The Peru Diaries part five: Pepe, baby deer legs, and a place they call Machu Picchu

The second day of the Salkantay trail was considerably less difficult than the first. The previous night's rain had drastically mollified the dust situation and we didn't have to contend with extreme altitudes or temperatures this time. Just pretty, peaceful trails. Ahh.

We spent the morning passing through more of the jungle-like area and making the occasional stop to learn about the local flora from Chabo, who displayed an impressive understanding about root what prevented this and what leaf what healed that. My favorite part of the morning hike was seeing the various bridges and waterfalls along the way. Each was unique in its size and grandeur.

Sexy bucket hat makes a reappearance.

Around halfway through the morning hike, we walked by somebody's home on a small, farm-like plot of land. Now we'd seen many stray dogs on our trip so far - they were everywhere from in the cities to out in the middle of the mountains and almost all of them had been very friendly and well-fed - but we met a special puppy at this place, one that Chabo named "Pepe". I'd casually tossed Pepe a peanut when we passed him and he ended up leaving his home and following us on the trail. Ten minutes later and he was still with our group. Twenty, then thirty, then forty. Pepe was still there.

Pepe (the golden puppy on the right) and friends from the small farm.

Chabo, the boy, Pepe & Pepe's friends

At around the hour-long mark, Pepe's companionship was starting to worry us a little. He was just a puppy and I was growing increasingly anxious that he wouldn't have the energy or the strength to make the trek back to the farm by himself. So I did what I had to - I shooed him away by yelling "Go home, Pepe!" and by throwing rocks in his general direction (never close enough to hit him). As his playful running subsided, his doggy smile dropped into a remorseful look and he eventually slinked away from the trail. I think shooing that puppy was probably the meanest thing I'd done in a while and it made me feel pretty rotten afterwards. But it was for the best! Or so we thought... because about just thirty minutes later, we encountered another group that had caught up to us, and lo and behold - there was Pepe, happily bounding alongside. That group went into a different farm to rest but the dogs there chased Pepe out (rude!), so he ran up along us, tail-a-waggin' and tongue-a-hangin' like nothing had happened. I didn't have the heart to shoo him away a second time - and so we were reunited with our canine friend, but feeling slightly less guilty, for it seemed that this time it was destiny and not a peanut that brought Pepe back to us.

Pepe accompanied us all the way to our end destination, a small but lively village with many other dogs. Passing through it, we came across several dogs who looked just like Pepe that would sniff at and carefully examine him - the boy and I think they were actually members of Pepe's family. While we'll never know for sure what happened to the little guy, Pepe did seem to enjoy himself and settle in nicely with the other dogs of the ending village. I hope his original owners aren't cursing us for having helped relocate him.

This was also where we had our last lunch with Walter, and boy did he he outdo himself. On the menu were juice, soup, pasta, guacamole, fresh vegetables, steak, and quinoa. Everything was scrumptious. I think it was one of the best meals I've ever had in my life.

Pausing for a photo op with Walter before digging in. All thumbs way up!

After lunch, we rode in a van for about an hour and a half into the forest preserve area near Machu Picchu. We then embarked on the last hike of the Salkantay trail, a three-hour walk, most of which was alongside train tracks that would bring us into the town of Aguas Calientes.

After a day and a half of going up and downhill, flat terrain was a welcome change.

These interesting local flowers were dubbed "baby's shoes." They were often used in funerals for miscarriages or babies who didn't survive birth as a way of aiding their passage to baby heaven.

A rare pop of colorful flora in front of a home we passed.

Mammoth boulders that are submerged during the wet season. Over the years they have been smoothed and whitened by the flowing water, producing this beautiful, almost fake-looking effect.

At the end of our afternoon hike, we reached Aguas Calientes with sore legs and very, very tired spirits. And of course, our hostel was all the way at the end of a long uphill climb. I could practically hear the tendons and muscles in my legs screaming in protest as we made our way up slopes of the tourist town, passing restaurants and bars touting happy hour specials that we ignored. We were greeted at Puma's hostel with big smiles and welcomes from our friends who'd stayed behind in Cuzco. It must've been comical for them to see us attempt to get upstairs to our rooms. My trusty legs had become so wobbly and reluctant to move, they almost gave out on me. I felt like a baby deer taking its first steps.

