The Peru Diaries part four: hiking as I've never hiked before

Up until so far, we'd been pretty lucky avoiding any sort of major calamity or disruption on our trip, but our luck didn't last beyond wee hours of the morning of our fourth day, when things got off to a gloomy start. Though we will never know for sure what wreaked havoc on our friend's system overnight, we suspect it was the tres leches cake that had likely been left out all day from the restaurant the night before. Whatever it was, it was clear that the malevolent visitor of her system rendered her too ill to embark on the three-day hike to Machu Picchu. Despite her pleas to "just strap me to a donkey", she and her significant other stayed behind to focus on recovery. And so we the four remaining trekkers dug out our saltines and animal crackers, bid a reluctant farewell to them, wishing for speedy recovery and resolving to meet in a few days at Aguas Calientes, the city next to Machu Picchu.

We hopped in a van and rode for about four hours out of Cuzco and into the surrounding mountainside. The first half of the ride was fine, as we were on paved roads, but as soon as we veered off into dirt road, the journey decidedly took a turn for the worse. I'd woken up that morning with a headache and an extremely painful sore throat (rendering me more or less voiceless the entire day, and feeling pretty stupid whenever I had to strain to whisper) and the topsy-turvy, stop-and-go ride did nothing but exacerbate how shitty we all were already feeling. The roads in the mountains were lined with large rocks that would violently shake the tires of the van as we zipped up and down mountainsides with no barriers between the skinny, one-lane road (the driver would honk around bends to announce that we were approaching) and the thousands of feet below us. The fact that our van would get stuck in muddy areas and need to get manually revved up - tires screaming, mud blasting everywhere - didn't exactly inspire confidence, either.

After two hours of switching between nervously peering out the window and closing my eyes pretending to be unaware of how high up we were, I let out a huge sigh of relief when our van finally slowed to a halt and we scrambled out.

We were very, very, VERY happy to have our feet firmly planted on the ground again.

A peaceful pastoral scene to start us off.

The trail we embarked on was called the Salkantay trek. The first two days were supposed to be about eight hours of hiking each, and the third would be for exploring the reward that was in store for us at the end of our trek, Machu Picchu. We booked a tour through Quechuas Expeditions and were joined by Chabo (guide), Walter (cook), and Eduardo (porter). Chabo stayed with us throughout the entire hike while Walter and Eduardo went at a separate pace with the food supplies and our donkey. We were just responsible for carrying our own day packs, which consisted mostly of water (I am now a believer in CamelBaks) and layers of clothing.

We were told warned that the first morning of the first day would be by far the most difficult leg of the trip, as it was largely an uphill journey through various temperatures to the peak of a mountain sitting at a cool 15,200 feet up in the air. At the time when this was told to me, I was well-fed, well-slept and sitting rather comfortably in an air conditioned room. The hike sounded like a blast of an adventure. But the morning of, in my sore-throat and sleep-deprived state, I definitely became a lot less thrilled about the prospect of ascending a mountain.

Nonetheless, ascend we did. The journey for the first day looked roughly like this:

Up to this point, I'd kept altitude sickness relatively at bay by physically taking it easy and by flooding my system with water and coca tea. But hiking at altitude with an initially ambitious pace definitely brought out the symptoms I'd been warned of, especially light headedness and shortness of breath. Imagine doing the stairmaster for about two hours, but with gradually decreasing amounts of oxygen being fed into your bloodstream. The going quickly slowed; 45 minutes into the hike, we were already passed by our porter and cook (from whom we'd had about a 20 minute head start).

Giving a camera a grin before we hiked the mountains of DEATH

Looking back, that first morning's climb was definitely the most physically taxing thing I've ever done in my life. I had to take a lot of breaks to catch my breath and several times I contemplated plopping my ass down in the gravel and just saying "Ok, I give up, someone send for a helicopter." It took a lot of patient goal-setting ("let's just get up to that next bend") and a lot of coaxing (sometimes involving Snickers bars) to keep me going.

