The SALKANTAY to MACHU PICCHU

Instead of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, we decided on the more adventurous Salkantay Trek, 5 days 4 nights. Our trip would start early on Easter morning, 3:45am was our wake-up time in order to be ready for our pickup. Juan Carlos, one of the guides, knocked on our hostel door at 4:20, and we walked down to the square where everyone was meeting, pickung up other groups along the way. All told we were: us two, James and Laura (UK), Mark and Pia (NZ), Mark and Marie (France), Salvador (Mexico), Guillermo (Arg), Alina (Ger), Malice (Italy), Markus and Gunilla (Swedes), Michelle (Ecu), Shane (Ire), and 5 Israeli's.

Our first stop would be Mollepata, a small town up in the hills where we could get breakfast and load our stuff onto "horseback." We started 'trekking' on the dirt roads out of town, winding up and through shortcuts in the hot sun. We broke for lunch and had our cooks make us up something tasty, then hey cleaned up and loaded everything back on the 'horses' which at this point was an old truck.. We continued waking and chatting until our first camp at Soraypampa (3900m). We had climbed just over 1000m and were feeling good. We passed a huge lodge on the way to our camp, hoping it would have our beds in it, but we found out later that this lodge is part of the slower Salkantay experience. They take 7 days, ride horses, stay in lodges/resorts, pay about 7 times as much as we did, but still looked pretty swanky!

Our tent site had been tarped off to lower exposure to wind and rain, we got no wet stuff that night, clear starry, Milky Way sky, nestled in between Apu Umantay (5459m) and Apu Salkantay (6264m). We were awoken early (5:00) by a call of "coca tea" and had time to pack up and get ready. Our trail today would take us to the pass between two mountains, and to the foot of The Savage Mountain (Salkantay). The pass was 4650m (15256ft) and we were all feeling the lack of oxygen. Photos were snapped and Team Sexy Cuys, our group of 8, had a few snaps as the mountain cleared, then we were off again, back down all the elevation we had just struggled up. This was our favorite day of trekking if only for the scenery, we got very lucky to have a clearish pass, then good conversation along the trail, the only bad part was descending 1750m! We had been promised hot showers (for a fee) at our next camp, but there was no hot water, and actually no running water at all ;) So it was a face wash in the stream (no water in the mouth!) and then snack time, with Kasey's favorite..popcorn!! They did an awkward introduction of our horsemen, who would be leaving us and throwing the extra weight we had put on the horses on our backs and of course we were expected, but not obligated, to tip. It's a bit difficult to know exactly where all the money you paid for a trip went when the guides, horsemen, cooks, everyone gets a tip too...

Day three we woke to damn roosters thinking the sun came up at 3:15am, then rain and eventually a coca tea call. Everyone was a little slow and stiff getting out of bed today but even the dreary weather couldn't dampen our spirits. We were back on dirt roads today and took a windy route down to the valley floor, passing the connecting trail to Choquequirao (a ruin complex that is a bit bigger than MP) Our 'trekking' today was only about 3 hours as we got a combi ride for the last 20km to Santa Teresa. After throwing our bags down, we grabbed swimmers and headed down to the hot springs down by the river. You got whistled at if you didn't shower before going into the pools, and it was funny to see some unshowered people's reactions to being whistled at.. We enjoyed the hot pools for about two hours and attempted to soothe our tired legs and shoulders. Three of our group had taken a bus straight to Aguas Calientes, because they had work and a wedding to attend, so we missed them the rest of the trip (Mark and Marie as well as Guillermo). Day three ended with a campfire and a few celebratory beverages (one group had a few too many).

