South America Explorations: Week 2 - Mountain Climbing Redemption

Saturday, October 19^th, 2013

Parting is such sweet sorrow – Roberto and I left our 17 new best friends early this morning to catch the first of two buses to Nazca to see the famed Nazca Lines. Our ultimate destination is Cusco, where we’ll start a 5-day hike on Tuesday morning. Flights from Lima certainly would have gotten us to Cusco quicker, but we figured we could take a few buses and get in a flight over the Nazca Lines for about the same price.

When we got to the bus terminal at 5am, we learned that the website is full of lies and the first direct bus to Ica (about 70% of the trip to Nazca) leaves at 6am and not 5:30am as we were led to believe. This additional 30 minutes of sleep may not seem like much, but to us it would have been a whopping 50% increase. Nevertheless, we were counting on catching up on some zzz’s on the buses.

Bus #1 to Ica was a nicer luxury-ish bus. What qualifies a bus to be luxury-ish verses standard run-of-the-mill you may ask? Well, luxury-ish adds an additional doorway between the bus driver and the passengers. After all, who wants to share airspace with the bus driver – what are we, animals? Unfortunately, this additional door had the added feature of hitting my knee in our prime position no-legroom front row seats. This is important because luxury-ish also comes with an attendant whose undocumented sole purpose is to open the door into my knee right at that point when I’m about to fall asleep. So glad we upgraded.

Bus #2 was run-of-the-mill, and as such it stopped every 15 seconds on the off-chance that there was a random Peruvian wanting to go in the direction of Nazca. Our seats this time were not in the front row, but somehow we managed to get an aisle that had the least legroom possible. Seriously – my knees were pushed up against the seat in front of us and you all know how short I am. Roberto checked some of the other seats for comparison using the oh-so-accurate “hand-lengths” method and found that we were shorted approximately 28.57%. I’m still waiting for my refund.

Finally, we arrived to the Nazca bus station early in the afternoon and immediately went in search of two things: an overnight bus to Cusco and a flight to see the Nazca Lines. Within 20 minutes, Roberto had this sorted out for us. Next up: food, since we had frighteningly little all day. Unfortunately, the flights over the Nazca Lines take a lot of hard banks and fly at pretty low levels, so the dude told us not to eat until we got back. They ferried us over to the Nazca local airport where we played the hurry-up-and-wait game again for another hour or so.

The flight was, well… underwhelming. Roberto summed up our experience perfectly: “Reality doesn’t do the pictures justice.” We both would have just preferred to save our $90 and fall asleep during the National Geographic TV documentary again. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t that either of us thought that the Nazca Lines aren’t a neat part of history… it’s just that seeing it in a plane didn’t really add much to the experience for us. We would have preferred to go on the bus and see a few of them in person from a raised platform. But hey, at least I got to tick off one more box on my way to see all 981 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so that’s gotta count for something, right? They should make a passport for that.

After dinner, we walked around the town of Nazca and quickly realized how fortunate we were to not be spending a full day here. There’s really nothing to do… so we were quite happy to board our bus when it showed up an hour late at 10:30pm.

Sunday, October 20^th, 2013

The bus ride to Cusco was not fun. We upgraded to the full-recline leatherette seats on the first floor of the bus at my urging, given that I didn’t want to go two days without sleep. Unfortunately, this upgrade also included full heat all night (with no method to regulate) plus Fast and Furious 6 in unnecessarily loud Spanish with Spanish subtitles for those unable to hear the aforementioned unnecessarily loud Spanish.

Fortunately, we had a stop this morning at some random little café off the side of the road. By the time we realized that the other passengers were ordering breakfast, we learned that they were completely out of food. But they did manage to scrounge together two pieces of bread for us. I considered going back for seconds. After about 30 minutes, we noticed a gathering of people at the back of the bus staring at the engine. The solution to the problem was several bucketloads of water, so I can only assume that the engine was overheating, but when we got back on the bus – they immediately put the A/C on full blast, which seems to me to be the opposite of what you’d want to do with an overheating vehicle.