Another challenge was the dust. The Salkantay trail is frequented by donkeys and horses alike, and since we were hiking in the dry season, the dust on the trails mingled with dried donkey poop particles and would get swept around in the air that we'd inevitably inhale into our systems. Here's a video of a typical donkey-passing scenario we'd encounter:

Despite how difficult the hike was that first day, the trail itself was nonetheless amazing. The views, for one, were just staggeringly, mindblowingly gorgeous. And the serenity of having nothing to do but just to walk and to take in the surroundings was quite a startling but welcome change from my normal day-to-day. It's amazing how quickly the mind and body adjust; gone were the modern-day amenities that normally serve as anchors to my life in the city and instead there were only the mountains, the trail, and the sound of boots crunching on gravel. The only piece of technology I used during this segment of the trip was my camera and even that was only sparingly brought out (relatively, at least. And mostly because I was too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.)

Pausing for a photo op before the ascent. Lookin' pretty foxy in my unevenly-bunched up SmartWools and sweaty-ass bucket hat, if I say so myself. 

What little breath I had from the trail was taken away every time I looked around me.

When we finally reached the peak of the mountain, we were beyond ourselves with excitement and pride. Not only were we extremely high in terms of altitude, but at that point our brains may have been er, a little dazed from the lack of oxygen in our systems.

Posing Captain Jack-style

Leaping out of joy. Or maybe just craziness.

The mountain behind us peaks at well over 16,000 feet up and has never been successfully climbed. We were certainly not going to attempt to on that day.

As the pictures hopefully convey, the views up top were pretty amazing; it was basically 360 degrees of  insane mountainside; some covered in ice, other in flora, yet others in the distance peaking out of thick, mysterious white clouds. Once we'd finished taking in the beauty surrounding us, Chabo told us a bit about the history of the trail and how the Andean ranges are considered sacred to locals. We each stacked a rock to create our group's cairn - a symbol of us having passed through this remote and beautiful area.

It's like a rock snowman!

Our timing also proved to be quite lucky; about ten minutes after we reached the peak, we witnessed a small avalanche happening on a nearby mountain:

As Isaac Newton once famously said, what goes up must come down. And it was cold and windy up there on the mountain. Perhaps most convincingly, lunch awaited in our future, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore the symphony of growls that our stomachs were emitting. We took one last look at our surroundings on the peak and decided to get a move on.

Descending the mountain was a much more pleasant affair, at least initially. We walked downhill for about another hour until we reached a much flatter, plains-like area right next to a gurgling fresh stream, where we met Walter and Eduardo for our lunch break. I was so ravenous at this point that any sort of nourishment would have been welcomed with extreme enthusiasm, but as it turned out, Walter had prepared a delicious and fresh meal of soup, avocado salad, and chicken stew. Looking back, I'm still amazed he was able to prepare all of our meals with basically just a pot of boiling water at his dispense. It was thoroughly delicious and hit just the spot after a challenging morning.

The afternoon hike went by quickly. There were two camping spots we could have taken; one was closer than the other but would require an earlier start and more hiking the next day. We aimed for the further one, encouraged by Chabo's claims that it was more beautiful anyway, with a very energetic pace that we kept for most of the afternoon. Unlike the morning, we rarely stopped and were able to keep up fairly well with our fleet-footed tour guide. A couple of hours of downhill hiking and you could definitely start to feel it in the upper thigh (burning), knees (aching), and toes (repeatedly jammed into the front of hiking boots from supporting the weight of the body). We passed the first campsite far sooner than expected; our spirits lifted by our progress, we made good time for the remainder of the journey, eventually making it to our campsite for the night at around 5 in the evening, just as the sun was starting to disappear from behind the vast mountainside surrounding us.

