or something, so you follow the bird to one tree, and then you look for it again, and follow it to the next tree.

At one point, Lucrecia had to fix something with the horse's saddle, so she gestured for me to walk downhill. The slope was more of a basin, so instead of being convex (curved up towards us) it was concave (curved downwards), which made it even harder to stay on my feet. I can't even guess how many times I fell into the mud that day, probably hundreds. Dad, I found out later, did even worse than I did, rolling down the hill until a boulder stopped him, falling with one leg above him and one beneath, sliding down the mountains. I never came close to getting seriously injured, though, and I really feel like I was protected. I had that old Amy Grant song "Angels watching over me, every step I take..." going through my head all day. Every step had to be carefully planned out, but since the footing wasn't stable (be it mud, rock, or grass) there was no time to carefully plan anything. I didn't get any pictures that day because it was usually a matter of life or death to just concentrate completely on where to put my feet. So, getting back to the story, I was descending into this basin without a trail, without a guide, with thick fog everywhere, just hoping that if I got lost that somebody would be able to find me. And out of nowhere, a dog appeared. I knew the dog; he had started following us near a pig farm the day before and he was a really good dog, although he sometimes got underfoot. But he was always with Dad or Marty; I didn't see much of him. He came up and started barking at me like he wanted me to follow, and he was leading me off to the right. I figured, what the heck, I haven't got any better ideas. So I followed him for a few hundred yards...right to Lucrecia, who was waiting for me! Then the dog went to follow someone else for the rest of the day.

I finally came to a flat area with a pasture, some cow sheds, and...Augusto and Marty! Halleluia, I had finally made it to the campsite! But...no. Augusto and Marty were just waiting for us to catch up before going farther. And so, after a rest, we set off again. Augusto said it was just an hour farther, which...I don't know if he was trying to be encouraging or what, but it was actually more than three more hours for me, and longer for Dad. Maybe Marty made it to the campsite in an hour, I don't know. We left the grass behind and started descending into the jungle on piles of granite that almost looked like stairs, but they weren't deliberately carved. The rocks were wet and slippery, and where there weren't rocks there was thick mud, which was also slippery. Breaking an ankle or a leg would have been so easy in this section of the trail. My legs were already shaking and tired, and my brain was tired from trying to find the best footing on the trail. Now we were on the hardest part yet! Several times the trail became a streambed, where we were wading in water that covered our shoes, and granite covered by water is SLICK! It was starting to get dark, the rain kept falling, and there was no sign of the bottom of the hill. I didn't think the trail would ever end.

Finally, finally, I saw our tents through the trees. I almost cried! I made my way to my tent, which was on a little ledge, maybe six inches high. I rested for a second, and then tried to lift my hiking pole into the tent. I didn't make it the first time (couldn't lift it six inches), so I leaned on the pole to rest for another minute, and then tried again to lift it into the tent. This time I got the bottom of the pole inside the flap, and I rested for another minute before pushing it the rest of the way into the tent. I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to climb into the tent myself, but it wasn't pretty. I've never had a harder day in my life, and while I'm glad I did it, I'm not sure I'd have the courage to go through it again.

The next morning, the sun was out, the mud had dried up, the fog was gone, it wasn't raining, and everything was completely different. We walked downhill on the same sort of trail we had walked on the day before, only this time it was easy with no mud. I could take step after step without falling! Such a novelty. Day 4 was easily my favorite day. I loved being able to see the jungle after seeing nothing but fog the day before. I took my time and strolled along the pleasant trail. Dad and Marty kept telling me to hurry up, since they stiffened up every time they had to wait for me. I was like, "Hey, how many times have I had to wait for the two of you on this trip? Deal with it." All too soon, it was over. 40 miles in 4 days! We said goodbye to Lucrecia and Juan, who were taking the horses back along the same trail (doing in two days what we had just done in four), and we got in a van that took us to some hot springs in Santa Teresa. The hot springs felt wonderful!

The cooks made us our last lunch, and then we got on a train to Aguas Calientes. The only way to get to Machu Picchu is by taking a bus from Aguas Calientes, because there's only one road to Machu Picchu and the road ends at Aguas Calientes. But you have to take a train to Aguas Calientes because no other roads run there! It was hard to wrap my mind around. It was a moderately-sized city, but it had no cars, since there was only one road and it only ran up to Machu Picchu. Everything else had to come in by train. Some sort of collusion between the bus company, the train company, and the government, I'm sure. We got to Aguas Calientes on a major city holiday: Machu Picchu Day. Apparently this was the anniversary of the date when Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham of Yale University. When we went to dinner (at a Mexican restaurant in town) there was a celebration happening in the town square, but the much larger celebration was happening just behind our hostel: 10,000 people in a soccer stadium listening to live bands and dancing. And the celebration went on all night. Literally. The last band stopped playing at 4:30 (I know because the silence woke me up). I slept through the music and the crowd noise okay, but I couldn't sleep through the fireworks and cannons which went off at midnight...and 1:00...and 2:00...

We slept in the next morning and then got on the bus for Machu Picchu. Since the previous day had been Machu Picchu Day, everyone had gone then for the celebration. So on the day we went, there weren't many people there. And I'm sure it can get crowded, but it's so big that it can handle hoardes of people. It was MUCH bigger than I thought it would be. Augusto and Marcelino took us around and pointed out temples, farm areas, living quarters, recreation areas, etc. The mystery to me is that Machu Picchu isn't THAT old (built in the 1400s) but nobody knows what it was for. In fact, by the time the Spanish came in the 1500s it wasn't being used anymore, and it was just forgotten in the jungle. Who built it, and where did they go? They couldn't have been driven out because of a battle or a force of nature, because then there would be legends about it. It's architecturally stunning, with every window facing a mountain peak or a temple, with gates on the mountains built so the sun comes directly over them during an equinox, and with the Inca Trail running hundreds of miles to Machu Picchu. And then it was just abandoned. There are theories about it being a royal summer residence, or a spa city, or a place of learning (an ancient university) but these are all just theories. Whatever it was, it was beautiful and peaceful, and I'm glad I got to see it.