Day 4 would be our latest time to sleep in, 6:30 I think, and ironically our longest distance traveling by foot, 25km. Some had elected to do a zipline thing, and skip out on the first half of walking, the rest of us carried on, up the valley, past some pretty impressive tunnels being built for another hydroelectric project. We lost our guide, Willy, at one point only to have him show up ahead of us, very mysterious (actually I think he took a car, maybe he was tired..) We eventually got to Hidroelectrica, where we stopped for our box lunch, and waited for the zipliners. After that the trail was all along the railroad track to Aguas Calientes. We only got passed by one train and I was thinking how easy it would be to ride that thing into town. We arrived to Aguas just before dinner time, Kasey and I had been booked into a hotel 5 more minutes uphill from all the others in our group, so we trudged our way up to, Puma's Inn for actually hot showers, and Ellen Degeneres on TV!!! Then we met back up wih the group for our last group dinner, and what do you know they made us pay for drinks!! Anyway we got our breakfast baggies, and instruction for tomorrow and Machu Picchu!

Day 5, Machu Picchu!! We rose at 3:50 to meet the group at 4:20, and headed out, most of the group had elected to walk from Aguas up to the main gate instead of taking the bus. Our route took us over the bridge and then up a windying set of stairs something like 1700-2000 stairs...in the pouring rain. We had plastic ponchos on but still managed to get wet from sweat or rain coming fom the ground up. We arrived at the main gate via headlamps and determination, and found people already pouring off buses, and standing under cover (I was thinking they should have to stand in the rain for a bit..) Our group finally got organized around 7am and we headed in, for our 2 hour tour, which eneded up being maybe 40 minutes. Our guide wasn't as informed or practiced in his presentation and we were a little more than bummed about that performance. It had been raining all morning and our guide kept telling us that by 10 or 11 it would clear up, well he was wrong, but it did eventually clear after 1:30 or so. Kase and I had climbed up HuaynaPicchu (Wayna Picchu) after a mad scramble from SunGate (with Mark and Pia) to the complete opposite end, only to find MP obscured in fog, we waited up there on the Inca's nose, being entertained by Luis and Ken talking about spirituality and the meaning of life, real deep stuff. We climbed to the tip-top of Huayna to take in a different view, and the clouds finally started to part! We snapped a few more pics before getting shooed off the top by a 'ranger type.' We tried to head to the Temple of the Moon, but were turned back by another 'ranger type.' Apparently they close these further sites down early so no one gets left behind. We wandered back through the main complex snapping shots where the rain had made it more difficult before, on our brief tour. We met our friends James and Laura who were snapping shots with their big Canon! So we hung out and snapped even more pictures as the sun had really burned off most of the surrounding clouds..

more info on a face to face breakdown of MP.

We finally left the park just before they closed and headed back down the stairs, a bus costing $10 US dollars, was a little ludicrously priced. We grabbed a fresh(ish) set of clothes before meeting everyone at Chez Maggie's, a pizza place we had been recommended very early in our trip. We ate and talked about the trek, eventually passing the time until we needed to go find the train station, we had a ticket for 9:30pm. Our train ride and snoozing (as there is little view at 9:30) and was interrupted numerous times by loud and apparently rich group of rude Argentinians. Then they pulled a bunch of us sleepy tourists off at Ollantaytambo, to catch a bus the rest of the way back to Cusco. We arrived in Cusco at 2:00am, sleepy and groggy as can be. Long day, 22 plus hours, but man was it worth it!!

We felt so lucky to have the weather break the way it did on Machu Picchu, because without that we wouldn't have been able to be checked off the old bucket list. .

Thanks for reading, we will see you all soon!!!

Life in Cusco

Well, as Jon said earlier, we spent about three weeks in Cusco volunteering and taking Spanish courses. I'll write a short blurb on those experiences for those of you who are interested.

We heard about both Spanish school and volunteer program through other travelers. For school, we found an organization called Fair Services, started and run by an awesome guy named John from Belgium. John has been living in Cusco for 12 years now and has a Peruvian wife and kids. Fair Services takes in single mothers and puts them through an intensive 600 plus hour course to teach them how to be Spanish teachers. Then, they become insructors for Fair Services. John had a new batch of teachers that just finished their training course and needed to gain confidence as instructors, so a discount was offered to students for the month of March...S/6 per hour, which equals just over $2 per hour for one on one instruction, an awesome deal!