Dinner that night was a candlelit one of soup, bread, spaghetti, and hot tea. I wasn't feeling well and barely ate anything - all I wanted to do was crawl into our tent and sleep off my exhaustion. According to my friend's watch, we'd burned 4,500 calories on the hike alone, not counting the bus ride, sleeping, etc. I'm guessing we ended up going through 5,500 or 6,000 calories for that whole day. Sleep was definitely in order. I was so sleepy that I could barely brush my teeth and pull off my hiking boots (not a pleasant affair, by the way) before I passed out. Early in the morning, it rained for about an hour. Lucky for us, the tents were sturdy and waterproof. It was soothing to fall back to sleep to the pitter-patter of raindrops so close by.

Our fantastic tents. Also, moving headlamp + long nighttime exposure = the bumblebee effect

Dinner. It's a good thing I took this picture instead of being in it because my eyes would've been crossed from fatigue and my skin tone would have probably blended in with the color of the walls.

Morning came all too early. At around five we were woken with Chabo's friendly voice and hot cups of tea being handed to us through the tent. (I think I woke up more from the fear of sleepily spilling hot tea all over myself than from drinking the tea itself). We had a quick breakfast, packed our things, and set out for our next adventure just as the sun was coming out.

Sunrise over the campsite. Not a bad way to start off the day.

The Peru Diaries part three: In which we visit the Sacred Valley of the Incas

We spent the majority of our second day in Cuzco seeing the sights of the Sacred Valley, a beautiful and lush region among the Andes that contained many agricultural sites, some of which are still used today, others that merely remain as ruins from the 15th century at the height of the Incan presence there.

We boarded our tour bus bright and early, excited and curious about what we'd signed up to see. We quickly realized that our guide was, in a word, terrible. Not only did he talk in a very disinterested monotone, he made no effort to pause between switching from rapid Spanish to broken English, which made listening to him an altogether stressful and confusing affair. I think I was able to make out the word "potato" a few times during his tour, but that was about it. At one point, when he was off the bus, we turned to a girl who was fluent both in English and Spanish and asked her what our guide had just talked about for thirty minutes, to which she shrugged and said, "I don't know. His Spanish is just as bad as his English." What kind of a tour guide can't speak either of the languages he's supposed to be talking in?! Anyhoo, if you're planning on seeing the Sacred Valley, definitely look some up on TripAdvisor and find one with favorable reviews.

Quick, someone give this guy a few copies of Rosetta Stone

Though the bus tour's narration was lacking, the views were definitely not and we still had an excellent experience. As we wove through mountainsides and came across plains, we jokingly said that we'd found Catan. The lands were abundant in rocks, trees, sheep, dried yellow grass (hey, it's close enough to wheat), and more bricks than the eye could count.

Now I just need a sheep and I can buy a development card!

Our first of three stops on the tour was in a small village on the outskirts of Cuzco, where we were given a demonstration of how the local women made colorful table runners by hand from alpaca wool. Thankfully, the main woman spoke very good English. She took us through each step of the process, starting with the dirty, just-shaved wool and ending with stunning woven goods. The amount of labor-intensive detail they put into making each table runner was truly mind-boggling. I was surprised that they kept to the same tools and methods that they had been doing for hundreds of years, like scrubbing a certain root known to create frothy water for washing the wool and using the blood of baby beetles to create a brilliant red dye.

Spinning spinning spinning

Making dye from crushed beetle blood. She then used it on her lips as gloss. Organic!

We also encountered a furry friend right outside of the courtyard where all the demonstrations were happening. I never knew that alpacas made such hilarious sounds - check out the video to hear his incessant yet adorable bleating. 

O hai!

Giving our friend a noogie

Our next stop on the trip was out of the small town and into the plains to see an ancient agricultural site called the Moray Terraces, which, for a lack of a better description, resembled 3D crop circles nested in the ground. They were used by the Incans to test out different types of soil for planting potatoes, quinoa, grain and all sorts of other starchy goodness at varying altitude levels - pretty ingenious, if you ask me. The Moray terraces also happened to look darned nifty from above, although let me tell you that while going down into the lowest level was easy and fun, climbing the five hundred feet back up was definitely not. 

Driving along the valley, we saw a contained fire in the fields 

The Moray terraces - ta da! I'm pretty sure that this ancient agricultural technique probably produced the modern-day potatoey perfection that is the McDonald's french fry.