When we finally arrived at Cusco, we were thrilled to be able to check into our room and get a nap in after an unrestful few days. The only benefit we had by taking the bus instead of flying from Lima is that we had a chance to acclimatize to the high altitude gradually vs all-in when you step off the plane.

Of course, as luck would have it, when we arrived to the hotel, they told us that the hot water heater for our room was not working so they moved us to a sister hotel a block or two away – our new room was more of an attic than anything else, but it was large and spacious and had the most important element: beds. There was still noise though: a random parade or demonstration of sorts a few blocks away and then the most random explosion of fireworks several times an hour, presumably to commemorate every time a local 4 year old puts his/her shoes on the correct feet.

After a quick nap, we headed out for a very brief walk around town and grabbed an early dinner before heading back to the hotel to conk out. During the brief walks, the impact of the altitude was readily apparent to me, particularly after walking up steps. That’s a really quick and easy way to feel old. 

Monday, October 21^st, 2013

I was awoken this morning to the sound of church bells. It seems that the bellringers were having a ring-off and trying to outduel one another on most progressive usage of church bells. I think the guy who rang the bells in an A-A-A-B pattern was much better than the one who was extoling the virtues of A-A-A-A-B. My mere wish is that their duel did not take 4 hours to fully play out from 3:30am to after 7am. Roberto was fairly oblivious to this duel, so I got to recount the intense action to him whence he awoke.

The city of Cusco itself is at 3310m (almost 11,000 ft) and was the capital of the Inca empire. Once the evil Spaniards descended upon the area and wrestled control, they systematically went about destroying everything they could – sending anything of value back to the motherland and building churches atop existing Incan religious sites to push Catholicism. Even so, Incan architecture was much more stable (due to degree of difficulty) than colonial architecture – the Spaniards realized this and left many of the building foundations in place. Walking around the city is a neat adventure in itself – the streets are very narrow despite two lanes of traffic, the building architecture varies from ancient Incan to colonial to modern, and the streets aren’t always laid out in a nice grid-like fashion which led us to getting lost on more than one occasion. Beyond that, I always felt like there was just this indescribable glow about the place that made you just want to sit and stare.

Roberto and I did very little of tourist value today – we took a quick and relatively cheap tour of the smaller of the two churches on the main square of town. It was called La Compania de Jesus, which I think translates roughly to The Jesus Company, which immediately makes my mind wander to the commercial aspect of religion and I figure I should stop writing my thoughts right about now before I inadvertently offend people. Perhaps I’ll write an essay on religion later in my travels.

What I did learn on the tour sums up to a few things: 1) no, you really are NOT allowed to take pictures regardless of flash/no flash; 2) all of the paintings/sculptures of Jesus tend to have him bowing his head down; 3) Jesus tends to be depicted in darker skin tones versus what we’re accustomed to seeing in the US and 4) there seems to be some strange fascination of showing the Virgin Mary feeding Jesus with a full boob exposed along with milk driplets.

That evening, we went to the office of our tour operator, Q’ente, to get a briefing on the 5-day expedition to the ruins of Choquequirao that we had signed up for a few months prior and would start in the morning. We learned that no one else had signed up and that it would just be us (I expected this). We also got a glimpse that our guide, Raul, was not that much of a guide… and by that, I just mean that he didn’t tell us much.

Why Choquequirao? Well, some of you astute readers may remember that I did a 7-day hike 9 years ago in Peru that culminated in Machu Picchu. I found Machu Picchu to be fascinating, but just overrun with throngs of tourists by the time we got there. And I’m sure that 9 years later, the government and industry has only found even more ways to conveniently pack in more tourists. Choquequirao, on the other hand, is almost a sister-site to Machu Picchu that isn’t frequented very much at all due to the difficulty of getting there. This hike is widely considered the most challenging of the standard hikes offered by tour guides in the area. In fact, most people we mentioned our trip to would generally respond how much they wanted to go there as well, but that it was too difficult (including Zenon from last week).

After re-packing our belongings into a bag that we would leave at the hotel and a bag that we would take on the hike with us, Roberto and I went out for a later than anticipated dinner and unfortunately picked a crappy restaurant. I had nachos & guacamole for an appetizer and it was so unappetizing that I barely finished the guac – under normal circumstances, this would be grounds for suspension. My main of spaghetti Bolognese was even more inedible. Our plan to have a nice large final supper before 5 days of hiking food was unfortunately not to be.

