Peru - Machu Picchu

Glenn’s Inca notes:

We (Michele and I along with Joyce and Sue who joined us a few days earlier) boarded the bus with ten other trekkers and left Cuzco early Sunday morning. We rode for two hours through beautiful, mist-shrouded farmland. The land here looked much more agreeable to growing crops than what we had seen when returning from our jungle tour. The houses were also nicer and most even had glass windows. We made a brief stop in Ollantaytambo (we called it O town) for breakfast at a hostel and then drove on to the check in at the trailhead. We all showed our passports and tickets were stamped, recorded and passed through. Only 500 people a day can start the Inca trail and that includes porters and staff. Our group had 14 trekkers, two guides, and 21 porters. A cable and wood suspension bridge allowed us to stay dry crossing a roaring river and we were off on our trek. The first few hours followed the river up stream through gently sloping terrine. This “gently sloping terrine” had us huffing and puffing in no time. The stops we made for history and nature lessons were greatly appreciated. As we left the river valley the trail got steeper and the rest stop for lunch came at a time we really needed a break.
The porters had dashed ahead of us and set up cooking and eating tents. We were served a full-scale meal at a table, with a tablecloth and stools to sit on. No sandwiches on this trip. Fully stuffed and rested, we set out on the trail again. Three more hours of hiking on increasingly steeper trail brought us to our first nights camp. All of our campsites were on land that had been at one time terraced for farming. From here on, that was the only way to have a flat place to grow food or pitch a tent. Our tents were, of course, already set up and waiting for us and we were informed that a “happy hour” of coca tea and popcorn would start around 5:30 with dinner to follow. There were even bowls of warm water outside each tent for washing up. Dinner was another huge meal with tons of carbs. In Peru rice is served with pasta in it and, watch out, your stir-fry is on a bed of crisp French fries. We carbo-loaded at every meal. Three meals a day began with hot soup or porrage before moving on to 6-8 other dishes served family style to us trekkers. Bedtime rapidly followed dinner and Michele and I struggled to get comfortable in mummy sleeping bags.

Day two dawned early since we had a long way to go before the next camp. After breakfast we were introduced to our entire staff (who had by then already broken camp).
None of the porters spoke English and many only a bit of Spanish. We got on just fine by smiling and saying thank you when they blew by us on the trail with their awkward 50 lb. burdens. They carried the tents, bags, tables, chairs, cook stove, propane bottle (the big kind like on a BBQ grill), pans, dishes and all the food for the 4-day trip. They had a tough job, which they seem to remain cheerful doing.

We hit the trail around 7:30 for the start of our “challenging” day. The first day had been
Billed as “easy” but we were challenged by it. All were wondering how challenging the 13,800 foot Dead Women’s Pass would be. It would be challenging. We made a mid-morning pit stop to regroup and refuel on chips and snickers bars sold by locals who live up there somewhere. Way down in the valley behind us we could just see the roofs of some buildings near where we spent the previous night. In the other direction the pass looked a long ways off and up. We had already climbed up hundreds of Inca stone steps that vary in height from about 4 to 20 inches. No 7-inch standard here. We geared up in warmer clothes since it had grown windy and colder and was looking like rain. The misty rain came and went and the trail and steps got steeper as we climbed and climbed. As the Inca’s steps got steeper, our steps got shorter. Each step we took moved us foward only the length of one shoe. Every ten to twenty steps we would stop to admire the view and try and get our heart rates and breathing back down to somewhere near normal. It had gotten challenging, but the views were quite dramatic. We stopped often to make sure we didn’t miss anything. We finally reached the summit just as the clouds closed in and another light rain began to fall. The view was now nil, so after a quick group photo our guide encouraged us to begin our decent before the weather turned ugly.

The knee jarring decent quickly got us out of the clouds covering the top of the pass and into a beautiful valley. We were able to move a bit more quickly now and after a while we could even breathe better. Walking down steep, uneven steps was still challenging, but our hiking sticks really helped us balance. We descended through beautiful alpine meadows with nice flowers and even a deer that stood next to the trail and watched us pass. It was much better than going up but we were really beat when we finally stumbled into camp for a very late lunch. At this point I had either altitude sickness or the beginning of the bug that I was still fighting when we returned to Trinidad. I felt lousy and went to bed.

Day three on the trail was up and down hills all day. We went over another pass, but not as high as the day before. We stopped at two fairly large Inca complexes and had more lectures on stonework and plumbing. It was late in the day when we reached camp and we were really ready to be there. Actually we were ready an hour or two earlier but we did cover a lot of ground that day (10 miles). The extra special thing about that night’s campsite was the pleasant dose of civilization—hot showers!! Boy did the tents smell better that night. If only we could have left our hiking shoes outside.

