Once we were well rested after our long bus trip we decided to venture outside to check out Cuzco. Jesus, our Spanish teacher back in Chile raved about this town so we couldn’t wait to explore it. An amazing town it is, although sometimes a little too touristy for our liking; the architecture, cafes and markets were mind blowing. We went to the Plaza de Armas (centre square – which is a big feature of towns in South America, no matter what size the town or city they all feature at least one) to meet up with Vasiles and we were immediately overwhelmed by people trying to sell us everything and anything, from paintings to massages to cigarettes. Boos Boos was even ambushed by 3 Peruvians with Llamas asking to take photos. She didn’t really have a choice to Doodles got out the camera and paid the ladies – although we don’t think they were very impressed with what we gave them.
We later found a food market which we visited every single day we were in Cuzco, despite police warning us that it could be unsafe for tourists. Happy to say, we did not have any trouble at all while there. Inside there are 3 aisles of small fruit juice stalls, all identical with women behind them competing for your business. Paying only $1.50 for enough juice to last you until lunch. The rest of the market area is filled with fresh fruit and vege, meat, cheese, chocolate and coffee….It was heaven!
Also worth a mention was a café called Jacks Café – which is owned by an Australian woman, and the menu there is filled with so so many delicious choices we visited here a lot as well. It was extremely Gringo-ish but the food was irresistible. That is one thing that we started to miss at this point was a wide variety of foods. Most common dish here is chicken and rice or meat and rice. It gets a little boring after a while.
While we were in Cuzco it was Doodles’ Birthday! We met up with Vasiles at his hostel and had some drinks and met some other backpackers who were keen to celebrate his birthday as well. As his birthday treat Doodles wanted to try Cuy (guinea pig), Boos Boos was not keen AT ALL but the birthday boy gets what the birthday boy wants. Let me just say that it is not the greatest meat in the world. They presented it almost like a pig with the apple but a small carrot to fit in his small mouth and piece of tomato as a hat. It was a little traumatizing for Boos Boos, but Doodles loved it! After the Cuy we checked out the night life of Cuzco, we had a lot of fun dancing until the wee hours of the morning – oh and the ladies got free drinks all night ;) hehe
Cuzco is the place to be if you want to go to Machu Picchu, but as the original Inca trail is booked out months in advance there are alternate routes that can be taken to get there. One being the Jungle Trek which looked fairly easy with a bit of hard work, or the Salkantay Trek which goes up to 4600m above sea level and is an arduous 5 days. Of course Doodles and Vasiles eyes light up when they saw the challenge while Boos Boos looked the other way not really keen on trekking that high. So she opted for the train up and down a few days later to coincide with the boys arriving at Agues Calientes (the town just below Machu Picchu).
So the boys set off on their trek and Boos Boos was let loose on her own in Cuzco. Filling her days with shopping, massages, a pedicure, eating in cafes, attending a local fair for children with some new found girlfriends and having nana naps. It was bliss to have time away from boys and be with some girls for a while. While here I found out back home my mum had to put our family cat down due to cancer. Luckily there was a resident kitten at the hostel we were staying in who helped me through me grief, we called him Ginger Ninja as we could not remember his Spanish name.
The Salkantay trek was 5 days 4 nights, and on the 5th day getting to Machu Picchu. The trek starts in Cuzco Plaza de Armas at 4am, into a bus and a bouncy but incredibly scenic 3hr bus trip to the starting point, at around 2500m, in a town called Mollepata. We grabbed some breakfast there, bought some coca leaves from a local Mercado for the altitude and managed to negotiate a plain wooden stick to go with them - my trusted friend for the next 5 days. There were some pack mules to carry food, bedrolls and water, so our packs were light, carrying sleeping bags, clothes, camera, more water and snacks. Our group - consisting of 14 people, young and old, and fortunately an incredible mix of global cultures were represented. The group was named by an Argentinean crazy named Manuel, who brilliantly created the acronym - ASICACA - Argentine (3), Ale mania (German) (3), Swiss (1), Irish (1), Canadian (2), Austria (1), Czech (2) and myself representing Aus. In Spanish - asi is used similarly to “like that“ or “in this way” in English ; and funnily enough caca means poo. So we were the ‘like shit’ group - this joke got a lot of length along a 5 day trek trust me! This was later renamed to include our two Peruvian guides who he had failed to factor in - so it was the ASICAKAP (not as good obviously).
