For my 30th birthday, Jenn thought we should do something adventurous. She knows I like to hike and camp, and she had visiting Machu Picchu on her bucket list, so Peru it was - a 12-day trip, of which 7 would be spent hiking through the Andes. I'm going to try to keep this a little light on the photos so it's not enormous.
The flight went through Miami, then to Lima, then to Cusco which is where all hikes to Machu Picchu start. The flight to Cusco was a bit of an adventure; as we were going in to land, the pilot banked sharply to the left and pushed the nose down at the same time, causing virtually everyone on the plane to swear and/or gasp. Then, once we had touched down, apparently nobody throught to slow down until we had run out of runway, at which time we skidded to a halt with the plane turned sideways. Slightly scary, but we survived.
Cusco was beautiful, though.
After going to our hotel, we left to explore parts of the city. The main square had some beautiful churches:
To test our our lungs in the thin air, we hiked up to Sacsayhuamán, a set of Incan ruins high above the city. Cool place, with some beautifully built ruins, interesting geography, and a giant white Jesus looking down on the city. The rocks were enormous, it's hard to believe humans both carried and carved these rocks.
The next day we went to Sacred Valley. There are Incan ruins here, and it was a significant source of crops for the Incas. They still speak Quechua in many parts of the Sacred Valley. The ruins we visited were in Ollantaytambo, and were called the Sun Temple.
In one area of this temple, there are two doorways flanking 9 windows. On the Solstice, the sunrise would shine directly into one of the doorways, and they would have a party and place the idol in the doorway. The idol would remain there for two and a half days, and then would be placed in one of the windows. Every 20 days, the idol would be moved, until the Equinox, when the sunrise would shine through the other doorway. The idol would be placed in that doorway for two and a half days, and then it would make its way back through the 9 windows every 20 days...giving them a 365 day calendar.
After the ruins, we visited Moray, which has some very interesting terraces carved into the valley that were used for crops.
That's a person in the middle, to give a sense of scale:
We then drove to Maras, which has some pretty interesting salt pools. A tiny stream (on the left of this photo) runs out of a mountain, and the water is incredibly salty. If you dip your fingers in it, when the water dries your fingers will be white with salt. They use this little stream to fill up 3000 salt pools. Each family owns 20 pools and when the water evaporates, they harvest the salt.
Okay, enough non-hiking photos. Let's get to the trekking. I'll keep this brief, and these are chronological as we hiked. For the first part of the trek, we had horses carrying our tents/cooking supplies/heavy stuff. The second part (the Inca Trail) doesn't allow horses so we had extra porters join us.
Milky Way at 13,000 ft.:
The mountain views were spectacular everywhere.
Salkantay Pampa, on our way up to the pass that stands right under the mountain Salkantay:
Hiking up to our campsite at 15,000 ft:
Overnight, we got to experience a thunder-and-lightning snowstorm, which was quite an experience, replete with ~60mph wind gusts. All through this, we could hear avalanches coming down from Salkantay, and when we woke up, the world had turned white:
We hiked over the Incachiriaska Pass at 16,000 ft. The views were spectacular! This is a giant panorama:
The Ridemonkey beanie went all the way to Peru!
Lots more hiking... eventually we left the Salkantay trek and hooked up with the Inca Trail. Much more crowded. If you look down into the valley, you'll see the path we were hiking.
Our team...
The original Incan steps, carved into the rocks, are still there after 500+ years.
Eventually we reached Machu Picchu. Pretty cool place, these guys were absolutely amazing engineers. All of the door and windows are at 10 degree inclines because they determined that was most effective against earthquakes.
They worshipped the condor, and if you use your imagination, they say this looks like a condor, hunched over the valley. The two flanking mountains are the wings, and the middle is the head:
Lots of carvings, this one of the actual mountains behind it. Look closely.
We left Machu Picchu and spent one more day in Cusco. We visited the local market, which was awesome. I wanted to buy everything - it all looked so delicious. We had fresh fruit smoothies while we were there - we didn't want to have them before we went hiking in case we got sick for whatever reason, but since we were going to be home soon, we tried them. Delicious.
Once we left Cusco, we headed to Lima for a day. Lima has some really beautiful areas. Alexis_DH was out of town, so we couldn't meet up for drinks.
We had drinks at El Cordano, which is the oldest bar in Lima, and Alexis warned us might be a little "local" for touristing, but we found it to be very pleasant, and the proprieter was very happy to talk to us. It is right across from the president's palace, and it is said that all the leaders of Peru have gone there for a pisco sour, so that's what we did.
We also visited the catacombs in the Covento de San Francisco, which did not allow photos but I thought was awesome. Something like 25k bodies are estimated to be buried there.
