La Luna de Miel Larga

This past weekend (July 10-13), we went on a four-day hiking trip to Choquequirao. These Incan ruins are being touted as the next Machu Picchu—you can see this New York Times article about them. But they aren’t as developed (for tourists) yet so you can only get there by foot: with over 4 vertical miles of altitude change throughout the hike.

The first day we got an early start in Cusco leaving on the 6am bus for Ramal de Cachora, but a late start for hiking as we had to take the three hour winding bus (we were a little carsick and the ride, which is on the road to Lima, definitely clinched it for us that we are never going to bus to Lima) and then a 30 minute taxi from Ramal de Cachora to Cachora, and then wait for our mule driver to get everything redistributed weight-wise and get the mules loaded. We were traveling with an American couple that we met here, and although we had decided not to hire a guide (we heard that the route is very straight-forward) we didn’t want to carry our stuff, so a friend here had helped set us up with our mule driver. We started hiking around 11:30am, mostly flat through fields and forests and along a ridge, where we could see this gorgeous range of snow-covered mountains. We arrived at the first lookout point around two hours later, and stopped for lunch and to check out our route. From that lookout, we could see switchbacks all the way down the valley to the river, and Choquequirao in the distance on a mountain on the other side of the valley. We started our descent, from 2900m to 1800m, where the first campsite was located. It was all pretty much downhill switchbacks, with another cool lookout where we saw condors flying right over our heads. We arrived at camp around 5:30pm, after a little less than four hours of downhill hiking. Our nice muler driver had already set up our tents, which was nice considering it was getting dark and not in his job description. The campsite had about six other groups there, and sold drinks and had bathrooms, as well as a lot of animals. The next morning we awoke at 5am to leave at “6 en punto” (6 sharp), but left more like 6:30am. We hiked down the rest of the way to the river Apurimac, which is at 1500m. Then we hiked up and up and up. We reached the second campsite for a little rest around 9am, and then the third campsite at the “top” by 11:30am. The third campsite is at 3000m. We had lunch and rested and set up camp, and then headed off to finish the last hour hike up to the ruins shortly after 1pm. It actually took more like 1.5 hours, and Chris and I were alarmed to reach the ruins at 2:45pm and see that they were only open until 5pm. But it turned out not to matter that much. Although the ruins are supposedly bigger than Machu Picchu, much of the site still is not excavated and it is very spread out. There aren’t the same level of “grand architecture” buildings like in Machu Picchu, but the site is equally impressive as it is perched high on a mountain top with spectacular drops to the Apurimac River. And it is cool to be one of ten tourists visiting the site. Chris and I (our other travel companions were a little ways behind us) wandered in along the terraces without seeing another soul and wondered where we were supposed to pay the entrance fee. We finally came to the Lower Plaza and walked right past the man in the INC vest, sitting on the grass at the side. We walked up the ceremonial hill and were rewarded with a great view of the whole site and a condor swooping past 30m directly below us. When we came down, we realized that the man in the INC vest was collecting entrance money…talk about the opposite of the control exerted over Machu Picchu! We explored the rest of the site, hiking up to the Main Plaza to hide in the top part of the ruin and watch the sun set over Salkantay mountain. We left as it was getting dark and windy (and cold) around 5:30pm. Our mule driver actually came looking for us around 7pm in the dark because he was worried because we weren’t back at camp yet. Day three we insisted on sleeping in and woke up with the campsite to ourselves. We made pancakes, making jealous a group who hiked in early as we were breaking camp. I think we were on our way by 10am and we made good time, getting down from our 3000m back to 1500m at the river within 3 hours. But our knees weren’t thanking us. We had lunch by the river and soaked our feet. Our friends decided to go swimming and Chris and I decided to face the uphill hike first, and then do our relaxing at camp. It was a grueling 300m climb with the sun beating down on us and every step steeper than the last. I think it was the hardest part of the hike for me, because of the sun. Still, we made it in about an hour, and then got to spend a few hours relaxing at camp before dark. We all had more energy and better appetites that night, but knew that we had to get up the earliest of all the next day, because the sun comes out and shines directly on the cliff face we had to hike back up. We were up by 4am and gone by 5:45am. This last upward push wasn’t nearly as bad as the others because of the coolness of the dawn, and us already having made significant progress up the day before. We stopped occasionally to eat snacks and tell stories, and made it back to the first lookout point by 9:30am. Not knowing where else to kill our time, we had lunch (yes, lunch at 9:30am) and took some naps. Around 11am we started the last bit of our hike back, which I also found difficult because of being so exhausted from the previous days and with the sun now out in full force. But it was mostly flat, and we took our time, arriving back in Cachora at 12:30pm. We bought some “cold” beer, after not being able to find any restaurants, and hung out in the main plaza for a few hours. Everything about the trip had gone smoothly and according to plan, including the food we had packed and consumed, EXCEPT that we really over-estimated how long we would be hiking each day. As a result, our bus tickets back to Cusco weren’t until 7pm, so we had lots of time to kill. Not being able to find anyone to serve us in town, we cooked our last package of pasta on the roadside in front of our mule driver’s house at around 4:30pm. Luckily, our taxi driver showed up reasonably on time to take us back to Ramal de Cachora, and we waited by the side of the highway for only an hour, wearing 4 layers because now we were back at 3600m. Our bus was on time (ish) and here we are, trying to get our leg muscles to recuperate after washing four days worth of dust off our tired bodies. Back to regular life!

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here we will talk about Inti Raymi.