The first day was spent slowly but steadily climbing and following a main valley, which would lead us up to the first camp about 4hrs down the vallley from the Salcantay pass, which we would cross the next day. Lunch was the first exciting event - the 3 Peruvian cooks who basically ran with the mules the entire way to arrive ahead and starting cooking meals - had yet to prove their worth so we were all hoping we weren’t going to be eating the same thing for the next 5 days. Luckily enough, these guys had it dialled, and they did well to keep things tasty and slightly differing the whole time. 7hrs later we arrived to the first nights camping spot, which was in a beautiful green valley below the glacial belly of a huge Peruvian mountain with a view up the valley to get small glimpses of Mt Salkantai, almost 800m larger than her brother. Needless to say, the freezing blustery glacial winds kept the temps well below freezing that night. Fortunately though, our tents were set up inside a low shelter with plastic around the walls, which helped massively to keep the winds out and the air a little warmer, so after a cracker meal, I was soon spooning with Vasiles and ready for the 5am wake up call to start moving the next day.
Day 2
5am: Scene - Dark and windy somewhere in the Andean Mountains, Peru.
Noises outside the tent - followed by a bashing on the tent. Wilba and Vasiles roused from a gentle spoon - wha the?
Peruvian cook with minimal teeth in Spanish: You want tea friend? Coca tea? Coca tea?
Wilba mumbles some response - si amigo.
No time for more spooning, we sat there in our sleeping bags, tea being delivered to our tents every morning for the rest of the trip. Awesome.
5.15am - Shortly after finishing the said tea, we were up and off for a quick breakfast, the tents packed and ready to go at 6am. The second day started out up a incredible valley, massive towering Andean mountain cliffs on both sides, and 10 million year old rocks (please excuse again my lack of geological knowledge. If someone does know some appropriate age estimations for the rocks in question - please let me know) lounging amongst lush grasses intermingled with small glacial streams. The morning was chilly with the cold winds, but as soon as we started it was uphill to the pass for a solid 4hrs, so we were pretty soon shedding the heavy layers to take in some of the brilliant morning light as it popped its head over the shoulders of the mountains.
One of the German couples in the group had a brand new Canon 5D digital SLR camera, and a few amazing lenses, and they were soon the photographic envy of many in the group with our pathetic point & shoot rubbish. Off course needless to say if our cameras had a fight - theirs would emerge victorious in a very Van Damne-ish fashion. Come on - you know what I’m talking about - Universal Soldier?! Great stuff. Watch it. Sorry - you may think I am rambling here, but I’m just showing an example of some of the crazy thoughts that were discussed along the 5 days of walking - this conversation actually happened. Perhaps something to do with the lack of oxygen, or maybe just a few too many eccentric people?
We arrived at the pass at 10-11am, this pass was signed at 4600m but both our guides insisted it was higher than that for some reason - I never found out why. The pass sits below the main face of Mt Salkantay, and is absolutely breathtaking. Look behind us to the beautiful valley we had just walked, glance to the right an behold the majestic enormity of Mt Salkantay and a long line of a joining peaks, with glaciers spilling down the sides like the perfectly poured beer on a beer commercial. Look left to her brother mountain and straight ahead to the down to the valley we were starting down, the misty jungle of the lower altitudes peeking through down below. This was simply wow. I had never been at high altitudes or amongst such huge mountains and had never seen a glacier in the chilly flesh.
We didn’t stick around at the high point for too long, the winds were howling down the valley and the temperature had plummeted so we started downhill.
