Peru (part two)
Door: Tom en Eline
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03 Juli 2012 | Peru, Huaraz
And here is part two of our update!
After leaving Puno and Lago Titicaca, the bus brought us to Cuzco! The first days we explored the city, we did a city walk and ended up on a mountain with another Jesus-statue (every bigger town seems to have one of these). The look-out over Cuzco was nice and we relaxed just a bit with the four of us. After arriving back at the hostal, it was time to make a decission about what kind of trekking we wanted to do to Machu Picchu. After comparing a couple of options, we decided to do the Salkantay-trail aka the mountain-trail. It seemed a good challenge for us and walking an alternative Inka-trail (the Inca´s used this track as well) was the next best thing after the original trail (the original trail tends to get sold out months before). Rutger and Andrea decided to do another track, so we split up for four days. Normaly the Salkantay-trail takes 5 days to walk and visit Machu Picchu, but because we wanted to celebrate Inti Raymi (the second largest festival in South-America after carnaval) we squeezed it in four days.
So..we started our Salkantay-adventure! Two guides and 16 others joined us on this trip. From the start on our group was amazing and everyone stuck together as one group. The weather during the whole track was also great and our noses got a really good color after the first day of not using any sunscreen.. We could have been two ´Rudolph the rednose reindeirs´. Anyway, on the first day we walked around 9 hours. The road we took was doable, but everytime we took a shortcut according to the guides, we had to walk steep up for 15 or more minutes..sighing and sweating like pigs. We started around 3000m high, so the altitude makes it even a bigger challenge with less air to breath in. After hiking trough a lot of forest and with many views on beautiful green valleys, we ended our first day at the bottom of the pass to the Salkantay-mountain with a rewarding view on the Salkantay and the pass we had to cross the next day. Ay..it was steep and quite a lot up. The first day ended around 3900m of altitude and the second day we had to walk up 700m within the first 3 hours. Challenge number two. During the track we camped in tents. The nice thing about this was that the porters (who guide the muels with our big bags) put up our tents. The only thing we had to do was making our beds and eat the food which the great cooks had prepared. That helped a lot during these days! The porters and the cooks were by the way AMAZING! After cooking our breakfast, they had to get everything organized, put it on the muels and then they ran to the lunchlocation (behind the muels and the muels walked really fast) to prepare our next meal. That ment that they left after us and arrived almost an our before us. WOW! We couldn´t have done that!
After a good but cold night (it froze a couple of degrees) we started walking up. That was quite difficult!! The first two hours were ok, but the last hour it got more and more difficult. Catching your breath is not easy at this altitude and we stopped every two corners to recover a bit. But we made it! Clear blue skyes and a beautiful mountain with a lot of snow and a long glacier. We were happy and we celebrated this with an hours rest and an inca ritual on top of this pass (4600m). After this the more easy part of the track started and we walked the afternoon and the day after trough a really green and lush jungle. Banana-trees, avocado-plants and a lot of flowers and waterfalls surrounded us. Nice nice nice nice! We had a lot of fun with our group and played a lot of cardgames at night. After day three we had to say goodbye to everyone, because we were the only ones which did the 4 day track. We had to keep on going for a bit more and took a taxi for 30 minutes to the start of the walk to Aguas Calientes. After 6 hours walking in the morning, we kept on going for almost three hours and arrived in Aguas Calientes around 6 in the evening. And then we were tired! After 9 hours walking on day 1, 10 hours on day two and almost 9 on day three and 75 km in total we fell asleep after dinner and had a really good night!
Then the alarmclock woke us up at 4.30h!! Sigh..we wanted to be one of the first in Machu Picchu so we had to start walking up the hill (500m again). We arrived around 6 and then there was...Machu Picchu!!
BEAUTIFUL! Just a few people, some fog around the ruins and 3 Lama´s overlooking the valley. We sat down for a bit to enjoy the things we saw. After this we started a guided tour and around this time it got more crowded. Very interesting to learn more about Inca-culture, their rituals and daily routine. Of course we made a lot of pictures, which we hopefully can post online soon (internet is slow again). We walked to the sungate and fell asleep in the sun for an hour or so enjoying the atmosphere. After 6 or 7 hours of MP we called it a day and started walking down again. In the evening we got the train and bus back to Cuzco, where we met Rutger and Andrea again. After a late dinner we called it a day. Next day we celebrated Inti Raymi! We can be short about this, a cool festival with a lot of cultural performances on the main square, a lot of Peruvian food and from the kids to the adults, people wear traditional clothes. They danced and performed a ritual in which they honor the Inca and the sungod. Special to celebrate this between thousands of Peruvians and just a few tourists.