The fourth morning we were up at 4:00 for a quick breakfast and a short hike in the dark to the final trail checkpoint. We stood in line with the other trekkers as it got light and waited for the checkpoint to open. After checking through we hiked to the Sun Gate which is where we were suppose to wait for the sun to blast away the clouds in the valley to reveal; ta-da, The Lost City of Machu Picchu. Didn’t happen. We waited a bit and then gave up and started down to a lower spot to get our first glimpse of the city. We stopped at the top of the terraced slope and after a few minutes the clouds did indeed thin, the sun broke through and Machu Picchu was revealed to us. Wow!! They picked a really dramatic spot to build a city. The hillsides were terraced for agriculture making the city look even bigger than it actually is. Small mountains stick up where the buildings end and also from the bottom of the valley. Everything is very steep and either jungle green or stone. We descended into the city and got our guided tour, which pointed out the amazing stonework and the assumed purposes of the various buildings. In general the better the stonework, one more important the structure was. The best were the temples followed by royal residences. It was amazing that hand cut stonewalls survived 500 years of jungle growth and earth quakes and still fit perfectly- with no mortar. We spent the better part of the day exploring and photographing the ruins on our own. Hopefully the pictures will tell the story here. Hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu was a fantastic, once in a lifetime experience and was well worth doing.

Glenn

Hog Island, Grenada

Yeah! We are back in Grenada and loving it. We had a great overnight crossing Monday evening. More to come. We hope to update the web with Inca trail photos.

[N12d00:13, W061d44:57]

Manu jungle tour, Peru

Welcome to the Jungle…Manu National Park

I was not sure what to think about the 7-day /6-night jungle tour. We booked our tour in July with SAS travel (South American Sites). The guide Fernando, the assistant guide Joel, the cook or should I say chef, Wilbert and Pastor the boat driver. They were awesome and let me say they give a whole new meaning to the word courtesy. I think as a whole Peruvians are very courteous but these young men were amazing. We are accustomed to doing everything for ourselves so it was a difficult at first to sit back and enjoy this luxury.

My first reaction to the jungle was not so great. It was hot, humid and buggy. I was really longing to return to the nice hotel with a bathtub in the cool crisp mountain town of Cusco. I wanted out badly. Sunday was much better because we spent 7 hours on the boat chilling out on the beautiful Manu River. The food was amazing. Wilbert was a superb chef. No chance of losing weight this week. They use a ham radio at all their base camps and solar panels to charge the radio batteries. We took a little hike when we arrived at the camp. Oh my goodness, we saw monkey’s as soon as we were in the woods. The coolest thing we saw was a mother spider monkey crossing a tree branch and she extended her tail out for her baby to walk across on. It was soooooo cool!

Monday we took a short boat ride to a nice hiking spot and a beautiful lake Otorongo.
We saw several black and white caimans on our way. Caimans are small alligator looking animals. We started our hike and saw so many different kinds of monkeys. I could not believe how many were playing and eating just above our heads, swinging from tree to tree. Then we went to the lookout tower so we were as high as the monkey’s in the tree branches and they came over so close you could almost touch them. I could have stayed there all day. Amazing! After lunch we took another boat trip to a local shaman village. On Tuesday we took another boat trip to the beautiful Salvador Lake. We saw tons of Giant River otters, we were watching from a wooden catamaran. We could have watched them for hours but when it warms up they go away.


Glenn’s notes:

