the Andes

Sun 16th December 2001

Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, with about 3 million inhabitants. It is a beautiful city largely built from the white volcanic rock from the three volcanos (one active, one dormant and one dead) which lie behind it. We strolled around a bit, getting used to the altitude (2500m), and I visited the museum containing some very well preserved mummies that were found on one of the nearby volcanos. The first mummy found was a 13 year old Inca noble girl, sacrificed to the god which was the mountain. Three more children have been found since, further down the mountain. One theory is that they were sacrificed at the same time to give the girl (known as Juanita) some companionship when she ascended to join the gods.

Mon 17th December 2001

This morning, we hopped on a bus to travel to the Colca valley. On the way there, we saw three of the four south american camelids (llama, alpaca, and vicuña). We also went through a pass which is the highest point on our tour. Taking people who are used to the air at oh, 5m above sea level to a point just shy of 5km above sea level is not nice. Drinking coca tea and chewing coca leaves are recommended to help with altitude sickness. The leaves taste horrid, but they seemed to help some.

The Colca valley is beautiful. The women here still wear traditional clothing, and the terraces, some 2000 years old, are still farmed by hand. A stop at the local hot springs was most welcome.

Tue 18th December 2001

First stop this morning, was a lookout over one of the real canyons in the Colca valley. From our lookout down to the river surface was a distance of about 1200m, and it wasn't far from being a vertical cliff. Further down the valley, there are places where the river is 3400m below the mountaintops on either side. This canyon is a good spot to see the Andean Condor, and we were very fortunate in that it was a sunny, dry day, despite the fact that this is the rainy season. We saw at least two condors close by, and possibly another in the distance.

In the afternoon we drove back over the high pass to Arequipa, and got an early night since we had to get up at 5:30am to fly to...

Wed 19th December 2001

Cusco is at 3400m above sea level, similar to the altitude in the Colca valley. It can be very tiring. I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but it's a beautiful city. Capital of the Inca empire. Tomorrow we set off on the Inca trail to Machu-Pichu!

Travelling Companions

Please excuse me for not introducing our fellow travellers in Peru earlier. (Also please excuse spelling mistakes in names and places) Joanne and Adrian are our senior couple, Dutch septigenarians currently living in Quebec. Tone is Joanne's younger brother and lives on the other side of Canada in British Columbia. Michelle and Michael are about the same ages as Katie and I, and hail from Norwich, UK. Yosuke is from Tokyo, and Dany is our fabulous Peruvian tour leader. Else and Rose (more Canadians!) joined us at the start of the Inca Trail. Arnold and Deidre (kiwis celebrating 50th birthdays) and Chris and Hazel (another couple from the UK) will be joining us at Machu Picchu.

Thu 20 Dec 2001

Inca Trail Day 1: The easy, "warm-up" day

Katie has not been coping too well with altitude sickness, and has decided to only do the 2 rather than the 4 day version of the Inca Trail. So she got to sleep in whilst I had to be in the hotel foyer ready to leave at 5am. There are only 5 of us heading out on all 4 days of the trek (Tone, Yo, Else, Rose and I) in addition to Dany, Boris (our local guide for the trail), 9 porters and a cook.

It felt most decadent to be able to walk along wearing only a day pack, and arrive for lunch at a campsite at which the porters had set up table and chairs in a dinner tent, and handed us a delicious bowl of soup as we sat down. I'm sure some of the other walkers thought this somehow not doing the trail properly, but I see no reason to make the trek harder than it need be.

There are buildings in Cuzco which have foundations and the bottoms of the walls of Inca construction and Spanish construction above that, but today I saw my first Inca ruins which had not been destroyed and rebuilt by the conquistadors. Incas built in stone, without mortar for the important buidings, and with mud to hold together the less important structures. Many other Andean people built or still build houses with mud bricks. But for European style construction, you need a lot of wood. Most Andean trees are slow growing and don't grow too high, so in the 1880s, a fast growing tall tree species was introduced to provided timber, and can now be found instead of the local trees throughout a lot of the Andes. The Eucalyptus. Rather strange thinking of a tree I normally regard as a nice native as an introduced weed species.

Fri 21 Dec 2001

Inca Trail Day 2: The hard day.

Last night's campsite was at a low 3000m. (For comparison, Cuzco is 3500m and Mt. Kosiosko is 2228m). Today was a climb pretty much straight up to 4200m and then down to 3600m to camp. Fat white boys used to a lifestyle of beer and burgers at the beach are not built for walking up mountains at these altitudes. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful tour guide who walked with me and even helped me get to the pass by carrying my pack. Thanks Dany!

I woke up at about 2am this night and stuck my head out the window to look at the stars. The moon had set, and at this kind of altitude, with no lights for miles around, the scene was amazing.

Sat 22 Dec 2001

Inca Trail Day 3: The long day.

Though longer than day 2, this day was easier than day 2, because it was relatively flat. A relatively flat days walk in Andean terms means the highest and lowest points are differ by about 1 km in altitude and you don't transverse that distance more than twice. The final decent to our campsite contained over 1500 steps. Dad frequently says walking up is preferable to walking down, now I won't agree entirely (certainly not over 4000m), but my knees definately know where he's coming from with this statement. The day was made much easier by the knowledge that Katie would be at our campsite, (and so were some warm showers!)

Sun 23 Dec 2001

Inca Trail Day 4: Machu Picchu

The idea here is to get to the Sun Gate to see the sun rise at Machu Picchu. This entails getting up at 4am. Ugh. December is in the rainy season, but up until now, we've had fantastic weather... a trend which ended today. So we got up at 4am, walked to the sun gate in the rain, and saw nothing. Then we did a tour of the city, still in the rain, then bundled ourselves off to Agua Calientes to drink beer and wait for the train back to Cusco. Now I'm not saying I didn't like Machu Picchu. I did. It was fascinating. It was also very wet. I now have a new shirt and pants... most importantly DRY shirt and pants to wear whilst in Agua Calientes drinking beer.

Mon 24 Dec 2001

I'm sure the valley is pretty and the ruins nice, but after all that walking I might have been a bit too exhausted to appreciate it. And the ruins might be more impressive if one hadn't just visited Machu Picchu and the other ruins on the trail.

In Peru, Christmas is celebrated on the night of the 24th, so we went out to a restaurant, ate fantastic food, then went out to a Peruvian nightclub, before returning to the hotel.