Next stop would be Nazca.. a small village in the desert, 13 hours by bus from Cuzco. Although 13 hours by bus seems long, the busses we got sofar are really comfi and we slept a lot. But this we will write about on our next update!
We hope you enjoyed it again, you all are doing well back home and we post something again really soon!!
Besos,
Tom y Eline
After leaving Puno and Lago Titicaca, the bus brought us to Cuzco! The first days we explored the city, we did a city walk and ended up on a mountain with another Jesus-statue (every bigger town seems to have one of these). The look-out over Cuzco was nice and we relaxed just a bit with the four of us. After arriving back at the hostal, it was time to make a decission about what kind of trekking we wanted to do to Machu Picchu. After comparing a couple of options, we decided to do the Salkantay-trail aka the mountain-trail. It seemed a good challenge for us and walking an alternative Inka-trail (the Inca´s used this track as well) was the next best thing after the original trail (the original trail tends to get sold out months before). Rutger and Andrea decided to do another track, so we split up for four days. Normaly the Salkantay-trail takes 5 days to walk and visit Machu Picchu, but because we wanted to celebrate Inti Raymi (the second largest festival in South-America after carnaval) we squeezed it in four days.
So..we started our Salkantay-adventure! Two guides and 16 others joined us on this trip. From the start on our group was amazing and everyone stuck together as one group. The weather during the whole track was also great and our noses got a really good color after the first day of not using any sunscreen.. We could have been two ´Rudolph the rednose reindeirs´. Anyway, on the first day we walked around 9 hours. The road we took was doable, but everytime we took a shortcut according to the guides, we had to walk steep up for 15 or more minutes..sighing and sweating like pigs. We started around 3000m high, so the altitude makes it even a bigger challenge with less air to breath in. After hiking trough a lot of forest and with many views on beautiful green valleys, we ended our first day at the bottom of the pass to the Salkantay-mountain with a rewarding view on the Salkantay and the pass we had to cross the next day. Ay..it was steep and quite a lot up. The first day ended around 3900m of altitude and the second day we had to walk up 700m within the first 3 hours. Challenge number two. During the track we camped in tents. The nice thing about this was that the porters (who guide the muels with our big bags) put up our tents. The only thing we had to do was making our beds and eat the food which the great cooks had prepared. That helped a lot during these days! The porters and the cooks were by the way AMAZING! After cooking our breakfast, they had to get everything organized, put it on the muels and then they ran to the lunchlocation (behind the muels and the muels walked really fast) to prepare our next meal. That ment that they left after us and arrived almost an our before us. WOW! We couldn´t have done that!
After a good but cold night (it froze a couple of degrees) we started walking up. That was quite difficult!! The first two hours were ok, but the last hour it got more and more difficult. Catching your breath is not easy at this altitude and we stopped every two corners to recover a bit. But we made it! Clear blue skyes and a beautiful mountain with a lot of snow and a long glacier. We were happy and we celebrated this with an hours rest and an inca ritual on top of this pass (4600m). After this the more easy part of the track started and we walked the afternoon and the day after trough a really green and lush jungle. Banana-trees, avocado-plants and a lot of flowers and waterfalls surrounded us. Nice nice nice nice! We had a lot of fun with our group and played a lot of cardgames at night. After day three we had to say goodbye to everyone, because we were the only ones which did the 4 day track. We had to keep on going for a bit more and took a taxi for 30 minutes to the start of the walk to Aguas Calientes. After 6 hours walking in the morning, we kept on going for almost three hours and arrived in Aguas Calientes around 6 in the evening. And then we were tired! After 9 hours walking on day 1, 10 hours on day two and almost 9 on day three and 75 km in total we fell asleep after dinner and had a really good night!
Then the alarmclock woke us up at 4.30h!! Sigh..we wanted to be one of the first in Machu Picchu so we had to start walking up the hill (500m again). We arrived around 6 and then there was...Machu Picchu!!