Tuesday, October 22^nd, 2013

Roberto and I got up bright and early this morning to freshen up and meet Raul on the pre-determined street corner at 5am. We had about a 4-5 hour drive ahead of us prior to lunch and starting our hike, and I guess they wanted to get a jump on traffic.

Along the way, we picked up our cook Aurelio, and some random lady looking for a ride to transport groceries from the market to her house. As most locals don’t own cars and the area is obviously very hilly, hitching for a ride is very common in exchange for a handful of Peruvian soles (local currency).

After dropping our hitchhiker, we stopped by a local marketplace for breakfast… which for us would be a small pitcher of mixto jugo (mixed fruit juice). We thought we were just getting a glass of juice each, so we were a bit surprised when the lady handed us a full pitcher – and it was oh so good, too. Outside of the market, Raul treated us to a local favorite called chicha, which I believe is a pureed purple maize (or maybe it’s a purple potato?) with some evaporated milk. It tasted great as well.

When we arrived in the small town of Cachora, we sat around for a bit while Aurelio made lunch. We were basically on the property of the horseman’s family – the horseman owns and manages the horses that will carry our gear for us to Choquequirao. Well, that’s only half true… there’s a river that isn’t really crossable by horses, so there will be another horseman on the other side of the river to handle that part of the trip for us. But anyway, after watching chickens peck around the yard for about an hour, we went inside and had our lunch and before long, we were on our way for the afternoon’s hike.

Today’s hike was pretty straightforward and simple – the first half was alternately on an unpaved road and a scenic woodsy trail with an overall slight uphill grade, though nothing too strenuous. The second half quickly changed to a steeper downhill grade of switchbacks – we were essentially descending to try and get down to the river so that we could cross over to the mountain where the Choquequirao ruins were. The destination for this afternoon was a lodge of sorts set up and maintained by a local family that was a few kilometers away from the river crossing.

I suppose before I get into the thick of the hike, I ought to break this down into smart and dumb choices – for those of you who haven’t read my recap of my Kilimanjaro hike, you might want scan through real quick for this to make perfect sense.

Dumb Choices:

1.       My training regimen for this hike consisted of leisurely evening walks with my dogs, 5 or 6 quick 2-4 mile jogs in the past month, playing pick-up ultimate Frisbee twice, lugging around concrete last Friday morning, and carrying Venita piggy-back for four blocks.

2.       My daypack of choice for this trip is kinda small and not exactly comfortable. I wish I had brought something a bit more versatile and with a hydration bladder (Camelbak).

Smart choices:

1.       I left all my cotton clothing at home and only brought synthetics. In fact, very few of the clothes that I brought were in my wardrobe 3 months ago.

2.       I remembered to bring my walking sticks too. Love those.

3.       I avoided the Diamox completely, and fortunately malaria pills were not necessary.

4.       I brought my own sleeping bag. It’s a bit bigger than I hoped, since I bought a 0-degree bag.

5.       I packed earplugs (plus a spare set) and Zzzquil in case I have insomnia.

6.       I brought a very lightweight filter for water – it’s made by Sawyer and is both cheaper and lighter than most of the offerings on the market.

7.       I researched and bought a real camera for this trip – it’s mirrorless, which makes it much more lightweight and compact than standard dSLRs. If you’re in the market for a camera, I highly suggest taking a hard look at the mirrorless offerings. Mine’s an Olympus OM-D EM-5. Unfortunately, the kit zoom lens that came with it wasn’t as compact as I had hoped and rendered the camera far less accessible than Roberto’s point & shoot which hung on his backpack straps. As they say, the best camera is the one you have on you.

Since the smart choices outnumber the dumb ones, I’m guessing you can figure out already how this hike went. That, my friends, is a trick I learned from Shakespeare called foreshadowing or some crap like that.

Early on in the hike today close to the town, a small dog began following us and stayed with us all night. Her tail was trimmed a bit, so I named her “Nubbie”. I gave her a bit of my food that evening at dinner, and I believe the cook gave her some scraps as well. Nubbie also stood guard and slept right outside our tent that night.