Jon and I attended Fair Services, about a 30 minute walk from our hostal, Monday through Friday, 8am to noon. the first 2 hours were grammar, so in a classroom at the school one on one with a teacher and with workbooks provided by the school. The second two hours were one on one with another instructor for practical practice. We would walk around the city, visiting markets, museums and other locations just talking in Spanish and practicing our vocabulary and going over what we had covered in grammar class.

Fair Services also offered a Peruvian cooking course every Tuesday night. We only needed to pay S/5 and could show up with some booze and the teachers bought all of the ingredients and would instruct us on how to help prepare the meal. We made some delicious meals like Rocoto Relleno and Llomo Salado. we bought the schools cookbook with 9 recipes included so we can make some Peruvian food when we get back home! Salsa lessons were also offered on Friday nights, but since the school was so far away and Jon and I were usually doing things with other friends we never made it to those lessons unfortunately.

From 2:50 until 7pm, Monday through Friday, Jon and I were volunteering at the after school program for kids called Aldea Yanapay. "Yanapay" is Quechua for "help." It was run mostly by a local Cusquenan named Yuri. For the first few hours of the day, the kids were divided up into classes: art, computers, games and homework tutoring were a few. Jon found himself in the computer class for the two weeks we volunteered and I was in art. For the second half of the time, the kids were divided into Families based on their age. During family time, you had to discuss the theme of the week (helping others, love, acceptance, etc) and the kids needed to prepare a skit to demonstrate the theme for the Friday performances. At the end of the evening, some quinoa in milk was provided for every kid, and vitamins were given to the younger families of kids.

On Fridays, the restaurant associated with the Yanapay school would offer an all-you-can-eat buffet for the volunteers for S/15. Drinking and dancing usually ensued, and Jon and I had some of our latest nights with other volunteers in Cusco.

Our third week im Cusco Jon and I dedicated to Spanish school and meeting up with my friend Hayley who was in Peru for her spring break with other optometry students to do free vision screenings. It was awesome to meet up with her and show her our local favorites, like Jack's cafe (the best food we've had in Peru, western size and quality food that never disappointed, not to mention delicious brownies and milkshakes that weren't just milk and flavoring). In fact, Jon had a Jack's count, and we had to match the number of times we went to Jacks for brownies or other food with the number of times we hiked up to Christo Blanco, the white Jesus on top of a hill just outside of Cusco. We also had our 10 day tourist boleto at this time and spent our afternoons visiting ruins in the area on the ticket.

Overall, it was an extremely busy but fun 3 weeks in Cusco. It was nice to avoid long bus rides and the stress and money that it takes to move around a lot. But, by the end of the third week, we were getting stir crazy and we were ready for our next and final adventure...the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu!

Sacred Valley, Ruins and Legends

March 7th we arrived in Cusco/Cuzco/Qosqo depending on who you talked to. We had a direct bus from La Paz that took us around the bottom of Lake Titicaca and up the valley to Cusco. In Cusco we would get involved with two types of Spanish "schools" but I will leave that for Kasey to write about. This blog I hope to inform, those who would like, a bit about the Sacred Valley. These are mostly weekend trips that we did, and we had a great time on all of them.

Here we go:

oops, for most of these we needed to pay entry, so we bought a 10 day tourist boleto that would count for all but one of the sites.

SAQSAYHUAMAN or as we gringos call it "sexy woman"

Cusco really took shape when the ninth Inca (King) Pachakuteq started reorganizing and rebuilding a lot of places, he also started the expansion of the empire. His city Qosqo would take the shape of a Puma (a sacred animal) and the fortress of Saqsayhuaman would be the Puma's head. The site now overlooks the city from the north and was the site of a rebellion by the last Inca. This site has three tiered walls with some massive stones. Each of the walls have a zigzag that make them look like teeth. These walls and other buildings were ransacked by the Spaniards to build their houses (thy also just destroyed the temples and sacred areas) but the main walls have mostly been un-moved by weather or earthquakes, pretty spectacular in their construction, And in size of the stones used!