Since a dozen or so travelers had all arrived at once at the small hostel, we had to make do with cold showers. It's hard to describe what I was really feeling at that point - blinding fatigue mixed in with eternal gratitude for indoor plumbing, clean towels, and soft, soft beds, maybe? Anyhoo, dragging myself back downstairs and keeping my eyelids open through dinner used my remaining ounces of willpower. After dinner, when I got returned to the hostel (legs numb at this point), I managed to pop in a few ibuprofens before crawling under the covers and seriously passing the fuck out.

The next morning, I woke up feeling much better with seven hours of sleep under my belt. But all three guys in our group, the boy in particular, were in a pretty bad state from having been kept up by a confused rooster that had decided 2 AM was a good time to start its crowing routine. After a very snappy breakfast, we hurried out so we could beat the lines and see the site before it got crowded. After all, the chance to see the sun rise over a world wonder doesn't present itself every day, sleep deprivation notwithstanding. 

We walked down to the bus area at around 4:45 in the morning and met Chabo there, who'd been standing in line for about thirty minutes to hold a place in line for us. When he'd first told us of this plan the previous night, we were too tired to ponder the consequences, but when we took our place in line that morning, our neighbors were less than pleased with us for having, in their eyes, cut them in line. It was a pretty awkward situation and while I would not do it again to avoid the hassel of annoyed neighbors, I don't think we were necessarily in the wrong, either. We saw several other tour groups do the same thing in front of us, and despite the people behind us in line saying it wasn't fair, we were in a different country where it seemed to be the norm to have tour guides hold their group's places in line. Besides, we were following his instructions. I don't know. I guess what was sorta funny was that a.) being among the front buses turned out to be worse position-wise than the back ones as the first buses pulled up further from the visitor entrance to the site and b.) the woman who'd been nagging on us the most ended up cutting the line once we got to Machu Picchu. Life is funny that way.

Machu Picchu was definitely the crowning jewel of my visit to Peru. There was a quiet mystery and calmness surrounding the historical site, and yet there was life there - llamas strolling around, lush green grass, even the water systems still running same as how they'd been built over five hundred years ago.

A little background on Machu Picchu: it was built in the 1400's by the Incans to honor their leader Pachacuti. In its hay day, Machu Picchu was pretty much the shit - it was inhabited by the foremost thinkers of Incan society, like astronomers, philosophers, and most importantly, religious leaders. In fact, religion played a huge role in its construction and architecture - so many of the rooms were reserved for worship or offerings. There was even a temple of virgins from which visiting big wigs could make a selection. 

The level of sophistication we saw in the site was nothing short of incredible. The Incans used water to break apart mammoth boulders and every single piece of stone was hand-sanded and rubbed to perfection. They also invented a series of aqueducts that would run through the city, providing water to its residents. Perhaps most impressively, they were able to keep Machu Picchu a secret from the Spaniards. To do so, they took their own mummies and possessions, covered up trails to their homes, and fled from the site. It still amazes me that this site, which was inhabited for over 100 years just 50 miles out of Cuzco, remained a secret to the world from the time it was abandoned to when it was discovered in 1911 by a historian from Yale university.

The boy and I only spent about two hours in Machu Picchu, which was sufficient time to take in the beauty of the site and learn about it from Chabo before it filled up with five trillion other tourists. The rest of the group continued the tour and the hike up through Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind the site. The boy and I opted to board a bus back to the hostel to uhm, partake in a dia de diarrhea that ensued on the boy's part. In the afternoon, while he rested, I met up with our other friends and visited the natural hot springs after which Aguas Calientes was named. It was nice to do something completely indulgent and the warm water proved to be therapeutic for our sore legs.

At night, we ducked into a restaurant to grab some pizza to go for our train ride. Fun fact: Peruvian pizzerias have not taken to the idea of putting their cheesy creations into cardboard boxes. Instead, the chefs attempted to stuff the steaming hot pizzas into plastic bags. We politely declined the bags and opted to just eat the pizzas ourselves en route to the train station. 

Another canine friend. This one we encountered at a cafe outside of Machu Picchu.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Pizzas

Three hours later, a train and a bus ride later found us back in our beloved Hotel Andenes al Cielo, where warm beds and the luggage we'd left for safekeeping were waiting for us. We said goodbye to two of our friends (who were at the end of their trip) and called it a night, for we had an early flight the next morning out of Cuzco and into Puerto Maldonado, where we were to embark on the next phase of our vacation - the Amazonian rainforest! Stay tuned to hear all about sweaty hikes, rustic cabins and tarantulas galore!

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.