BEAUTIFUL! Just a few people, some fog around the ruins and 3 Lama´s overlooking the valley. We sat down for a bit to enjoy the things we saw. After this we started a guided tour and around this time it got more crowded. Very interesting to learn more about Inca-culture, their rituals and daily routine. Of course we made a lot of pictures, which we hopefully can post online soon (internet is slow again). We walked to the sungate and fell asleep in the sun for an hour or so enjoying the atmosphere. After 6 or 7 hours of MP we called it a day and started walking down again. In the evening we got the train and bus back to Cuzco, where we met Rutger and Andrea again. After a late dinner we called it a day. Next day we celebrated Inti Raymi! We can be short about this, a cool festival with a lot of cultural performances on the main square, a lot of Peruvian food and from the kids to the adults, people wear traditional clothes. They danced and performed a ritual in which they honor the Inca and the sungod. Special to celebrate this between thousands of Peruvians and just a few tourists.
Next stop would be Nazca.. a small village in the desert, 13 hours by bus from Cuzco. Although 13 hours by bus seems long, the busses we got sofar are really comfi and we slept a lot. But this we will write about on our next update!
We hope you enjoyed it again, you all are doing well back home and we post something again really soon!!
Besos,
Tom y Eline
-
04 Juli 2012 - 07:22
Bianca:
Geweldig om te lezen!! ik ga eind november die kant op. Dus jullie verhalen zijn een mooi voorproefje :).
groetjes, Bianca (ex Essent) -
04 Juli 2012 - 21:14
Ola Muchachos:
About eating the alpaca, the past! Especially now you walk around like Rudolf, my favorite reindeer!
You must be very healthy if you come back. What challenges you experience.
Fortunately we can enjoy the beautiful pictures.
In that same time, summer is finally here. The weather is so nice, it forced uncle from DB, for lack of beer to start drinking wine! But, don't worry I have a spare bottle.
Meanwhile we follow you closely, not by foot, but in our thoughts.
Big kisses from uncle and Aunty from DB -
05 Juli 2012 - 13:09
Tuur:
Coole verhalen Tom ! Als je terug bent, snel maar live de verhalen horen !
Heel veel plezier nog daar !
Tuur -
05 Juli 2012 - 15:08
Laura:
Hoi Eline, Wauw wat een gave dingen doe en zie je allemaal! Geniet er nog maar even vol van! Hier denken we al weer aan je terugkomst. We missen je en onze caseloads beginnen aardig jeugdig te worden... Ik heb - by the way - vandaag (eindelijk...) mijn BIG-registratie binnen! Hele fijne weken nog en thanks voor je kaart, die hebben we volgens mij afgelopen week gekregen! Groetjes, Laura -
05 Juli 2012 - 15:19
Koen:
Ha Tom en Eline,
Klinkt weer goed en die foto's weer van Machu Pichu, super! Geniet er maar goed van. Hier alles zijn gangetje. Mijn visum is ws pas klaar eind september, dus, geluk bij een ongeluk, hebben we nog genoeg tijd om bij de kletsen als jullie terug zijn. Morgen hebben we ons feestje, waar jullie helaas niet bij kunnen zijn. We zullen een Limburgs biertje op jullie drinken.
groetjes Koen -
08 Juli 2012 - 09:22
Ed:
Hoi avonturiers,
We zijn gisteren teruggekomen van onze traditionele vakantie in la douce France en deze was natuurlijk minder indrukwekkend dan jullie zware reis maar weer wel heel relaxed en we hebben er met volle teugen van genoten. Alleen het Ned. elftal was natuurlijk zwaar knudde! Ik heb meteen jullie 2 reisverslagen gelezen. Het ziet er allemaal weer geweldig uit en ik geniet heel erg van jullie prachtige sfeerrapportages. Fysiek is het nou niet bepaald een makkie ....maar dat geeft dan ook weer extra energie als je ziet wat je allemaal voorgeschoteld krijgt aan natuurschoon en cultuur. Geniet maar lekker verder!
hartelijke groeten Ed en Marjan -
12 Juli 2012 - 12:57
Marti Troost:
hallo Eline en Tom,
Ik zag jullie verslag en foto's. Dat geeft een enorm gevoel van reislust!
Jullie maken wel hele mooie dingen mee, echt super.
Ik hoop dat alles goed gaat en dat jullie nog lekker lang kunnen genieten van de laatste etappe.
Hier op De Waag is alles nog hetzelfde, Eline, blijf nog maar lekker even weg hoor.
Hartelijke groeten , ook van Hetty. we zaten ons net een beetje te vervelen en zijn op zoek gegaan naar jullie blog.
lieve groet, Marti
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