Peru & Chile, part 1: Peru

Our hostel in Cuzco, built on Incan foundations

We recently returned from a 2 week vacation in Peru and Chile- our first trip to South America! The trip began inauspiciously when, just days before we left, PK both caught a bad cold and also injured her foot, potentially jeopardizing our plans to hike to Machu Picchu in Peru, then go skiing in Portillo, Chile. We grimly boarded our Taca Airlines flight to Peru and hoped for the best.

Our first stop was Lima (capital of Peru) which unfortunately was a pretty uninspiring place. Fortunately, Peru turns out to have great food, and a friend’s cousin took us out for a fantastic dinner: papa a la huancaína (potatoes smothered in spicy cheese sauce), anticuchos (grilled beef heart marinated in garlic and pepper), and many other wonderful dishes.

The next day we flew to Cuzco, ancient capital of the Inca empire. Cuzco is high: over 11,000 feet of elevation, so the short walk up the small hill leading to our hostel had us completely winded in spite of the altitude medication we were taking. Luckily, as soon as we arrived the friendly hostel proprietress introduced us to the real altitude medication of the Andes: tea made from coca leaves, which Peruvians living in the mountains consume constantly. It felt like drinking a cup of coffee, only without the jitters or insomnia, and we instantly felt energized enough to go for a long walk around Cuzco. The city is incredibly picturesque, with many colonial Spanish buildings built on top of Inca foundations whose stonework is amazing--  much better, impressively, than that of the more recent Spanish buildings above them.

Soray Pampa

The following morning at 5am we started our trip to Machu Picchu with a long drive to Soray Pampa (Pampa means ‘flat area’, which in the mostly-vertical Andes was seemingly used to refer to any place with a grade less than 20%). Greeting us at Soray Pampa were our cook, 3 horses and 2 horse tenders. Also there were 2 queasy-looking Americans, slumped on the side of the road. They told us they’d made it about 1 hour into the trek before getting severe altitude sickness and retreating to the start. They caught a ride back to Cuzco with our driver, and we wished we’d given ourselves more than half a day to acclimatize before starting the trek.

We were feeling great at the start (PK having fortunately recovered from both illness and injury), and after hiking uphill for about 1.5 hours I thought we were out of danger. Then, as we stopped for a snack on the side of the trail, PK suddenly turned pale and said "I think I'm going to faint." Not receiving much of a response from me, she added "and roll all the way down the mountain if you don't catch me." Then she fainted. For one long minute she was completely unresponsive, then slowly revived. Happily, our trekking company had anticipated this eventuality, as one of the horses was designated the ‘emergency horse’, there to haul our sorry carcasses up the mountain if we couldn’t do it ourselves. So PK reluctantly agreed to ride the emergency horse, then spent the next half-hour happily snapping pictures from her new, higher vantage point until we stopped for lunch.

Mt. Salkantay

After 2 hours we rounded a corner and suddenly found ourselves face-to-face with spectacular Mt. Salkantay (21,000 feet). It was massive, majestic, and snow-covered, and loomed so large over us that it practically filled our entire field of vision. The Incas worshipped these tall mountains, and it’s easy to see why.



From our lunch spot we hiked the rest of the way up to the pass (15,000 feet, the highest point of our trek), then descended from the rocky alpine grasslands into scrub forest where we camped under a night sky overflowing with twinkling stars.

Salkantay Pass

The next day we were up at 6am and continued hiking downhill, as our surroundings slowly grew more lush and rainforest-like. The trees dripped with vines and creepers which formed a nearly impenetrable wall on either side of the trail. We’d read in our guidebook that Peru is thought to contain many lost Inca cities, which had initially puzzled us–how can you lose a city?—but now made complete sense. The jungle quickly covers up ruins and disused paths, and once that happens you literally would have to hack your way through with a machete.

Meanwhile, as we eyed the other groups of hikers that we crossed on the trail, it became clear that there was a distinct social hierarchy emerging. The small number of people hiking without a guide were the alpha dogs; they had the most swagger, and seemed to look down their noses at the softies (like us) who travelled with guides and horses. We, meanwhile, felt superior to the guided groups staying in the luxury eco-lodges that dotted the trail, congratulating ourselves on roughing it in tents. (The lodge-stayers, presumably, felt smug compared to their friends who had stayed home instead of braving the rigors of life in the eco-lodges of the Peruvian jungle.)
We hiked onward, and spent the night in the town of Santa Theresa, where we took a dip in the volcanic hot springs next to the Rio Urubamba.

View of Machu Picchu from Llactapata

On our third and final day of hiking we travelled over a section of the Inca Trail leading up to the ruins of Llactapata. Please forgive a brief digression to describe the remarkable network of paved roads that connected the far-flung regions of the Incan empire, which spanned from modern-day Ecuador through Peru and onward to Chile and Argentina. These roads allowed messengers, soldiers, and trading goods (typically transported by llama caravans) to quickly move around the empire. This was our first time we’d seen the actual trail: it’s impressively wide (up to 20 feet where we were) and in good condition even 500 years after the empire fell. It’s an amazing feat of engineering and logistics, given the vast distances covered, and the extreme ruggedness of the terrain.

From Llactapata (an Incan ruin at the top of a mountain, at which only a few buildings have been uncovered; the rest remaining tantalizingly covered by thick jungle) we got sweeping views of the Urubamba valley, including Macchu Pichu and the surrounding peaks and waterfalls. From there we hiked down and had one last lunch with our cook before he headed back to his village. Up until this point I’d been congratulating myself on how well I was communicating with our crew using my broken Spanish, but during this lunch I was humbled when I tried to ask the cook if he wanted more food, and he responded by describing the transportation modalities he would be using to get home after the trek. It made we wonder what other absurd things I’d accidentally said in the course of the trip while trying to make friendly chit-chat.

On day four of the trip we visited Machu Picchu. Seeing this ancient city, perched on top of a mountains and shrouded in morning mist, is visual overload; it’s so gorgeous. The city rests atop terraced gardens that stretch hundreds of yards down the steep flanks of the mountain. These terraces not only allowed for agriculture, but also literally buttress the flat sections at the top where most of the buildings are. It’s another staggering feat of engineering. Really, it’s impressive how these Incas mastered the fundamentals of empire building: advanced stonework to build big cities that could withstand the numerous earthquakes, paved roads to knit-together their mountainous empire, and the clever use of terraces to allow agriculture in the super-steep Andes. Take notes, all you would-be empire builders out there!

Huayna Picchu in the background

Exquisite Incan stonework- no mortar, no metal tools!

After strolling around the city, our final goal was to make the roughly 45 minute climb up to Huayna Picchu, the small but exceptionally steep mountain that overlooks Machu Picchu. That morning was the first when I didn’t have any coca tea, and for the first time since Cuzco I felt a faint twinge of altitude sickness as we prepared to start the strenuous climb. Fortunately PK remembered that she had brought a few extra coca leaves with her, and as we waited to start the climb we decided to chew them - a more direct route of intake which our guide had warned us was more intense than drinking the tea. Roughly 10 minutes after we started chewing I started feeling euphoric: incredibly happy to be alive, to be at Machu Picchu, to be there with PK. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so purely happy. As soon as the gate to Huayna Picchu opened we both practically started sprinting up the mountain. We passed everyone in front of us, and in spite of sweating and panting, we somehow didn’t care and oddly felt no desire to slow down. We reached the top of Huayna Picchu in half an hour, and had just enough time to snap one last spectacular shot of Machu Picchu from above before the clouds rolled in and obscured it completely.