Machu Picchu: the Salkantay Trek (9/21-9/26)

Since arriving in Cusco, Scott and I were relatively sure we´d like to visit a nearby site of Incan ruins, accessible via various treks or by bus-train combo. The site, which the Peruvian people will tell you was definitely not ¨discovered¨ in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, but rather has been known to the local people almost since the fall of the Incan Empire, is called Machu Picchu. You may have heard of it.

To get to Machu Picchu, one can choose to take a one- or two-day bus and train to Aguas Calientes - the painfully touristy town at the base of Machu Picchu mountain, then hike or bus to the actual ruins, or one has the option of hiking. There are three hiking routes to access the ruins: (1) the infamous Inca Trail - 3 nights, must be booked months in advance, features arriving through the Sun Gate; (2) the newly-popularized Inka Jungle Trail - 3 nights, favored by young adventuresome types, can feature rafting and downhill biking segments; and (3) the Salkantay Trek - 4 nights, least popular of the access routes, features summitting a 4,200 meter pass over the Salkantay glacier one day, then dropping to the jungle at only 1,300 meters the next, passing through various eco- and climate systems.

We booked the Salkantay Trek one night at 5pm, and left the next morning at 4am.

deluxe hot lunch - ready when you are

Now, Scott and I both consider ourselves to have more camping experience than the average bear, and we spent some time seriously considering doing the Salkantay Trek by ourselves. When we added up the costs of going solo versus going with a group, though, the two were fairly comparable (solo may have actually been more expensive), so we decided to forgo our prejudices against organized tours, and go with a company. In a moment of defiance, however, we brought our own tent along for the ride...we never used it.

the (shorter) mountain next to Salktantay

In retrospect, we may have preferred doing the trek solo, but what we did do ended up being a completely new experience, at the very least. Mules and horses carried our bags the first 3 days. We slept in tents under roofs. We were woken at 5 or 6am each day to a steaming mug of hot coca tea. At lunch time, we´d stop at building or shacks along the trail, where a team of cooks had already prepared a hot lunch of soup, rice, meat, vegetables and tea. Part of one meal was comprised of delicate, sushi-like rolls of polenta stuffed with fish. There were cold beers to be bought along the trail. It was like a distant sister of camping who had never stepped in a puddle without proper rainboots had decided to organize the trek, and while we enjoyed the amenities thoroughly, the constant complaining of the majority of the group tried our patience.

Hayley, Juancito, and Scott, hot on the trail

As you can imagine, the guides and the group affect the fluidity and enjoyment of a trip to an enormous degree. Our guides, Juancito and Javier, had opposite but complementary styles. Juan was quiet, funny, shy but engaging, and marched along stoicly no matter the conditions. Javier was loud and outgoing, but disappeared frequently and inexplicably, and only interacted with the group to say, ¨Ok, Super Amigos...ok guys...ok. It is a tradition...to give a little tip. So we all give a little tip. Ok? Ok Super Amigos...ok.¨ The guides, then, were fine. It was the other 16 people on the trek that made it truly interesting.

Nearly half the group was Israelis who had recently finished their time in the army, which meant they were all in beastly good shape and enjoyed jogging down the trail and complaining in Hebrew. While they were uninterested in interacting with the rest of the group, we did manage to catch their names: Angry Boy, Captain Israel, the One that I Don´t Like, the One Who Looks Like the One I Don´t Like, the Boyfriend, and Silent Girl.

Goofing off while waiting for the rest of the Crew to catch up

Another large subset of the group was the effervescent Commonwealth Crew. This group of med students was so-called because of their various nationalities: Australian, Scottish and English. While generally friendly and cheerful, they were also rather cliquey, and always situated themselves as far from the Israelis as possible at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner tables, creating a strange constrained space for those of us in neither clique, of which there were only five of us. Scott and I mostly associated with the Canadian couple on their honeymoon and the German girl traveling by herself, as well as the less-entrenched members of the Commonwealth Crew.

Overall, it was an enjoyable crowd, and the more people complained about the daily eight hours of hiking, the more Scott and I reveled in our physical fitness and our stoicness in the face of adversity. We did climb to and snow-camp at 4,800 meters on a snow-capped volcano in Ecuador, after all.

Ghost-Hayley climbing the stairs in the fog-rain to Machu Picchu

The trek itself was mostly upwards at the start, then once we crossed the snow-capped Salkantay pass it was almost entirely downhill; we dropped over 3,000 vertical meters in the span of a day and a half (Fun Fact: according to Juancito, no one has ever summitted the Salkantay mountain itself, and the only people who tried were caught in an avalanche with no survivors). While the first night was rather cold, the second was positively temperate, and the third slightly warm. Also on the third night, we visited the Santa Theresa hot springs, which lie alluringly at the edge of a river, and in which I met a girl who went to Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park (she knew a girl I played volleyball with in high school, small world). I also sustained some incredibly bizarre insect bites on my ankles, which bubbled up into delicious-looking blisters by the next day, and later oozed into my socks.

Dawn at Machu Picchu

The final (4th) day of hiking before Machu Picchu saw us laden with our packs, since horses can´t cross rivers. The morning was desolate, and our path was a scorching, dusty highway running too high above a roiling river replete with hydroelectric spillways. When that ended, we hiked several hours along railroad ties, and only once were we obliged to jump into the bushes to avoid an oncoming locomotive. The track was interminable, broken only by the occasional glimpse of a terrace high above the valley, veiled in clouds, that marked our final destination.

