Lares Valley Day 1, Peru

Sorry for the delay, but here goes; The day before our trek we had a debriefing at the tour guide office. I knew there were a few people from my hostel going and one of them mentioned that there were going to be at least fourteen on this backpacking trek. I let a little sigh out when i heard that. I like smaller groups, it's easier to manage and get to know new people.

We show up to the meeting greeted with tea and cookies. Half of the people wearing their alpaca hats. We go over the basic logisitcs for the trek. Two days of serious hiking through Lares Valley, then half a day of hiking and a train ride to a hostel, and lastly the long anticipated Machu Picchu.

Here's a short conversation between our friend Jake and Aldo the guide.
Jake: I heard it's going to rain, how should we prepare?
Aldo: Nah, nah... it's dry season. Don't worry about it.
Jake: Well, what about snow?
Aldo: Nah, the only snow you have to worry about is the snow peaked caps, but that's above fifteen thousand feet.
Jake: Will we have to cross any rivers
Aldo: No, nothing serious.

Lake at Huilquijasa Pass

It's pitch black out. My phone alarm is going off and it's 3:00AM. We quietly get out of bed trying not to wake the other dorm mates. Changing in the dark and putting on our backpacks. We sneak out and meet up with the other hostel people doing our trek. Waiting for the bus to arrive we hear the pitter patter of rain on the plastic roof. Not looking good. We pass out on the bus for a few hours. I wake up slowly to the bus taking turns on the top of a mountain with what I think is a dirt road, I can't tell it's covered in snow. Looking even worse. I can feel Aldo slowly eating his words.

We arrived at the bottom of a valley with a few houses made of mud, straw, and corrugated steel. Things were looking good while we had breakfast, but then right after it started to rain on us. Aldo actually gave us the option of turning back and skipping part of the hike. Half the people raise their hands to go back. That wasn't enough to convince Aldo, so we trekked on. The rain started to turn into sleet. Every once and a while there would be a break in the clouds. I'd unzip my two layers of jackets and whip out my camera and try to take a few pictures here and there.

Some of the guys On the way down.

The way our group was setup was one guide was at the head and another at the tail. The porters and horsemen would go at their own pace. I have to say I was probably the worst hiker in the group. My 65 liter backpack was probably a third full. and my camera strapped to my chest. It felt like I was wearing bricks at this altitude and my feet began to move slower. It became harder to put one in front of the other. The higher I went the more frequent I would need to catch my breath. Apparently the guides would typically make more and longer stops for us to catch our breath but they wanted to book it because of the horrible weather. Lovely. The picture above is part of our descent. If you look closely, you can see two of the hikers Jake and Sam wearing their huge backpacks which to me look full and pretty damn heavy. Of course they were always in the front of the pack too. Not doing cardio in my work outs is definitely not paying off.

The porters/mules passing us. [photo cred: Step]


We passed a few more beautiful lakes on the way down. Crossed some ice cold streams. We stopped to talk to the local kids and gave them some food. In fact the guides told us to stock up on food and snacks to give away to the poor farmer kids. we all make it down to the bottom of another valley and find all these tents setup for us with a huge tent for our dining/cooking hall. Finally a place to get out of the rain. They brought us a late lunch which felt like heaven after the first day of trekking. We ascended and descended about 650 meters in only two miles. The hot tea and hot soup was amazing. Maybe because we just touched the sky and came back. We arrived early to the camp site so we took a nap after lunch. Woke up for dinner, and then slept early. End of day one.

Cusco, Peru

Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus

Back when we were in Costa Rica we realized we didn't book our Machu Picchu trip. Being two weeks out from our ideal time and it being high season there wasn't much of a selection of tours. For some reason we were convinced that the only way you could see Machu Picchu was by booking a tour because there was only a limited amount of tickets to reach the top. The most popular trek the "Inca Trail" was obviously booked ahead of time probably about half a year ago. Two other alternatives were sold out which left us an eight day and a four day trekking tour. We didn't have too much time on our hands and the Inca trail was a four day tour itself so we figured, let's do it. You can't visit Peru and not see Machu Picchu right? We shrugged off the steep price and booked it. Later as we did more research we found out that the limited tickets are for Huayna Picchu which is the steep mountain that you always see in the postcards of Machu Picchu. Well, we already put our non refundable deposit down and read good things about this trek.