We passed by a number of hikers today – either on the trail or at the campsite – and every single one of them was carrying their own gear. Roberto quickly started to feel like a bit of a wuss, since he frequently backpacks for multiple days without assistance. Me? Not so much. I don’t know that I could handle my own pack plus food & tent and all that good stuff, so I was fine wussing out a bit. I also had been under the impression that it was a requirement to have a guide, but clearly my assumption was wrong here.

Wednesday, October 23^rd, 2013



Happy fun skull guy says
"Don't Use Headphones!"

We got up early this morning because we wanted to get an early start for the long climb ahead. Our destination today was the actual campgrounds at Choquequirao, but this would require a ridiculous number of very steep switchbacks. It was best to get as much done before the full sun came out. After a quick breakfast, we were on our way by 6:30am or 7am. We still had a few downhill kilometers left to get to the river. There used to be a bridge here, but it got washed out a few years back during a heavy storm in the rainy season. There were workers there building a new bridge a bit higher up, but in the meantime we had to use a manual cable trolley system that they had set up. Horses definitely could not pass on this small cable car, and dogs weren’t so keen on it either. So, after less than a day, we bid adieu to Nubbie. She didn’t notice anyway since she was quite happily busy wrestling with another local dog.

The climb uphill was, well, it really sucked. Roberto was timing how long it would take us to hike each successive kilometer and our times kept getting longer and longer and longer… from 22 minutes up to 35 minutes. There were a couple of nice spots along the way where we stopped to catch our breath, but for the most part, I just tried to keep my head down and go up slow and steady with small steps. This was a technique that worked well for me on Kilimanjaro, so I figured I should stick with it.

On the one hand, switchbacks are great since you can see a defined endpoint at the turns, and those feel like mini-victories. On the other hand, it doesn’t take long before you feel like the damn switchbacks will never ever ever end, and it’s hard to keep despair from setting in. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about quitting at least once or twice.

Even so, we got up to the small village of Marampata by lunchtime. Marampata was more than just a campsite, since multiple families lived there and though their income was supplemented by the hikers, they were still farmers at their core. Sitting down in the shade was a mini-dream come true – the sun had been really beating down on us and I was pretty soaked through with sweat.

Our new horseman for this side of the river was from Marampata, so we ended up just staying the night here instead on his property. I was so exhausted that I was fine with not hiking an hour after lunch anyway. Roberto seemed fine with that idea as well. The best thing about this decision was that I could hop in the cold shower immediately – I don’t know if it’s possible for water to feel more refreshing than this. Roberto took a long nap in the sun instead, and I caught up on my journal from the week before.

A little snot-nosed kid named Alex was hanging around us as well. Apparently, his understanding of personal boundaries is a bit different than in our culture, because with no provocation he wound up and smacked the heck out of Roberto’s junk. Roberto keeled over and little Alex was just laughing. He got a good talking to for that. I had unfortunately missed this spectacle as I was enjoying the most glorious cold shower known to mankind.

By some point today or yesterday, I had decided that Raul’s little cackle laugh that he gave rather frequently sounded something like JonStewart’s GWB laugh impersonation… and I began to give a little laugh in the Jon Stewart fashion every time Raul did – and definitely way too obviously so. Roberto, for his part, was unable to keep a straight face and I generally had him in stitches. This only made it all the more necessary for me to continue, and by the end of the trip it was completely involuntary and I couldn’t control myself. Poor Raul didn’t know what was going on.

Dinner was better today. Our cook Aurelio… well, let’s just say that he’s never encountered a salt crystal that he didn’t like. It was killing me, but tonight he toned it down some after I requested a change as gently as possible in my rudimentary Spanish. One thing I do know is that you should never be mean to the people who make your food.

The stars came out in full force tonight. There were no clouds in the sky and we were far away enough from civilization and we were high enough on the mountain that we had a crystal clear view of everything. In fact, there were so many stars that we had a very difficult time finding any constellations – granted, most of the ones we were familiar with may not be as visible in the Southern hemisphere, but even Google sky maps on our smartphone didn’t work. Wifi isn’t needed for that app to work. And there was no wifi available; I had made it a habit to ask Raul about that each day as well.

