Life at 4000 Meters: Cusco, Peru

Have you ever been somewhere where the natural beauty of the place was so incredible that you walk around with your jaw open and feeling a bit giddy? Well, I suppose it could have been the altitude, but such was the last week of my life.

We started off he week with a 18 hour long bus ride from the deserts on the coast of Peru to 3300 m up in the air to the town of Cusco. Cusco is an ancient town, filled with Spanish colonial architecture, and is the center of Andean culture up here in the highlands. Being, deep in the mountains, it is also the tourist destination in Peru, and is the center for treking and of course the base for the famous Machu Picchu. So after several days of relaxing, shopping, and trying to shake off headaches and lack of energy from the altitude change, we headed off to the great outdoors on a 5 day pilgrimage to Machu Picchu.

The trek we chose was called Salkantay, since the famous Inca Trail is horribly expensive and booked up months in advance. But Salkantay proved to be one of my favorite hikes in the world. Our crew consisted of me and Lisa, 4 Brazilians, our guide Freddy, a couple cooks, some insanely hardworking porters, and a few trusty horses. The first day started off pretty easy, coming out of a village if Mollepata, and taking us across some nice rolling hills. But soon we were deep into the alpine, and by our first campsite we had a wicked view of the glacier covered peaks.
The second day started with an insane climb up to a 4600 meters pass. Having little air to breath, I thought that I might just die, but we made it, and views of Mt. Salkantay (6200m) from the top were incredible. In the tradition of the ancient Inca, we built a small stone shrine, gave an offereing to the gods of Salkantay, and took a moment to reflect on our journey thus far. After getting our fill of alpine views, we started the long decent into the rainforest. It´s quite amazing how altitude changes everything about the ecosystem, because within an hour, we went from deserted, snowcovered, rock, to grassy plains, to thick bamboo, banana, and coffee covered rainforest, and the temperature went from 0 to 15C in minutes. In all my travels, I have never seen a fresh coffee bean, which was pretty cool to see. Evidently, they don´t taste all that good straight off the tree.

The third day of the trek was a nothing but rainforrest. And after not showering for 3 days, we received we one of the greatest surprises possilbe. About 2 hours, into the hike, we came across a wonderful, natural hot spring, completly deserted by other hikers. So for about an hour we sat, soaking our sore muscles, and enjoying the jungle scenery around us.
Day four proved to be slighly uneventful (though not in the least bit boring) with more mountain scenery, river crossings, and following the railway tracks for a good part of the day. But the next morning, at 5:30 am, we were off again, straight up a mountain, through thick fog, to reach our final destination - Machu Picchu, the ancient mountain top Inca city, left deserted since sometime around the 16th century, unknown even by the local Quechuas, and not discovered until 1911. They aren´t exactly sure what the place was used for - a religious site, a royal retreat maybe?, but today it makes a pretty impressive sight. Though we really couldn´t see a whole lot of it for the first part of the day, it was still one amazing place. By the end of the day though, the sun cleared up, we were able to climb Wayna Picchu (the mountain behind us in the picture) for wicked views, and we got to experience the place in all it´s glory. Me being me, of course, spent most of the day taking endless amounts of pictures from every angle of the ruins. At the end of the day, we headed back down to town, down the long stepped path that we came up, arrived back in town, and enjoyed a few well deserved beers, having completed 5 fantastic and exhausting days of hiking.

We are back in Cusco now, relaxing and shopping some more, and planning on spending a few more days in the area before heading to Lake Titicaca and into Bolivia.....