Standing in front of the mines of Moria terraces of Moray

The stairs between each level were made of rocks that jutted out from the walls.

So circular. So meta.

Our third and final stop for the day was at the Salinas salt mines, just a short drive from Moray. I'd never before stopped to think how we actually collect salt - I guess I'd kind of just assumed it was a simple collection process - but this visit proved me wrong! To collect, wash, and refine the salt, the Peruvians built an intricate water system through which water from the nearby Vilcanoa River would flow and drain through different types of pools and then slowly evaporate, leaving behind the salt for collection. We learned that typically, a month's worth of draining yields a layer 10cm deep of salt in a pool that averaged to be five square meters in area. Not only does it take a lot of time, but different pools are designed for specific types of salts - some are cultivated for animals to lick while other salts are refined further so that they are suitable for cooking.

There were about 3,000 pools in total. The different colors indicate the different types of soil/refinery in each pool.

Salt collectors using pans to strain for salt

We all stuck our fingers into the pool and tasted it. It was salty. Surprise!

One neat thing I found in the small snack shops near Salinas were deep-fried, salted habas beans. I had these crunchy morsels all the time growing up in China and was always very fond of them but could never get a hold of them in the States. It was a pleasant surprise to see them being sold in a completely different part of the world. I excitedly bought a little packet and made all the white people try some.  

So happy with my habas beans

And thus marked the conclusion of our bus tour. We were dropped back in Cuzco around 3 PM and spent the remainder of the evening walking about the city and enjoying our last hours there. At night, we found a local restaurant and watched the Olympics - karate was on - and called it a night early, as we were set to be picked up at 4:45 AM the following morning (breakfast at 4:15! Wincing as I type this) to start our big trek to Machu Picchu. 

The Peru Diaries part two: Cruisin' across Cuzco

Regarding last entry's nail-biting cliffhangers: eventually, of course not, and with the utmost self-restraint, no.

Cuzco (pronounced "Kooze-coh"), Peru is a city that sits in the Andean mountain range at roughly 11,000 feet above sea level. Home to roughly a third of a million residents and receiver of almost two million visitors a year, it was the historic capital of the Inca Empire and serves as the modern-day gateway to Machu Pichu. Woo! /mandatoryWikipediaplagiarism

Now I've flown into my fair share of airports across the world and among them, SFO had always been my favorite strip o' tarmac to land on. But Cuzco definitely bumped San Fran from the foremost place on my list of coolest views from a descending airport. As if the snow-capped Andean mountain range alone wasn't enough of a visual treat, landing into CUZ also afforded beautiful views of the homes and buildings embedded on the gentle slopes of the hills that surrounded the city center.

Ooooh

Ahhhh

A funny little event happened during the cab ride to the hotel. Our cab driver, who had been weaving in and out of lanes to get through traffic, started waving and shouting merrily in rapid Spanish to another cab that was parallel to ours, the driver of which started waving back with gusto for a few fleeting seconds. After the two cars broke away into different directions, the boy and I asked the cab driver (who still had a big grin on his face) what had just happened, to which he happily replied, "Mi hermano", which I understood (from having watched that episode of Arrested Development) meant "my brother". Hooray for brotherly cab rides!

The hotel we stayed at in Cuzco was called Hotel Andenes al Cielo and was located in the San Blas area of the city. The hospitality there was unbelievable. We were greeted upon arrival with steaming cups of coca tea, which as you may guess are infused with coca leaves (the alkaloids of which, when extracted, are the source of cocaine). Despite coca tea being illegal in the United States in its unaltered state, the tea itself was very mild and herbal and gave off what I'd guess would be the same gentle caffeinated effect as a cup of regular green tea. It was recommended to us to help alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness, but I enjoyed and drank it mainly for its flavor and warmth.

Walking into Hotel Andenes al Cielo, we were greeted with all sorts of flora.

Coca tea with the leaves from which cocaine is derived. Sounds much more badass than it really is.