The cloudless sky didn’t last long though, by 10pm the rainclouds started moving in and we hopped into the tents. It rained all night, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t have much trouble falling asleep.

Thursday, October 24^th, 2013

Today’s itinerary was solely dedicated to the exploration of Choquequirao – most other guided treks do this trip in 4D/3N, but ours adds a day so that you have an entire day to explore the site versus just the main parts in a few hours. When we arrived to the site after a brief 1-hr hike from Marampata, we were so early that we beat the park ranger to his entrance station. So we continued on the trail into the park and we saw him along the way. The ranger had us sign in, and we could see that in previous days there were at most 10 tourists signed in on any given day. In this particular instance, we ended up being the only 2 tourists there all day – imagine having such a massive set of ruins all to yourself!

What I haven’t told you is that we have yet to see a single stone of ruins by this point. With the rains last night, there was a thick fog covering the mountain. As Roberto best put it, “Wow, I can see for inches!”

Raul led us down the mountain first – there were massive terraces that he wanted us to see first along with an old temple. So we essentially descended half the mountain to go do this. I figured since we’d be exploring the ruins all day and not “hiking”, this would be our easy day. In fact, it ended up being our hardest! When we got down to the terraces, it was clear that not all of it had been reconstructed yet. Raul shared that about 40% of the total site has been rebuilt, and that the government will be recommencing efforts next year to clear away overgrowth and reconstruct the rest. This nice little archaeological paradise that we have to ourselves right now will be overrun with tourists in a few years, as the government has plans to build a cable car system in the coming years to cross the steep valley. So if you have dreams of having a mountainful of ruins to yourself, skip Machu Picchu and hurry up and come to this place!

Oh right… some of you may not know what terraces are – these are flat steppes carved into the mountainside which creates space for farming even on the steepest of mountains. At other times, these terraces were created to manage erosion to keep the ground up above stable as well. It seems that some local farmers had used these terraces not so long ago, but the government kicked them out with the new plans for development.

After climbing back up the mountain, we found Aurelio who had brought us food from our campsite in Marampata, and had lunch at a rather random spot on the trails. The poor fellow had been wandering around for a full 45 minutes until he found us – he and Raul had miscommunicated on both the time and location for lunch.

Our next stop was to a large flat space atop the left side of the ruins – it was large enough to be a soccer field, but apparently was used by Incan astronomers. From this spot, we looked out onto the ruins of Choquequirao for the first time. The clouds were still rolling through and after a while, we realized that there was an entire upper section that we did not even see yet. The special effects drummed up for this reveal could not have been better choreographed. We sat in awe for a few minutes before descending to the main level of the ruins.

When we got to the ruins, Raul was strangely short on details on what the different structures were for. Rather, he led us to the backside of the mountain where we started descending again, presumably to go see some llamas. I was a bit confused – why would we leave a magical set of ruins to go see some animals that are quite common in this region? As it turns out, the “llamas” were in fact white stone llamas inserted in the terrace rock on that side of the mountain. These terraces pre-date the total Choquequirao site built by the Incas and were built by the Chachapoyos, a name which interestingly enough means “chicken dance” in Spanish. (Waiting for it… a little longer… annnnnnd, there’s the eye roll.)

This side of the mountain was ridiculously steep – so much so that the pictures we took look altered. After re-ascending from those terraces back to the main level, Raul told us roughly how to go to the upper level of the ruins and told us we had about an hour. He stayed back to “guard our bags”.

By this point, both Roberto and I were getting a little annoyed with Raul. We had easily wasted an hour around lunchtime just waiting around for no good reason, and there was still an entire section of the site that we hadn’t really seen. And then he doesn’t even come up to the top of the hill with us? Beyond that, I slipped a bit when we went to see the stone llamas and my hand was bleeding pretty badly – Raul didn’t think to bring any first aid with him (seems like a basic tour guide rule to me), so I was lucky that Roberto had his with him. I’m guessing Raul’s knowledge of Choquequirao itself might be cursory and limited to where things are vs what things are.