Downhill Vs Uphill: It seems like a pretty simple question, would you rather walk down or up a hill, which would you find more comfortable? Downhill surely - uphill - forget that man! I felt the same, and initially was glad to see some downhill after the hard slogs of the previous day and a half. But in reality, walking downhill is much more demanding, the rocky trails were loose and slippery, and although our bags were not heavy, there was still 9-10kg in there and so was an “added extra” when it came to slowing your pace while walking downhill. So it is much easier to move very quickly and use gravity to take you down the hill, and try and reduce the shock on your ankles and knees as you try and slow yourself. This meant 2 things over the next couple of days: A - it seemed most of our group caught onto this quickly, and soon there were several groups setting a cracking pace which meant we often arrived an hour before the other groups, long enough to get the best camping spots every night. And B - moving quickly down a rocky path is and always will be a challenging experience. Luckily for me, I had my trusty Stick (the stick became The Stick after saving my ass a few times) which was perfect to use like a ski stock for balance if a foot went out from under you. I knew I got the stick for a reason.
Our camp that night was now in amongst a jungle type vegetation, with powerful glacial rivers flowing close by. We were smelling pretty bad after two days of walking, so decided to search for a little swimming pool and test out the frigid cleansing properties of Andean glacial waters. We found a perfect small waterfall into a pool, and set about having the most f*#king freezing shower in my life to date. Put freezing 30knot westerlies to shame, but once I had thawed, I felt absolutely on top of the world - clean, the hard work done for the day, dinner being cooked and being in the middle of nowhere in the Peruvian Andes.
Day 3.
After a repeated predawn wake up call from our toothless coca tea bearing amigo, we set of for a 5 hour downhill morning, following these tormenting rivers through a plethora of varying environments - we were dropping rapidly in altitude over the morning which meant it was constantly changing fauna, and small creeks and waterfalls often made a micro rainforest midway down a valley but suddenly you would turn a corner and you were out in a more arid and dry shrubbery. We were passing small settlements where the local people were farming corn on the sides of these hugely steep valley walls - amazed these old hobbling Quechuan ladies moving quickly up and down these hills putting me to shame as I puff my way downhill.
We reached the tiny town of La Playa around 11 or 12, and as we were taking a more difficult route the next day, would have the rest of the afternoon off to relax in the grass, lounge lizard like in the rocks by the nearby river and/or later in the day... Battle of Gringos vs. Peruvians in soccer/futbol with teams of about 15 gringos v. 17-18 Peruvians - mostly made up of guides, cooks and mule handlers. The number of their teams was constantly varying, adding and taking players - often the goalie would just change from one player to the next - very suspiciously to one of the 6 guys standing in the goal square and happened to be the closest one to the ball at the time! The field was pretty crazy - Vasiles to a fall only to roll within a half meter of a block of concrete. No one knew what the block was doing on the field but it was quickly removed as the ball disappeared of to the other end of the field - normally the Peruvians scoring a goal. The end score was 10-3 against the gringos. Keep in mind this was at 3600m! The game was brutal, and by the time full time was called - almost 2hrs later - there was a long line of casualties. These included my left knee - the downhill of the previous days had taken its toll on the sucker, so after being forced to run around for 2 hours in hard soles walking shoes - my knee and me weren’t best of friends and it was sending pain signals straight to my brain for punishment. Cop that sucker - make me work! Also notable was our guide Marco who kicked someone elses foot or shin (hate to see that guys shin) and broke his big toe. With 2 days still to go walking. Nice.
Another great dinner and early shnoozing - big day tomorrow and totally exhausted from the days activities. The thin bedroll felt like a gourmet king size…ok maybe not, but its was welcoming none the less. ZZZ.
Day 4:
Toothless amigo wake up tea again this morning. Despite the somewhere scary facial features of our friend (especially when viewed in predawn light and accentuated comically with a head torch from below), I could get used to coca tea as a wake up. It was nice and fresh just made from the leaves, some sugar and nice hot water to rouse you from the chilly revery of Shnoozetown, Tennessee. We all knew that the day was the biggest of the trip, so soon started out with a flat section of road, slowly warming the very sore muscles serving as further reminders of the previous days game. ‘I shouldn’t have played’ was definitely muttered from a few people that morning as we then started up the side of the valley wall, and we were climbing solid for the next 4hrs to get to the top of the ridge. On top of the ridge, our spot for lunch, was another old Incan settlement, but only a few buildings remained as the rest were destroyed and pillaged by the Spanish for the gold used in decorating the Incan buildings. After lunch we set of down the other side of the valley.