Friends don't let friends get altitude sickness.

Heeding the advice imparted onto us by wiser souls, we decided to take it pretty easy and stroll around town all day to let our systems adjust. Fortunately, Cuzco was a pleasure to explore and very much accessible by foot. Although there were obvious indications that it was a tourism-fueled town (Starbucks in Plaza des Armas, anyone?), I still think we got a pretty good glimpse into the culture and the way of life of the locals there. Highlights of my day include eating a local meal (called a "menu"), holding a baby alpaca, and playing Jenga at dinner.

Plaza des Armas, the city center and most happenin' part of town

I call this statue the "pigeon pigeon goose" statue

Beef heart for lunch! Yummy. This dish, a hearty soup, and a drink cost ten soles, or approximately $4.

I'm pretty sure this was the happiest moment of my life.

Jenga! Whoever lost had to do a shot of pisco.

The boy and I lost :-(

We also spent a good chunk of the afternoon browsing the markets with little booths brimming with sweaters, trinkets, backpacks, table runners and countless colorful doo-dads. The soles to USD exchange rate made shopping sort of a win-win; a sweater made from 100% alpaca wool would run about 30 soles, or $12 USD and the locals were very eager and happy for our business. Just as I do in any country that charges a premium price for foreign visitors (India, I'm looking at you!), I haggled my way into some pretty good deals. 

Haggling was an interesting affair. Here are the tips that I was given:

• when you see something you like, always have a number in your head of how much you'd be willing to pay for it before talking to the vendor
• show some interest in the item. If it's a sweater, run your fingers through the wool (to assess quality) or hold it up and scrutinize it. The trick here is not to show that you really like the item - sellers pounce on that. Instead, try to act as if the item interests, but does not impress you.
• if at this point the seller has not approached you (unlikely), make an inquiry about the price
• in markets like this one, where haggling is expected, that first price is almost never the lowest that the seller would be willing to go, even if it's quoted as a "special" or a price "just for you, my friend." At this point the negotiation begins and it becomes up to you how much you want to try and go down. I was told that really good (and patient) hagglers could usually get down to 50% of the quoted first price. I was neither that good nor that patient so I was very happy with getting it to 60 or 75%. Besides, the starting price at these markets was usually well below the number I had in mind from the first bullet.
• when haggling down (i.e. during the exchange of numbers), there are several good techniques and several bad ones. The good ones are always founded on logic; pointing out a small stitching flaw, for example, or saying you heard a lower price for this item elsewhere (be honest though!). The bad ones are ones where the buyer becomes frustrated or mean. ("This is a rip-off!") 
• don't be afraid to walk away. It's not just about the price; it's also the experience. I tended to politely decline offers from vendors who were aggressive and instead, gravitate more towards ones who I thought were kinder. At markets like these, when many of the same goods are on display at different stalls, where I purchased the item quickly became less important than how my experience was getting it. 
• enjoy yourself! Haggling is fun when done right, and adds extra memories when looking back at the item you've purchased

These alpaca sweaters were so soft and warm. It was probably a good thing I had limited luggage space, else I would have gone berserk buying them!

Goofing around with an alpaca mullet. I didn't end up buying it for fear of being arrested by the fashion police.

Alpacas were everywhere - on sweaters, hats, rugs, and in plush form. So cute!

I'm getting a seizure looking at this

I'm still fuzzy on the series of events that transpired which led to the purchasing of these godawful sweaters. But it happened.

Exploring Cuzco made for a very tiring yet satisfying day, and the high altitude/busy exploring had definitely taken a toll on our bodies. After dinner, we walked back to our hotel, had some tea, and played cards. At one point we also wanted to take a group picture on my camera, but I accidentally set it to 10 continuous pictures (thinking it'd be a 10-second timer), so once we caught onto what was happening, some pretty weird facial expressions started popping up. I'll end this entry with this jewel of a shot:

High Five Cuzco!

The next installment of the Peru Diaries will feature some beautiful sites we visited outside of Cuzco. Stay tuned to hear about more adventures to come!