Something hadn’t been sitting with my stomach so well, so rather than doing my business in the weeds as I had done after lunch, I figured I would focus on getting back to the campsite as quickly as possible. I’m generally not the fastest of hikers, but Roberto and Raul were struggling to keep up with me and I ended up making it to the campsite almost 6-8 minutes faster.

I’m not positive what exactly had my stomach in a lurch, but it could have been some dulce de leche topping on the pancakes served this morning, and I had neglected to take a Lactaid pill. I actually had thought about it, but I hadn’t deemed it Lactaid-worthy. It’s similar to the system employed by Elaine Benes to determine if a guy was sponge-worthy. Okay, it’s not similar at all. Scratch that.

All in all, despite our annoyances with Raul, this was a very long and taxing day that was totally worth it. I think right around now Roberto was thinking he was very glad that I dragged him along on this hike.

Friday, October 25^th, 2013

Today’s hike was more or less the opposite of Wednesday – we had to descend the big mountain and all of those terrible switchbacks, cross the river and then go up a few kilometers to the campsite. If we made good time, we would continue on to the second campsite so as to minimize the amount of hiking on the final day.

I generally don’t like going downhill – the basic exertion is not so bad of course, since it’s more or less coordinated falling. The hard part is the toll that it takes on your knees. After some trial and error yesterday, I quickly learned that you could jog down and semi-steep slopes much faster and with much less pressure on your knees than walking down slowly – the difference is in how flexible your legs remain during the motion. When you move slowly, you essentially tend to lock your knees which is where all the pain comes from. But if you take short quick jogging steps, your momentum flows smoothly from one step to the next, minimizing any pressure on your knees. And if the trail is too steep, slalom down to make mini-switchbacks midst the larger switchbacks – trekking poles are especially helpful at facilitating all of this, of course. The only bad part was that your toes take a little larger beating, especially if you had not trimmed your toenails as I had not, owing to a lack of a big toenail clipper. I chose my knees over my toenails.

Long story short, what Raul figured should have been about a 4-5 hour descent was over in about 2.5 hours for us. I ended up making it to the bottom about 15 minutes before Raul. He was fairly impressed with us and had not expected this. In fact, towards the end of the trip he told us that we were without a doubt the best hikers he had guided to Choquequirao before.

I think I learned a few things about myself and hiking and what works best for me:

1.       Newton is your friend. Or more specifically, Newton’s Laws regarding inertia. If you’re

moving, you should really try to keep moving – the jogging downhill example above illustrates this fairly well.

2.       Lean into the mountain. When going uphill, lean forward. When going downhill, lean back. The effect of this for me was that I felt less risk in falling and being off-balance. I’m guessing that this has more to do with the distance of your center of gravity from the ground.

3.       Take small steps. I figured out a few months ago when I was trying to take up running a bit that my knees felt great when I took smaller faster steps than longer strides – here again, I believe this method is better at conserving inertia and minimizing wear on your knees. Shortly after I figured this out, a friend went to a runner’s physiology conference and shared back the exact same thing.

4.       Keep your head down and focus only on the next few steps. For me, this helps me not worry about how much longer there is to go, and instead facilitates me into thinking about something totally unrelated which makes the time pass by much faster.

5.       Trekking poles are not for sissies – they help you distribute the workload to your upper body, as well as provide additional stability, both of which are excellent things.

After crossing the river again, we hiked up to the site we were supposed to have lunch at and were waiting around a bit. As I mentioned, we made it there a bit earlier than Raul had anticipated. We were also being swarmed by mosquitoes and it was getting really annoying. The mosquitoes were worst closer to the river – up at the top of the mountain, it’s not too bad… and they also tend to stay out of site when the weather is not great. But this being a sunny day, they were loving it and we were hating it.

Before too long, Raul suggested that we go ahead and hike up to the next campsite where he was planning for us to stay that evening. Within a few hours, Roberto and I had made it up there as well. It was about 1pm by this point but Aurelio needed to set up and cook lunch. He has a tough job – he essentially needs to feed us breakfast, clean up, pack up, beat us to the next spot and cook lunch for us. For most tourists, this isn’t much of a problem at all, but as I mentioned Roberto and I had been moving these past few days a lot faster than they had expected. As a result, we didn’t end up having lunch until about 2pm and then dinner was shortly afterwards at 6pm.