Compared to the 4hr climb - the descent took us a grand total of about 45 mins. A few of the crew took some tumbles as it was difficult going, but super steep so its was easier to keep a rapid pace down the hill. The afternoon was long but rewarding, once we reached the valley below our lunch spot, we following some incredible rivers to the “town” of Hydroelectrica. Great name from the giant hydroelectric power setup hanging off one hill, but everybody’s focus was on the huge majestic waterfall bursting from a hole at the top of the cliff above us, sending water tumbling hundred of meters onto the rocks below. Amazing stuff. The rest of the day we slowly wound our way along the valley, walking upriver along the train lines to our last night at Aguas Calientes. We had heard there were some hot springs in the town (hence the name Aguas Calientes- meaning hot waters in Spanish) and after arrived totally exhausted after about 9hrs walking, we rapidly found them and settled in for a beer and a soak. Unfortunately, about 200 other people had the same idea - it was pretty packed. After the incredible hot springs of Japan, this wasn’t that crash hot, but did wonders to sooth the sore muscles from the day.
After a cracker dinner, Boos Boos finally made it on the train and was reunited with the stinky crew, and everyone crashed, ready for the 4am wake up the next day.
Day 5 - Machu Picchu.
Up at 4am, Doodles was walking up to the site and Boos Boos decided on the snooze in and catch the bus option. The gates to Machu Picchu open at 6am, and tickets are given out to Wayna Picchu, the mountain sitting on the end of the ridge, which you can climb and get an aerial view on the city. This means that you are walking for an hour, up brutally steep and never-ending steps. All in the dark. Well if you’re and idiot named Wilba who forgot his head torch and thus had to walk by the lights of people behind or above him on the trail. Fool!
Because of the high mountains all around, the sun didn’t penetrate the valley until we had met Boos Boos, and ourselves up on the top of the city, overlooking this incredible place with all its mystery. Pretty amazing moment as the day was totally clear, the sunrise over the mountains after the hard slog to get there was so worth it. Photographically, things didn’t work out well for Vasiles. Not within 5 minutes of arriving, his camera died. He was not happy!
We spent the morning wandering around the city, checking out the incredible stonework, it will definitely leave you baffled as to how its was constructed - giant boulders being perfectly fitted 6 ft up a wall, with no mortar to hold them together. Amazing. There is so much to say about the place, but it would go on forever, and I have probably just set the record for babbling in this blog and your bored as hell, so just go there yourself and check it out while you can - the city is slipping down the hill, and already they have limited the visitors to 600 per day to try and preserve it.
The plan was to climb Wayna Picchu, but after the 5 days, my knee was really killing me, and the exhaustion was kicking in, so we headed back down (in the bus this time!) and found a place to crash out for a few blissful hours, before we met the group for a great final dinner to conclude the trip. It was a great bunch of people, some of whom I am sure we will cross paths with in the future!
After dinner, our train back to Cuzco left at 9.30pm, so we decided on some drinks to pass a few hours. Because the tourism industry here is very cut-throat, with lots of competition, the bars often try and blatantly outbid their competitors to get you into their place. Picture this - we stop in a cross intersection of 2 streets, with 4 days on each respective corner. Four bar staff rush out and start their speil for our business. 3 for 1 cocktails! 3 for 1 with free nachos! 4 for 1! And so on. We eventually settled for 7 for 1 cocktails, with free nachos. I think we got totally jibbed, because after the first round of terribly bad pisco sours (honestly the worst), upon ordering the second round, we were told that happy hour was over so they were now full price! And the nachos never came! Bastards!
Feeling a bit pissed, we made the train and started the solid trip back to Cuzco, first the train and then onto a bus with a mad driver, who eventually (and only just - we nearly rolled a few times) got us back to Cuzco at 2am. There had been a crazily hatched plan earlier in the trip to go out straight away, and a heaps of the guys made it, but alas, sleep got the better of us both and we crashed out - spending the day doing pretty much nada.
After 2 months of travelling together it was time to say goodbye to our new and very special friend Vasiles. It was a strange feeling after seeing him practically every day for so long, knowing the possibility that we may never see such a good friend again. Although he says that he is coming to Brisbane next year…we will hold you to that V. And one day we will travel to the rainy little island to see him!
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
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