Arriving into Cusco we very much needed a quite relaxing hostel. Cusco is a huge party town but also a place to do a lot of treks so a lot of the hostels advertise either quite and relaxing or party party party. Well we found this perfect spot to chill out for a few days. Lots of movies, bean bags, couches and a great kitchen with unlimited fruit pancakes for breakfast. After Colca Canyon we needed to rest up before doing our first hike. Plus one of the girls was sick as well and needed some good sleep. Pretty much did nothing the first day, shopped around for a few treks and then went looking for a fake student ID so we could get it cheaper. Pretty much went on a bit of a wild goose chase around Cusco looking for this ending up in some random market areas where you could get anything but a fake student ID. Outside of the tourist region was fascinating. Markets with all sorts of food. People all over the streets selling everything from huge bags of Coca leaves bigger than bin bags, all sorts of herbs, cheeses, breads even meat sections where they were cutting open the animals on the floor and hanging up the meat on hooks. All over Central and South America we have been eating amazing street food. Usually the best food as well and never seemed unhygienic but some of this place felt like food poisoning just waiting to happen. Was interesting though. Plus it was so cheap. Cannot believe how cheap Peru is for some stuff. Adrian got a really good meal with Guinea big head and rice and salad and chips for like 60 cents or so. You could get all sorts of meals around cusco even two course meals for less than a euro.
The second day in Cusco we were to go shopping for hikes but I woke up feeling like absolute shit. A few people we've been with lately have been sick and I guess I must have caught something unless it was something from the food the day before! Anyway we shopped around for treks and then decided to postpone it another day due to my illness and spent the whole day and night in bed. On the third day I was a bit better so we booked and that evening went out to Loki to meet a load of the others we knew. Again its another big party hostel that is set up perfectly. Loki hostels just seem to do everything right, get the people in, get them to stay and are like big massive hotels.
Salkantay Day 1
Woke up at 330 in the morning to get the bus to Mollepata. Wrecked from the night before and the windy roads didn't help it. Met our group for the trek. It was actually two groups together so we had two guides and all but would be split up for meals and stuff. In the last two days the only food I had eaten due to been sick was some chicken the night before. Well that morning that all came up and there was no way I could stomach anything else. And throughout the whole day couldn't even look at food. So ended up walking 21 km up mountains as far as about 3900 metres on an empty stomach. Shouldn't really have been the toughest day but for me it kinda was. Simple little hills caught my breath. As we got further up towards our camp we see these huge glaciated mountains towering in front of us, little streams running off the sides and thundering rivers flowing down below. We made our way to camp before sunset putting on the layers as it got colder and colder. We were told it would get to -5 or -6 at night but back in July in the winter it could have been as low as -20 in this place. The last ten minutes up to camp were the worst and I was ready to collapse when I arrived. Had a dinner and spent half an hour taking in the scenery around us. There was a full moon night lighting up the snow capped peaks with a number of stars around. After this it must have been 8 O'clock or so and time for everyone to pass out! Funnily enough after weeks of going out and barely getting to bed before sunlight its now gone the opposite way. With all the night buses we have been getting and trekking a sleep in at this stage is 7 O'clock. A lot of the times we've had to be up for 4am!!
Salkantay Day 2
Another early rise at 5am to the cocks crowing. Full of energy I was ready for anything. Started out to blue blue skies with random clouds rolling in every now and then. I had totally recovered from been sick and was practically running up the mountains. Had the music playing on random and every song that came on just fit the moment of the scenery. Was absolutely loving it. Thinking it was one of the best days of my life. All around you could see everything from massive glaciers, rolling green hills, more little rivers, boulders ten times the size of us. All the coca leaves we've been taking as well probably helped with the mood!! Coca leaves are the leaves all the locals chew or make tea out of to give a bit of energy and help with the altitude. They are sold everywhere and its very common all day in tea. We made it up to 4600 metres which wasn't a peak but the highest point of our trek. Some people were short on air up here, this is 15000 ft above sea level for those who don't know metric. Compare that to Carontoohil, the tallest in Ireland which is roughly 1038 metres or about 3405 ft. After some chill out time up here we walked down and down towards our second camp getting warmer all the time. This was through a huge valley. Lots of scree and boulders around stuff I'd learnt in Geography years and years ago. You could totally see how the glaciers had carved out these massive mountains and left so much junk behind it. Night two we were down to 2900 metres so was a nice bit warmer and time for some beers. Our guide said we had made record time and we had done another 19km or so.