Passing the time at this particular campsite was very tough. Calling the site “lacking” is generous compared to the others. But the sun was out in full effect so I wanted to find shade. The problem was that this is where the mosquitoes were – I think they were trying to hide from the sun as well. Repellent didn’t seem to be deterring them either. Roberto figured out a way to hang out in the tent pseudo-naked without baking in the sauna by just not moving. He told me that there was space in there for me to join, but I guess it felt a bit too homo-erotic and maybe I just wasn’t feeling confident enough in my own sexuality or something like that. Needless to say, I paced around between the shade and the sunlight with absolutely zero to do for about four hours. I would have suggested hiking to the next campsite uphill, but there were no more campsites before the end of the trail. And it was too late anyway – the poor horses had already been relieved of their wares and were up the side of the mountain finding interesting grasses to munch on.

Saturday, October 26^th, 2013

This morning’s hike was not too terrible, but we still had a pretty long uphill stretch to go. Fortunately for us, the weather mostly cooperated during these first few hours and we had a light cool mist covering the mountain which kept both the sun and the bugs at bay. The problem with the mist is that Roberto and I had zero idea how much further we had to go before the endless switchbacks would end.

Once we were through the uphill climb, we had about two hours alternating between an unpaved

road and a woodsy trail. There were lots of detours on this path and it was frequently unclear which way we should go. We would have asked Raul, but as was the case with most of yesterday, he had elected to hang out with Aurelio and just have us go on our own. Fortunately, the horseman had just passed us and often we were able to see where they were and go in that direction. At other times, we were trying to remember landmarks we had seen 4 days prior when we began the trek.

The highlight of our walk today came towards the end when a drunk 80-year old Peruvian began waxing poetically on who-knows-what. Even with Roberto’s full fluency, he could barely make out a word and we had no idea how to politely excuse ourselves from the conversation. When we finally escaped 10 minutes later, we decided that the horseman planted the old man there to delay us because we were catching up to him too much and his pride was at stake.

When we got back to the horseman’s home, there was a new group there having lunch and about to depart on their own trek to Choquequirao. As much as I really loved the full day at the site with no one else around, I was more than happy that our hike was done. I was exhausted and ready to take a ridiculously long nap when we got back to Cusco.

All in all, the trek was better than I expected. Owing to the descriptions of the hike from countless others, I would be lying if I said I didn’t have any concerns on whether or not I would be able to do it. But in the end, I think I passed with flying colors – but only because of our dear horse friends carrying our crap for us. Roberto may disagree, but I seriously don’t think I could have handled carrying 30 more pounds on my back (or more?). Regardless, I did leave with a feeling that I had at least partially avenged my Kilimanjaro failure and I got some of my I-can-do-anything mojo back. And yes, that’s probably a little more important to me than it should be. This probably scares my dear old mom too, since I’m sure she’s wondering if this will result in me biting off more than I should in some of the coming months. I guess that remains to be seen!

Tidbits:

1.     Peruvian music is terribly bad. They seem to have two distinct archetypes for their music: either a high pitched whiny off-key falsetto with a Zamfir-style pan-flute and accordion accompaniment, or an Incan marchy chanty style with a primary singer plus backup chorus that repeats what the primary just said. Both get very annoying quickly.

2.     Best line uttered this week: “Como se dice motorboating?” Offered without context.

3.     After a waiter (or the horseman, as was our case this week) gives you food, it’s common for them to say “servido”, which I believe loosely translates to “you’ve been served.” Of course, I’m guessing their interpretation of this phrase is very different than ours.

4.     The people in the countryside appear to have a way to make alcohol from absolutely everything – potatoes, corn, miscellaneous fruits, you name it. Raul and Aurelio offered us a sip of at least 4 different concoctions, all of which were terrible, which completely reminded me of moonshine back in eastern Kentucky. Come to think of it, I think Aurelio may have been drunk the entire trip.

5.     Numbers for this hike: 134,774 steps; 1548 floors; 57.49 miles