Saqsayhuaman has a large field where the native people still celebrate Inti Raymi, 'The Festival of the Sun.' There is also some 'slides' on the backside of a quarry looking area where the Inca probably had some fun, slipping down the rocks on their feet or maybe in their ceremonial dress (; Saqsayhuaman was the closest site to Cusco.

QÉNQO

Just up the road from Saqsayhuaman, we find the ceremonial site of Qénqo. This place was smallish, but held a semicircular ring around a massive stone (altar or something), and cool cuttings from the rockface. There was also a few channels at the top of the rock outcrop that had been made to drain the sacrificial blood, chicha or water down from a nother altar. And lastly there was a tunnel that had an flat stone cutout, a shelf in the stone and burial chambers. Seemed like a very spiritually centered place, and like most of these places we were left guessing about what we'd just seen or walked around.

LANLAKUYOQ

Not much of a ruin but a really cool playground of rocks, tunnels, narrow slot 'canyons', crevases, and shafts. I couldn't find much online about this place so I assumed it was a mining area, a playground for the little warriors, or a place to run to and confuse, scare, and ambush the would-be conquerors. I felt like I was wandering in an Indiana Jones film..

TAMBOMACHAY

These were apparently some pretty awesome baths to go to in the olden days. Incas would come here to bathe in the sacred and forever clean waters before doing a ceremony or big festival. it doesn't look like much now but water still flows out of the hill and down the channels built by a once great empire. I guess the other thing was that Kasey and I rode up there on a bus with a capacity of about 25, and I think there was at least 50 on te bus, so literally squeegeeing ourselves out of the bus into the downpour was an experience in itself. We didn't really need to see the baths when we were already soaked (;

PUKA PUKARA

Puka means red, Pukara means strength or fort, so PukaPukara is 'Red Strength' or 'Red Fort'. This site would have been a check point or rest place for people, messengers, merchants going from Cusco to the Sacred Valley or vise versa. It sits on a rocky prominence and would be easily defended from three sides. I think the Inca built many of these smaller forts or lookouts to help guard their territory as they were never without enemies.

MORAY 'crop circles'

The complex at Moray has been described a agricultural laboratory for the 'scientists' of the empire. There were over 4000 different kinds of potatoes, and I've heard numbers from 57 to 250 types of corn or maize. This site has over 20 levels of terraces in at least 4 different 'indents.' Archeologists have found multiple soil types at the different levels, and there is a 20C difference from bottom to top terrace. With different soils (carried in from all over the empire) and seeds from different regions, they were able to acclimate seeds and plants for foreign areas, get special characteristics for certain plans and modify others so they would grow in the high plains of the Altiplano. Basically ancient horticulture!

These plants all needed water so they irritated the levels too, but what to do about the bottom levels, wouldn't they just fill with water? They either dug down and created a drainage system or there is a natural occurring drainage at the bottom so that no matter how much rain the bottom level never floods!!

SALINAS (not realy a ruin site but cool anyway)

Near Moray, there is a spring that spits out salty water, actually 7% salt, that's twice as much as the oceans. Here the people have built rice paddy looking 'holds' for water. The water comes from the spring and is split up among 5000 or so shallow 'pools' and as the sun bakes off the water a salty crust forms. This salt has no iodine but does have small amounts of iron, magnesium, and a few other minerals, making it healthy and a commodity for Peru. The mines aren't running in the wet season as too much rain makes the water less concentrated in salts and evaporatiisn't effective enough to produce salts. The Incas may have used this site too to make salt as they needed it to dry their meats and other products for longer storage.

And now the big ones in the Sacred Valley proper.