Here’s a little video of our time on the Apurimac River near Cusco. We arranged to have a 4 day private trip, rowing our own boats. My dad Joe and stepmom Jane had arrived in Cusco a few days before, so it was just the four of us and four guides. This was definitely the biggest water any of us had run, and the rating system seems a bit looser down here, so the 5+ rapids we ran would have definitely been 6’s in the States (the standard rating scale for rapids is 1-6 from least to most difficult/dangerous). The video looks a lot more tame than it really was, because this was really powerful water. Several of the rapids the guides wouldn’t let us, or anyone else, run because of the danger involved, but we did convince the head guide to let us run Toothache with him, a difficult 5+, which Aviva managed to do part of standing on her head as you can see at the beginning of the video. All in all it was a fantastic trip and we had a great time, and the owner/head guide wants me to come back and guide for them later this season as they’re really busy, so there might be more videos in the future.

Sorry it has been so long since we updated! We got back to Cusco at the end of May and jumped happily back into our everyday lives. I made some good progress on research and Chris worked at putting the finishing touches on our next weeks’ itinerary. Joe and Jane (Chris’s dad and stepmom) arrived on June 12 and we spent a few days hanging around Cusco while they acclimatized. I got to keep up with a bit more research and we celebrated Chris’s 26th birthday early with some of our local friends at a collective party meant to be for four people’s birthdays. On June 16, we left for our river adventure, which Chris describes in the above post (see Apurimac Rafting post), where you can also see the video which the guiding company made for us. We arrived back in Cusco on June 19 (Happy Birthday Chris!), exhausted and a little sick, but pleased with our experience.

My brother (Kal) arrived on June 21, but he didn’t get to spend his first days taking it easy. We were immediately off on the Sunday to visit the ruins and market of Pisaq, and from there we headed to Calca, another Sacred Valley town. We stayed for an afternoon, night, and the following day in Calca, at my friend’s Cultural House, where we learned lots about Andean cosmovision, rituals, music, and traditional medicine. We met a local Andean paqo (priest) who did an offering ceremony for us, and we got to eat delicious Pachamanqa (a meal prepared by burying food in a collapsed earthen oven; ours had four types of meat—alpaca, cuy (guinea pig), chicken, and beef—as well as countless types of potatoes, plantains, salads, and sauces). We also had an Andean music concert, and learned how to diagnose ourselves using eggs. We highly recommend one of their workshops to anyone coming to Peru and wanting to learn more about where they are visiting. We plan on taking my parents when they come visit in September.

We got back to Cusco in time for the Inti Raymi celebration on June 24th. It deserves its own post so see above (see Inti Raymi post). We went out that night to celebrate Chris’s birthday again, at a nice wine bar restaurant with unremarkable service but good food. Then Kal and I headed off on a three day hike through a portion of the cloud forest to reach Aguas Calientes, the town below Machu Picchu. We saw lots of tea and coffee plants, not to mention peppers, pineapples, roosters, and lots of tall grasses that made hiking a bit difficult as you couldn’t tell where the cliffside was. We also went to the hot springs at Santa Teresa, although we just dipped our feet. Meanwhile, Chris and Joe and Jane headed off to do their own Sacred Valley tour (Chinchero, Moray, Salinas, Ollantaytambo) and met up with us on June 27th. They climbed the mountain Putucusi that day, while Kal and I limped (well, Kal walked and I limped: I had rolled my ankle the day before) down the train tracks for our last day of hiking. We all went up to Machu Picchu on June 28th to spend the day seeing the ruins and hiking the mountain Wayna Picchu. We got back to Cusco late that night.

Joe and Jane spent their last day in Cusco seeing the ruins of Tambomachay and Q’enqo, while Kal and I spent some extra time recuperating and preparing for our next trip: to the jungle. We went out that night to the most expensive hotel in Cusco for a drink, and then to another nice restaurant for a final dinner. Joe and Jane made it back to Portland safely, while Kal and I left for Paucartambo with my biologist friend who does research on beetles at different cloud forest elevations. The four of us (including her assistant), caught a bus to Aojanaco, where we hung out for a few hours at the Manu Park guard’s station, waiting for someone to show up. When they did finally show up, they told us that we couldn’t stay as we had planned because they had “special visitors”. So we caught a taxi to Wayqecha, a really nice biology research station at around 2900m. We spent two nights there, catching beetles by headlamp gleam, hiking around to pick up beetle traps, and eating good food. On Wednesday (July 2), we spent four hours by the side of the road, playing variety puzzle games and waiting for some sort of transportation. We finally were able to flag down a truck, and we rode in the back (quite bumpy!) until San Pedro (1500m), where Kal and I had reservations that night at Cock of the Rock Lodge. (We left our friends at their third research site, further up the road.) We went on a hike and saw lots of monkeys, and the next day we awoke early to see the Cock of the Rock birds doing impressive territorial displays. Then we waited on the side of the road again, this time for only an hour, before catching a ride back up the road to Rocotal, meeting up with our friends at their fourth site. We had lunch and did some walking around with them, seeing the landslide that had crippled traffic for days last rainy season. Then we caught a ride back to Cusco (and the people we drove with had a monkey in a backpack…which is sad news for the monkey but good news for Kal who really wanted to hold one during his time in the “jungle”). We got home a day early (July 3), which was lucky because the shack at Rocotal wasn’t quite big enough for four people. Kal and Chris spent the next few days shopping, and I did some work. Unfortunately, Kal had to leave early this past Monday, because of a national strike going on today (Wednesday) that threatened to paralyze the airports.

So that’s our last few weeks…we posted photos here from Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu and jungle trips. See the other posts for photos/video from the Apurimac and Inti Raymi trips.

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