We spent the night in Aguas Calientes, avoiding the 4-for-1 Happy Hours and - with the practiced idiocy that rears its head whenever hikes are involved - bought six tiny rolls and a package of wafer cookies to sustain us the entire following day at Machu Picchu.

Path up Huayna Picchu - sacred city in background

4:30am saw our entire group eating Oreos and - having lost Javier again - picking our way up the treacherous ¨trail¨ (read: vertical stone steps), our skin slippery with the early-morning fog, which couldn´t decide if it would actually become rain, but drenched us nonetheless. We entered Machu Picchu at 6am alongside the dry, well-dressed, non-sweaty tourists who had opted to take the bus up the vertical incline. One member of our group verbally assaulted a woman smoking a cigarette nearby, so thirsty were we for air and respite from the ascent.

Our first impression of the infamous Incan site was...foggy. We couldn´t see much, and our group´s tour guide, Horatio, was more interested in expounding upon his theory that South-pointing triangles in Machu Picchu must indicate that the Incas worshipped the Salkantay glacier than elucidating us on any of the actual theories about the site. His book will be coming out next year. He also had a charming way of rambling incoherently in a mixture of Spanish and English for several minutes, then announcing, ¨Ok boys and girls, girls and boys, clear the understand?¨ At which point we all giggled nervously and shook our heads.

Machu Picchu from Huayna Picchu

At 8am, having crossed most of the city, yet - due to the fog and Horatio´s unintelligible babble - having seen and understood very little, Scott and I finally detached from the group to hike Huaynapicchu (Waynapicchu), the peaky mountain that rises above the city. Only 400 people can hike the peak each day, and our reservation was for 8am, while the rest of the group went later.

Strenuous. Uphill. Cables on the path to keep you from tumbling to your death in the jungle thousands of feet below. As we climbed higher, we were able to see much of the route we´d hiked the day before. And as though the Incan gods wanted to impress upon us the beauty and sacredness of the site, a brilliant rainbow cut through the fog to illuminate the valley and river below. The ruins at the top of Huaynapicchu seem to indicate a lookout point or stronghold, although someone told us that the location was simply used by the city´s astronomers. Near the top, I met a fellow Bruin on a spiritual retreat. We giggled about comparing Machu Picchu and Los Angeles. We also ran into a South African couple we´d been leapfrogging the whole trek (they´d gone solo), and took one of the funnier MySpace-style pictures of all time (four heads and the lost Incan city captured on an iPhone on top of the world - not bad).

post-napping in the Picchu

While the mountain was relatively peaceful and scenic, upon reaching the very pinnacle, we found ourselves surrounded by about 30 Japanese tourists, all tittering and giddy. It was probably the most surprising location for a party atmosphere I´ve ever imagined. Scott and I tried to wreck their pictures by making faces in the background, but we got caught and were obliged to participate in a Japanese jumping-spinning video I hope we get to see someday.

Yep! We were there...Either that or I´m good at Photoshop

From Huaynapicchu, there were signs indicating something called the Gran Caverna, and we decided to take the challenge and check it out. We climbed down stairs for the next hour, and I would guess that about 1% of all people who visit Machu Picchu even know this place exists. Because of this, we thought we were sneaking off the Gringo Trail to see a hidden treasure at Machu Picchu...Instead, we briefly peered into a cave with some brick structures, and then spent 30 minutes being spiritually uplifted by a bored park caretaker. The spiritual uplifting involved having our earlobes rubbed, massaging our own buttocks, and sitting in the back of a cave pretending to meditate while secretly keeping my eyes slightly open to ensure out backpacks weren´t being pilfered. When we finally escaped his relatively innocent clutches, he suggested we tip him. Having essentially been kidnapped and forced to meditate (seems counterintuitive, I know), neither of us was particularly inclined to do so, but I ended up reaching into my pockets and giving him the only thing I encountered, which was a Canadian two dollar coin, or ¨toonie,¨ the Canadian honeymooners had given me the night before (sorry, guys!). Reflecting, I was strongly reminded of last summer in Morocco when I bought a couch from a man named Couscous (¨they call me Couscous because I am very fat¨) for some quantity of dirhams plus one U.S. dollar. Bafflingly, the man at the Gran Caverna was thrilled upon receipt of the coin.

Double rainbow on our way down from Picchu

Back in Machu Picchu several hours and sweaty stair hiking later, we´d finished our meager snacks and it had started to rain. Many of the more fickle tourists left at the first drops, so when the sun broke out stunningly 30 minutes later, Scott and I were sharing the place with a fraction of the thousand tourists who enter each day. Being hungry and warm, naturally, we took a nap on the precipitous walls of the sacred city.

At around 4pm, and 8 hours in the infamous place, we made the (now-rainy, but also rainbow-y) hike back to Aguas Calientes, where we managed to convince a restaurant to give us a 45 sol pizza and a 1.1 liter beer for only 30 soles. Our negotiating is getting muuuch better.

Back to Cusco meant taking a train (with gourmet snax - parmesan crackers and chocolates!) to Ollantaytambo, where - of course - Javier had abandoned us, and we had to pay a colectivo (shared taxi) to take us back to Cusco. I was annoyed, and took it out on a Peruvian man for not making space for me on his row of the colectivo.