All in all, a spectacular trip. It was hard to adjust to real life once we got back.
Thanks, Jenn!
The flight went through Miami, then to Lima, then to Cusco which is where all hikes to Machu Picchu start. The flight to Cusco was a bit of an adventure; as we were going in to land, the pilot banked sharply to the left and pushed the nose down at the same time, causing virtually everyone on the plane to swear and/or gasp. Then, once we had touched down, apparently nobody throught to slow down until we had run out of runway, at which time we skidded to a halt with the plane turned sideways. Slightly scary, but we survived.
Cusco was beautiful, though.
After going to our hotel, we left to explore parts of the city. The main square had some beautiful churches:
To test our our lungs in the thin air, we hiked up to Sacsayhuamán, a set of Incan ruins high above the city. Cool place, with some beautifully built ruins, interesting geography, and a giant white Jesus looking down on the city. The rocks were enormous, it's hard to believe humans both carried and carved these rocks.
The next day we went to Sacred Valley. There are Incan ruins here, and it was a significant source of crops for the Incas. They still speak Quechua in many parts of the Sacred Valley. The ruins we visited were in Ollantaytambo, and were called the Sun Temple.
In one area of this temple, there are two doorways flanking 9 windows. On the Solstice, the sunrise would shine directly into one of the doorways, and they would have a party and place the idol in the doorway. The idol would remain there for two and a half days, and then would be placed in one of the windows. Every 20 days, the idol would be moved, until the Equinox, when the sunrise would shine through the other doorway. The idol would be placed in that doorway for two and a half days, and then it would make its way back through the 9 windows every 20 days...giving them a 365 day calendar.
After the ruins, we visited Moray, which has some very interesting terraces carved into the valley that were used for crops.
That's a person in the middle, to give a sense of scale:
We then drove to Maras, which has some pretty interesting salt pools. A tiny stream (on the left of this photo) runs out of a mountain, and the water is incredibly salty. If you dip your fingers in it, when the water dries your fingers will be white with salt. They use this little stream to fill up 3000 salt pools. Each family owns 20 pools and when the water evaporates, they harvest the salt.
Okay, enough non-hiking photos. Let's get to the trekking. I'll keep this brief, and these are chronological as we hiked. For the first part of the trek, we had horses carrying our tents/cooking supplies/heavy stuff. The second part (the Inca Trail) doesn't allow horses so we had extra porters join us.
Milky Way at 13,000 ft.:
The mountain views were spectacular everywhere.
Salkantay Pampa, on our way up to the pass that stands right under the mountain Salkantay:
Hiking up to our campsite at 15,000 ft:
Overnight, we got to experience a thunder-and-lightning snowstorm, which was quite an experience, replete with ~60mph wind gusts. All through this, we could hear avalanches coming down from Salkantay, and when we woke up, the world had turned white:
We hiked over the Incachiriaska Pass at 16,000 ft. The views were spectacular! This is a giant panorama:
The Ridemonkey beanie went all the way to Peru!
Lots more hiking... eventually we left the Salkantay trek and hooked up with the Inca Trail. Much more crowded. If you look down into the valley, you'll see the path we were hiking.
Our team...
The original Incan steps, carved into the rocks, are still there after 500+ years.
Eventually we reached Machu Picchu. Pretty cool place, these guys were absolutely amazing engineers. All of the door and windows are at 10 degree inclines because they determined that was most effective against earthquakes.
They worshipped the condor, and if you use your imagination, they say this looks like a condor, hunched over the valley. The two flanking mountains are the wings, and the middle is the head:
Lots of carvings, this one of the actual mountains behind it. Look closely.
We left Machu Picchu and spent one more day in Cusco. We visited the local market, which was awesome. I wanted to buy everything - it all looked so delicious. We had fresh fruit smoothies while we were there - we didn't want to have them before we went hiking in case we got sick for whatever reason, but since we were going to be home soon, we tried them. Delicious.
Once we left Cusco, we headed to Lima for a day. Lima has some really beautiful areas. Alexis_DH was out of town, so we couldn't meet up for drinks.
We had drinks at El Cordano, which is the oldest bar in Lima, and Alexis warned us might be a little "local" for touristing, but we found it to be very pleasant, and the proprieter was very happy to talk to us. It is right across from the president's palace, and it is said that all the leaders of Peru have gone there for a pisco sour, so that's what we did.
We also visited the catacombs in the Covento de San Francisco, which did not allow photos but I thought was awesome. Something like 25k bodies are estimated to be buried there.
All in all, a spectacular trip. It was hard to adjust to real life once we got back.
Thanks, Jenn!
- this was one of the longest, difficult tours that the tour group we went with offers.
. Stupid, stupid me for not taking advantage when I had the chance.
I love that pano, too.