The Manu River looks like the Wolf River in Memphis except its twice as big and has no trash. We saw lots of fallen trees in the river. Our dugout had to be maneuvered carefully to avoid the shallows and the floating logs. The trees along the shore were old growth and huge. We looked at one kapok tree that is thought to be over 600 years old. That would put it here before the Spanish. Then we saw an ironwood that was even older, but not as large since they grow slower- very hard wood.
Our tour boat is a 38ft. dugout with cedar side planks. It is equipped with 50hp outboard (and a spare), a 55gal drum of fuel and a row of nice comfortable bus seats down each side. The whole boat is only about 5 ft. wide in the middle where the seats are with a narrow isle up the middle. The isle was handy for Joel “the bow thruster” to run forward and pole us off the shallow spots. All in all it is an efficient way to travel the river with up to a dozen guests and 4 staff. Our tour was under booked and should have been canceled but the company honored our reservation and ran the tour just for the two of us. The seven-hour boat ride on day two was really very relaxing and fun. We were able to kick off our shoes and let the guys do the work. A full-on lunch was served underway- no sandwiches on this trip. We had stir-fried rice, salad and a yummy cold chicken/potato salad- and complimented by a few beers I bought before we left the settlement at Boca Manu. It was a great way to spend a day on the river.
Back tracking a bit; due to the under booking of our trip we were flown from Cusco to the Boca Manu airport instead of starting by van and riverboat. The flight was great! Flying out of Cusco, everything was brown and red when viewed from above. The town is way up in the Andes and there isn’t a lot growing in the red soil and rock around it. Most of the buildings are adobe walls with tile roofs, all red. Not far away we saw a lot of terraced farms on the hillsides. The Inca’s were experts at this, carving level spots into the hills and then bringing in the perfect mix of topsoil for farming. Once clear of the mountain peaks, we started descending to the Amazon basin. The Amazon River is not here, but this area all eventually drains into it. Suddenly, things got green, real green. We flew over miles of dense forest with occasional rivers snaking through. It looked like a great area to explore by canoe- if you could get there. As we flew lower in preparation for land we could tell the trees were huge! I know the pictures would not show the scale but I had to shoot a few anyway. We were the only passengers on the 12 seat Cessna plane so we could see the “Airport” in front af the plane as we landed. Grass. It felt like we were going way to fast to land, but they got us down with no problems. It was cool to land on grass and taxi to the thatch roof pavilion that served as the terminal. It had everything a modern airport needs: radio, scale to weigh passengers and cargo, wheel barrow for moving luggage and a guy with a baby howler monkey on his shoulder. (I guess it’s a great way to meet chicks). A path through the jungle took us from the airport to the cruise ship docks. The riverbank had steps cut into the dirt to walk down to the motorized dugouts that serve as tourist boats. The boats are made in Boca Manu, our first nights destination. There is an eight-hut lodge facility in the village that serves as a hotel for tour groups. The rooms were wooden platforms with thatch roofs and canvas and screen walls.

Fernando, our guide took us on an evening hike into the jungle to an oxbow lake to observe wildlife. On the way there we passed through a fairly primitive village (25 people, one last name) and Fernando paid their leader 20 Peruvian soles ($7) to use their lake. SAS travel keeps a catamaran on this arc of a lake. The lake was left behind when the Madre de Dios River changed course by cutting off a corner and leaving that curve landlocked. The catamaran is two dugout boats (like our tour boat but smaller) attached together by a wooden deck. Those who have been to the Phillips cabin in Arkansas and have enjoyed the “party barge” will recognize the design.

Michele again:
It is hard to remember the last few days of the jungle tour. I do remember the Madre de Dios River (The Mother of God River) I can see why they named it that. We traveled upstream for two full days. It was so tricky, I was glad I was not steering and I was happier that we had the 50hp engine and spare with us. I will also never forget our 9-hour truck ride back to Cusco. We thought we were going to return to Cusco by SAS van. Well, for some unknown reason we returned in a Toyota pickup truck and we shared the backseat with Wilbert our cook. Oh and one very important detail I almost forgot, the road was dirt and extremely bumpy.

For you bird lovers here is a list of all the birds we saw in the jungle: Neotropic cormorant, Anhinga, White necked heron, Fascinated tiger heron, Refuscent tiger heron, Agami heron, Great egret, Snowy egret, Jabiru, Wood stork, Roseated spoonbill, Horned screamer, Muscovy duck, Orinoco goose, Black skimmer, Yellow billed tern, Great billed tern, Yellow headed vulture, King vulture, Osprey, Roadside hawk, Barred hawk, Spotted sandpiper, Sand colored nighthawk, Amazon kingfisher, Ringed kingfisher, White winged swallow, Giant cowbird, Grey tinamou, Blue and yellow macaw, Chestnut fronted macaw, Scarlet macaw, Blue headed parrot, Tui parakeet, Pale vented pigeon, Russet-backed oropendola and the national bird of Peru, the Cock of the Rock. Wow that was a lot of birds.
For you Monkey lovers or Monos in Spanish we saw 8 different species: Saddleback tamarin, Night monkey, Dusky titi monkey, Squirrel monkey, Brown capuchin monkey, Black spider, Red howler monkey and the Common woolly monkey.

a great trip!

Friday the 13th / YIKES

Well, we thought we were going to get Crossroads back in the water today. Ha! We were in the travel lift being lowered in the water when Glenn went down below to check things out. He found a leak in the rudder shaft. Oh happy day! The good news is we discovered it while in Trinidad the bad news is we are back in the boat yard. Glenn is recoving from his travel bug!

Michele

Back From Peru

We returned to Trinidad late Monday evening. We had a wonderful time in Peru, we will be sharing photo's and stories very soon. Crossroad is still in the boatyard, she will splash on Friday. Glenn is sick with a travel bug, once he is up and going again we will post many Inca stories.

Crossroads did survive a 6.5 earthquake in Trinidad. Wow! And we thought we only had to worry about hurricanes.

talk soon,
Michele