Salkantay Day 3
Day three was a lot easier. I think roughly 14km or so down through the jungle. The whole landscape had changed at this stage to warmer weather, palm trees started to appear and all sorts of tropical fruits. Saw more locals around. There were trees growing peaches, papaya, avocado and banana's. Amazing how much the altitude effects everything and how a whole other world can be just another thousand metres below. This also brought the mozzys out unfortunately and we all got some terrible bites from some sort of yellow mozzys that we'd never heard of before. In all the walking I did over the few days the feet were fine but these bites fucked them up on day 5. I could barely walk due to the swollen ankles they gave! We really only walked here till mid afternoon then camped out in some half built building and spent the afternoon in these natural hot springs in another huge valley. That night some people had a few beers, tried to check out a night club in the local town which didn't seem to be open so went back to the campfire chatting to Eddie our guide who is a local. Eddie was a great guy. Full of personality and local as well. He had some great stories and has travelled all over South America and Switzerland. It's great to hear how much some of the locals have travelled here.
Salkantay Day 4
Half the group decided to get the bus to the lunch stop. The rest of us walked. After lunch we walked all along the railroad tracks at the back of Machu Picchu to Agues Calientes. This is the town at the bottom of Machu Pichu. Felt like a scene out of Stand by me!! Arriving into Agues Calientes was a bit of culture shock after been in the middle of nowhere. From down this road here come 20 dirty people, wrecked from walking 78km, unshaven, carrying backpacks and just literally coming out of the jungle and here we see real tourists. All clean wearing proper shoes and shirts. Most likely paid a fortune to get the train or bus here. Eating in crazy expensive restaurant's that were in the town. Even the locals in the town were probably shocked to hear us speaking Spanish. We went for food in one local restaurant and even though the whole town is tourist a few of the locals here wanted to take our picture cause they'd never seen a tourist in there before. And its the local places that usually end up been the best. Well we were hear for three or four O'clock, actually got a shower (although it was cold) and a bed. Decided it was time to go drinking and spent the night drinking until 10!! Never have I been to bed that early from drink but we had another 4am wake up to get up the Machu Picchu.
Salkantay Day 5 - Machu Picchu
We needed to climb 1700 Inca steps to get to the entrance. Most of the tourist would get the tourist bus up but we wanted to be up there early and first to get extra tickets for another mountain called Waynupichu. Raced up a couple of hundred metres to the top in about 40 mins watching the sunrise as we went and managed to get our spot for the other mountain. Up until 9 0'Clock the weather varied so much from having one layer of clothes to getting freezing cold when the clouds rolled in but as soon as the sun came out the area was beautiful. Most peaks all around and the ruins in the middle of it all. Climbing the other mountains over Machu Pichu called Huayna Picchu was probably the highlight. I think this was another 600 metres or so up again. Very very steep and they only let 200 people at a time do it. After days of been used to only 20 people around all the time was weird to see the hundreds of tourists around. Been at the peak of Huayna Picchu was incredible though. Looking down on the ruins from a few hundred metres above. Spent a couple of hours relaxing around until it was time to head back to Agues Calientes. Actually raced the tourist bus down and made it to the bottom the exact same time as the bus had to go via the windy roads and we could go down the steps a few hundred metres.
We did just under 100km of walking in 5 days. I will never think of my feet the same again. The last few weeks of trekking and all the other stuff we've been doing have been some of the best days of my life. Peru is amazing for that and definitely a place I would love to come back to. Some of the mornings getting up, putting on the shoes and putting one step in front of the other was so difficult for the first few minutes but then we quickly got back into the rhythm and ready to go again. Stopping for breaks was the hardest part of getting stuck behind someone slow is also hard cause you can't do your own pace. All in all I totally enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to everyone. Had a great sleep when we got back to Cusco and the following day sitting to breakfast we hear all about Ireland on the news. It was plastered on the front pages of every major news channels and even local Peruvian channels all about the bailout and the economy. Brian Cohen's face today is all over the world on most front pages. They were interviewing lots of random Irish on the streets of Dublin and showing it here and even showing clips of protests that make it look to be riots when you don't know what's actually going on.
Right now as I'm writing this I'm on another cool bus on the way to the Bolivian border. Going to spend a few days at Lake Titicaca one of the highest lakes or something like that and then onto La Paz to party at the Wild Rover a famous Irish hostel!
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