Qorikancha the golden Court Yard

The same company that we booked our trek with said we could join their city tour for free. We figure it was an easy tour and something to do on our last day before our Trek. We met at the tour office at noon and were handed off to someone, who then handed us off to someone else, who shoved us into a huge tour group of maybe 30 people. Our tour guide sounded like he was an announcer of a boxing match. Or rather he would be so enthusiastic it sounded like he was telling a children's fairytale and every other sentence was the climax. But in actuality all he talked about was how much gold and silver there was in the church and how he couldn't believe it. He also boasted how he was once a teacher and proceeded to give us lessons on the sun and how the Incas were great astronomers. It really is interesting, but after he kept repeating how the sun travels after we visit each site it seemed like that's all he talked about. The sun in winter, gold, the sun in summer, the sun again. We considered ditching the tour but the more interesting sites were up next.

Saqsaywaman [Photo cred: Steph]

This picture is probably my favorite one of the day.

So we made it to Saqsaywaman, a short bus ride right above Cusco sit's this ancient ruin of giant stones walls. I actually got yelled at because I started to climb up one of the rocks. Here's a little fun fact not learned from the guide; the name Saqsaywaman actually means "Satisfied Falcon", as most Americans will say sexy-woman. I'm absolutely sure the tour guide was talking about the sun again but i stopped paying attention. We found out the tour was to go on for a few more hours and we decided to ditch it this time around because we had to wake up at 3:30am to catch our bus for the trek.

Sacred Valley, Peru

Alpaca grazing in the Andes

Since we're taking our time in Cusco we did a day trip to the Sacred Valley. We weren't sure if it was going to be worth it because we already booked our four day Lares trek to Machu Picchu. Really, who wants to see more ancient ruins? We asked a few people and heard it was actually quite different and well worth it. And yes, they were right. Although I would recommend not doing the tour. Our dorm mate had a better deal, she somehow met someone by chance who knew a taxi driver that hooked them up and drove them around all day for free. That is my ideal way of visiting anything really; they're not trying to sell you anything, you take your own pace, and you get personal service. Lucky.

Incan family dressed up for tourists

The worst part about any tour is when they make their stops at the tourists spots where they get their kick backs or what not. So one of the first places we were supposed to visit was the Pisac ruins. We stopped in the village of Pisac and they said to get off the bus for 30 minutes. We did and walked around, looking for the ruins, getting lost in the tourist stalls. We come back and then they say now we're going to the ruins. I hate tours.

We ran into this family of Incans. Since I wanted to take their picture, we tipped them a little. This is after Stephanie stopped saying how cute the little lamb was. As we walked back to the bus I saw another five more families dolled up in their traditional clothes, carrying little lambs or alpacas, and holding a baby on their backs. All of them came up and asked for money. It kind of made me sad how people rely on tourism to make a living.

Terraces at the top of Incan Pisca ruins.

I believe the Peruvians pride them selves in how many different varieties of corn they produce. On the way up to the Pisac ruins we picked some up and it was crazy good. Each kernel was like a little plump potato. I've never seen kernels so big. The cool thing about this place was that we could spot the terraces from far far away as the bus drove around the mountains. These agricultural terraces they created allowed them to produce an abundant amount of crops which I imagine would have been hard at this altitude. That's probably why they have such a great selection of corn.