PÍSAC

The site of Písac sits above the town of Písac. Písac (the town) now survives on the tours that come to town, the market on Sundays sprawls through every nook and cranny spreading from the central square. This square contains a very old tree that legend says Pizarro roped his horse to when he came (1533?) making the tree near 500 years old. Believable as the tree looks as its seen a number of years. Our guide also told us that the church holds mass in Quechua, the only one to do so in the region, every Sunday after normal service.

Písac the ruins, sits high above the markets and square, and we took a ride on the tour bus ;). Like Saqsayhuaman was the head of a Puma, Písac was built to resemble a 'pisaca' a type of partridge found in the valley. The site has many terraces, for agriculture and erosion control. They grew the best corn, white maize, here in the valley, and Písac would have been another stopping place to rest the llamas, get more food etc. to continue the journey. The main temples and storage for drying food were at the top of the spine where Písac layed across. Temples on top because they were easier to protect at the top, and closer to the gods and Apus, and storage houses because the wind kept the food dry with the wind and not soggy.

Písac would have protected the southern valley, Ollantaytambo protected the northern valley. Another interesting fact is that the walls across from Písac hold some thousands of tombs, many of which have been looted, but its still interesting to see an Incan grave 'wall.'

OLLANTAYTAMBO

This site keeps to the animal theme, and we find it in the shape of a llama. From the town, Ollantaytambo rises up the rockface like a pyramid, these terraces were for style only, no agriculture was done here, only beautification. Ollantaytambo was built with stone from across the river. National Geographic came to test a theory for how stones were moved (we found out how they cut stones at Machu Picchu). It would take some 7 thousand villagers or workers pulling ropes to move some of the more massive slabs, an they rolled them on wood rollers and/or stone ball bearings as big as bowling balls. They used ramps, like the Egyptians, to get the stones up to the cliffs and higher rockfaces. When they had accidents with big rocks they left them where they lay, in fields, because putting that stone up in a temple or other structure was seen as bad luck.

Ollantaytambo also has a few faces in the rocks, one has a man-made corona (crown) representing Apu Tunupa, a pilgrim knowledge giver in Incan Mythology. Another face, the north face has what is known as the 'inca face' and the winter solstice sunrise appears from this face when looked apon from the temple of the sun on top of Ollantaytambo. One of the temple walls has some unique architecture, 6 large slabs are spaced by smaller narrow slabs which could move and break during an earthquake and be replaced, rather than replacing a huge slab.. Many of the temple areas and structures were smashed to bits to promote Catholicism from the Spaniards.

CHINCHERO

Chinchero is the last stop on our tour, the main temple here has been overlayed by a massive church, but many of the terraces and walls can still be seen. We went on this part of the tour on a Sunday and the church had just closed, but we still got the lana demonstration. Wool from llamas, alpcas, and sometimes vicuñas is not ready to weave just yet. Ladies of the surrounding villages demonstrate how they wash the wool using a root that has saponins, which naturally clean the dirty wool. The next step is to spin the wool into various thickness depending on what you're making, then dye it. For this last step they use anything from plant leaves, flowers, roots and even a bug that lives on cacti, smooshing this bug gives a deep reddish/purple, a few drops of lime and the color turns bright red, put salt on it and it turns orange!! With this they can make many different natural colors to make their mantas, and clothing. A table runner sized piece of work would take 1 - 1.5 months to weave!

One final fact:

The Inca became such a wide spread empire not just from conquest but from integration. They picked the best parts of each culture they came in contact with and used these skills to enhance their knowledge or boost their warriors. Nazca for their astronomical knowledge. Tiwanaku and Chavin for their architectural genius. Huari (Wari) for their battle skills. Others for their knowledge in potery, weaving, crops, etc. Too bad the Spanish came along as white bearded men, or we could be looking at a completely different region..

Ollantaytambo, the sun god smiles

Moray

Písac from the temple area

Salinas, salt "mines"