I woke up at, what I thought was, 2:45ish a.m. so that I could shower and finish my last minute packing. I have been using my phone as my alarm clock and since I don´t turn it on, I didn´t update the time when I arrived in Perú. What I thought was 2:45 a.m was really 3:45 a.m. The night desk guy pointed that out to me when I went to ask "What happended to the water"? Apparently the entire town didn´t have water that morning. My pick up was in 15 minutes - holy crap. I kicked it in gear with a baby wipe shower, a quick brush through my hair and a quick brush of my teeth with the standard bottled water. I was ready in 20 minutes! Whew! I wasn´t so happy about starting out with dirty hair, but oh well, soon I´d be at one with nature and it wouldn´t matter anyway.
Once our "family" was all loaded in the mini van, we had a 3 hour ride to Mollepata for breakfast, which was a complete rip off. The breakfast was way overpriced as compared to what you can get elsewhere and it was puny. You have to buy breakfast where they take you so, we were stuck. And the frustrating thing was that when we were walking out, we saw what the "locals" were eating - heaps of rice, beans, eggs, etc. What´s that all about? After the puny breakfast, we drove another hour or so to the trail head at Sorya Pampa which is at an elevation of 3800m, about 400 meters higher than Cusco. Here is where we met Julian, our horseman. He and Martin loaded our main packs and camping gear onto the mules for the trek.
Jaime had given us a heads up that the 1st day of the trek was one of the hardest. We would reach our highest elevation point on the 1st day. We started walking. I took about 50 steps and was already breathing hard. I thought "how on earth am I going to do this"? I was trying to get into a walking rythm. Up, up and up we went. It was tough. I found myself counting, counting steps. I would take about 100 steps and then look up and take in the view. The good thing was that we had a clear day. We could see the top of the snow-covered Salkantay mountain at 6,264m and the Huamantay mountain at 5,810m. We heard a few thunderous avalaches on the Salkantay mountain - very powerful!
Poor Natasha, she had just arrived to Cusco the day before and was struggling with altitude sickness. It was tough without having a pounding headache, I can´t imagine climbing with one!
We made out way to Soyrococha where Martin and Julian had our lunch tent set up. It was perfect timing because just as we got there, it started to rain. It was pretty cold when we stopped moving. Lunch was awesome. We all agreed that we wanted to bring Martin home with us! He made amazing soups, chicken and other side dishes...yum! I continued to drink mate de coca to help with the altitude. Jaime had also given us a lesson on the healing properties of the coca leaf. The coca leaf is not a drug - have you seen the t-shirt? He gave us some to chew. I am not of fan of chewing the leaves, but the tea was doable.
After lunch, out came the ponchos. We treked for about an hour in the rain, to our hightest point - Abra Huamntay at 4,600m. On the way there, we each picked up a quartz rock and left it at Abra Huamntay. We said a prayer to Pachemama (mother earth) and left the rock as thanks. We didn´t stop for too long, there was still a lot of treking to do. Later, we saw Chinchilas in the rocks. At first they were hard to see, but when we stopped to focus on the rocks, there were lots of them.
Finally, we made it to our campsite, Huayracmachay at 3,800m. I am so happy that I didn´t have to use the "long drop" when we got there. The Aussies and Kiwis call the "outhouse" a long drop. Funny! I guess it does make more sense since these didn´t have a seat - just a hole in the gound and 2 boards for your feet and then pop a squat! Ay yi yi!
Dinner was amazing. I ate alot! Natasha was feeling better by the end of the day. For a while there, she wasn´t looking too good.
Day one was tough...keep going nature girl!
1 comment:
I hope you took a picture of the long drop b/c I just can't visualize it ;)
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