[Unimportant side note: So our tour of Pisac was done and we were ready to move onto the next site. After getting on the bus we realized two of our people from the group were missing. We had our own personal time to explore the site and then we were supposed to meet up at a certain location at a certain time. Thirty minutes pass, other members are getting impatient, they start to yell at the tour guide. Some had good reason because they were catching a train at the next site. After some bickering and another twenty minutes pass, it's decided that the bus leaves with out them. I don't exactly know what happened but they show up at the next site where we had lunch, and the tour guide wanted it on record that the entire group decided to move on with out them because people had to catch a train. So he wrote out the facts and wanted the people to sign it. The couple that showed up late grabbed the paper, crumpled it up, and threw it out the moving bus. The bus driver stops. I thought a fight was about to break out. Sorry for the anti-climax, but nothing ends up happening and Stephanie and I write down the facts on a strip of paper from my guide book and have everyone else sign it but them and hand it to the tour guide later.]

Standing ontop of Ollantaytambo ruins [Photo Cred: Steph]

Getting to our second to last and coolest place was this ruin. Ollantaytambo. It was the last resistance of the Incas against the Spanish Conquistadors. Every view from this place was scenic. Even if not the view from it, the ruins them selves were amazing. There were these giant stones which looked as big or possibly even bigger than the stones used in the Pyramids. It must have taken an amazing amount of man power to move some of these giant stones.

Cusco, Peru

Stephanie bargaining for the first time on our trip.

Someone how we spent an entire day doing errands; laundry, post cards, shopping... Stephanie was never a really big haggler, in fact neither was I. But after just experimenting a few tactics, we've managed to get away with a bunch of warm clothes for our trek up into the mountains. It also really helped out with the freezing cold weather at night in Cusco.

Peruvian women making belts on the street.

There were a lot of people trying to sell things to the tourists on the streets. Some of the things were Alpaca goods, fake raybans, and massages. Massages? At first I thought it was really strange that everyone was asking if you wanted a good massage, but after I thought about it, doing a four day trek over the Andes mountains actually sounded nice. The fake raybans were awesome. Guys would come up to and tell you they have real raybans, they would continue to bend them to prove they were real as if they were going to break it. After you would call them out and say they're fake, they would say "noooo, not fake, stolen my friend, stolen".

Plaza de Armas at night

After our day of errands, i went and climbed up the hill to take pictures at night. As I left the hostel I asked the lady if it was safe to walk around at night by myself since the book said there were lots of thefts at night for tourists. Not one problem. I deem Cusco safe.

Cusco, Peru

Sipping on Coca tea at our hostel

We flew to Cusco, Peru from Bogota, Colombia in hopes of doing day trips from Cusco, acclimating to the altitude, and psych ourselves up for Machu Piccu. Our plan was to check in to our trekking office for Machu Piccu and then spend a night or two down in Puno to see Lake Titicaca. When we got to Cusco, there were some strikes going on and apparently the 7 hour bus ride there turned into a 17 hour bus ride. Hurray for strikes. So we had some time to kill in this tourist town. We ended up sipping on Coca tea, took it easy, and did research. Luckily we didn't get altitude sickness but were close to it. I mean Cusco sits on the Andes mountains at 11,100 feet which I really didn't think we would feel any sort of effects. But we would fatigue easily, breath heavily while walking up small hills, and have slight headaches all day long. Yeah, our days were short.

Our view from our hostel of Cusco

Probably the best thing about our hostel was the view of Cusco. You can see on the mountain in the back it says Viva El Peru. Actually it seems like every town we visited would have something written on the side of the mountain with initials of something or the town name. Cusco is a beautiful town, just extremely cold at night.

Pisco Sour

Night came and we wanted to eat some local cuisine. We set off looking for a suggestion in Lonely Planet but found this hole in the wall where we only saw locals eating. Score. However it still had a tourist menu which is pretty much just a prix fix menu. I got the recommended Lomo de Alpaca, Sopa a la Criolla, and a Pisco Sour. the Sopa a la Criolla was amazing there, best one I had in town. It's a lightly spiced, creamy noodle soup with beef and vegetables. Lets just say I wouldn't order the Alpaca again. The pisco sour was surprisingly good. Here's some random facts about it; The alcohol Pisco is a brandy made from grapes. The actual mixed drink is Pisco, Lime juice, simple syrup, beaten egg whites, and bitters. You know, just in case you want to make it at home. Cheers.

The Lomo de Alpaca and fish fillet. [Photo cred: Steph]