Peru: Cusco, Sacred Valley, Willoq Village, Inka Trail & Lima

How was Peru? Interesting. Beautiful. Inspiring. Challenging. Scary. Historical.


Rundown:
Day 1 - Friday - Fly from LaGuardia to Lima. Arrive at 1 am to a gross hotel room with a beautiful lobby and exterior. Shower. Water is spewing out of the AC onto my roommate. Can't sleep.

Day 2 - Saturday: Wake up at 430 am for breakfast. Eat, get on the tour bus en route to the airport. Fly from Lima to Cusco. Nice hotel, check. Altitude sickness, eh not sickness but definitely felt my oxygen being limited. Cocoa tea. Explored Cusco until it was time for our official tour of the city. Visited some ruins - pictures later if i can figure out how to post them - a cathedral (absolutely gorgeous!)

Day 3 - Sunday: Off to the Sacred Valley to a Lodge-like hotel. Lunch, then to Willoq Village to check out the scene for our service project. Little kids were running around with their siblings strapped onto their back. They started going down slides, it was hilarious! Back to the hotel for an orientation with the Inka Trail tour guides, i think they freaked us all out!

Day 4 - Monday: Early start to some more ruins which contained a little preview of the trail. I stormed right up those steps and then got a little light headed and extremely freaked out that i was not going to make it for the next four days....lesson learned: take it slow. the heat is exhausting. Llama and Alpaca farm. Back to the Willoq Village for a day of service - harvested potatoes, cleaned water systems, created a drainage system and transported rocks to clear the entry way to the community. Lunch followed by local market with beautiful alpaca goods. On the way back to the hotel, the guides stopped at a local Chicha (sp?) factory so we could sample the corn drink made in Peru. There was a game with a golden frog and some gold coins, the group went crazy trying to toss the coin into the frogs mouth! Then we got the tour guides to down a pitcher of Chicha!!

Day 5 - Tuesday: Day 1 of Inka Trail: 200 hikers allowed each day, 300 trekking staff.
No sign or rememberance of St Pattys day except for our green duffle bags. Off to the Inka Trail...a few inclines, what we thought was hard but turned out to be a joke later! Gatorade/candy vendors along the way. Apparently people live on the trail since they were there before it turned into a public space...so the Peruvian government allow them to stay. One thing i must mention is our porters - they are truly amazing! These men and woman run up and down the mountains with 40 pounds on their backs wearing sandals made of recycled tires. Its pretty inspiring as they run past and we're barely able to breathe with a small daypack on our backs!! Oh and they make about $14 USD a day.

Day 6 - Wed: Day 2 of the Inka Trail is the toughest. 4000 ft incline with the peak being "Dead Womans Pass" because they found a dead woman up there at one point!! So yeah...everyone was basically terrified. On the way up, we saw a perfect rainbow which basically made my day. Hung out at the peak for a bit and then a two hour descent. Only goal: reach camp before sunset because hiking down in the dark would be a huge disaster. We get there right after dusk, find our tent, celebrate a fellow hikers birthday and enjoy dinner.

Edit: I can't explain the natural sense of euphoria that takes over after accomplishing something that you have been so nervous and terrified about for days...its amazing. And makes me understand why people are adventurous, its the rush that comes afterwards, nothing compares.

Day 7 - Thurs: Day 3 of Inka Trail
The entire day is about going down the 4000 ft that we climbed the day before, with some inclines just to psych us out a little. Sunny, rainy, cold, windy. A typical weather pattern in the mountains requiring lots of layers of clothing and changes. This was our longest hike: 11 miles so we woke up ar 430 instead of the regular 530 am. It was still a race to camp. BUT, at the end awaited an option to shower for a mere 5 solas! (3 solas = 1 dollar). We were forewarned that hot water may not be available...and it wasn't but we finally figured out a way to work the shower and ended up taking over the men's bathroom since most of them didn't seem at all interested in taking advantage of the facilities. Dinner was fun, filled with extra special treats from the cooks - they made pizza! We got them Cusquena and presented them with tips. We finished our dinner and raced to our tents in the pouring rain. Basically it was my second shower of the evening. :)

Day 8 - 430 wake-up call goes like this "Good morning? cocoa tea?" Last day of hiking, with Machu Picchu waiting for us at the end, could the day be any better? Hiked up to the Sungate where we could see the ruins in the distance under the clouds. 84,000 steps later, we finally made it! And only onto see hoards of clean tourists who had paid the fee to enter the area while we had spent the past four days hiking the toughest trail I have ever been on, trying not to fall (one girl broke her fibula but still made it down, talk about a trooper, another guys knee locked up and rest - well we had the regular bites and scratches, along with moments where we thought we might fall off a cliff....in addition, i managed to create two blisters, one on each ear from tossing and turning on the zipper of my Rutgers hoodie which i was using at a pillow)!

Got my official stamp - its the best one in my passport :) We had lunch at the fancy buffet down from the ruins. We were all so happy to see real toilets, soap, and hand dryers. Not so thrilled to see our reflections for the first time in days...yeah, not pleasant but still happy. Local market shopping right before our train - had about 10 minutes and these ladies DO NOT bargain, nothing like India/Bangladesh. Train was fun, we played BS and laughed! At night, we celebrated our success by going out in the main square in Cusco! All in all, 24 hours of staying awake, most of it in delirium :)

Peru

I'm off to peru in about 24 hours....After South America, all I have left is Antarctica (which i dont think i'll be going to anytime soon) as far as continents go! Would write more but I'm sick, didn't do tonights hw assignment, need to pack, etc....good news is that my manager is sending me home! yay!!