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Cusco, Inca trails and Macchupicchu
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After Bolivia we crossed into Peru heading for Cusco. We spent an interesting night at the Silustani ruins, bush camping with 3 young peruvian girls who joined us for dinner. They were welcome guests around the campfire. The pack of dogs that spent several hours that night tearing each other appart outside our tents were not such good company. Most of us sat quaking in our tents, too scared to venture outside such was the blood curdling ferocity of the prolonged attack with one of the canine victims litterally screaming with each new onslaught. For the remainder of the night, every dog within earshot continued howling and ruining any further option to sleep.
Arriving in Cusco was a welcome relief. Its central square is said to be one of the best in South America, flanked on two sides by cathedrals and the remaining two sides by wooden buildings with ornately carved balcony´s over arched walkways. Cusco is Peru´s second city and is used by tourists as the launching point for trips along the Inca trails to Macchupicchu.
As we left Cusco we stopped at several Inca ruins including Saqsaywaman, a sacred site overlooking the city but know by tourists as Sexywoman. The huge carved rocks that it is constructed from use no mortar yet are so closely fitting that it is impossible to even slide a piece of paper between them.
On to the terraced ruins at Pisac where we were caught in a hailstorm. It is the begining of the rainy season and you realise that this downpour is obviously becoming a daily occurence when shortly after the heavens oppened a breathless man came scooting around the corner of the mountain, waving a pile of brightly coloured plastic ponchos for sale.
We continued on for another couple of hours around winding mountain roads that seemed to narrow for our bus and about 2.5hrs after the last village, we pulled into our first overnight stop in a remote Andean village called Quisharani (3850m). Our arrival was greeted by several kids running alongside the bus waving and shouting. As the gringos started to disgorge from the bus with our kitbags, the wranglers made their way over to help us. Dragoman the truck company I am travelling with work with a local trekking opperator and the two companies have set up several community projects working with local Andean villages. They avoid the "Classic" Inca trail which is now completey over run with tourists and instead use some of the other 1000s of inca trails that spider the Andes, and each group that treks provides money, labour, or other forms of voluntary support to help those communities.
We were lead into the equivelent of the village green which was between the community meeting room and the toilet and shower which were a recent addition built by other Dragoman groups. In the centre were two rows of salmon pink dome tents, already errected for us. The women and girls of the village came out, spreading their traditional brightly coloured blankets on the grass on which they laid out selections of woven bags and belts for sale. I bought a bag and belt and the two little girls I gave the money to looked at the notes in amazement as if they didn´t know what to do with them.
The boys played football with the kids before we sat down to a 3 course meal in the dining tents that had also been set up. The night was clear and bitterly cold so we turned in early to huddle into sleeping bags wrapped in layers of thermals, hats, gloves and beneath alpacca blankets.
We were woken early by the kitchen staff bringing coffee and coca tea to our tents along with bowls of hot water for washing. After breakfast we headed off whilst the kitchen staff and wranglers packed the tents and all the food we would need onto about 20 llamas and 15 sturdy looking ponies. Apparently llamas refuse to move if you put more than 20kgs on their backs - the horse is definately the beast of burden and the llama, despite its pink wooly earrings, aint as dumb as it looks.
We climbed until lunchtime crossing the Huillquicasa Pass at 4400m. Below us was a vista of several aquamarine lakes with Andean geese dotted around them. We had joined forces with another Dragoman truck so there were 28 of us in the group and we had with us a Doctor and medical supplies that we had donated to take to the villages. The doctor was called upon whilst on route as there was an older lady with us who was severely struggling with the climb and dangerously rising blood pressure. As the group split with those of us that were faster climbers at the front I looked back down the mountain. As we neared the summit I looked back down at the trailing group, at the moment that Helena spotted us and realised how far away she was from the top, she threw her hands in the air and crumpled to the ground. That movement even from a distance said so much. Being at the back is too demoralising and somewhere I couldn´t let myself be.
After lunch we were as always overtaken by the wranglers and the animals once they had packed up camp. They would sprint past us with nothing more substancial on their feet than plastic sandals and wearing their traditional red ponchos and hats with bright ribbons on them. We were even overtaken by an old lady as she walked between the mountain villages, each home to about 1000 people but very remotely despersed over the peaks. She had the toothless and wrinkled look of an 80 year old dark raisin though in reality the cold, wind and dry atomosphere here take a toll very quickly so she could have been 30 but just lacking the luxury of nivea cream. We saw a few young children out with their llamas or just walking in the mountains. One boy was about 3 or 4yrs old and appeared to be all on his own, another of about the same age was accompanied by a big sister who must have been all of about 5 years old.
When we arrived at the village of Cuncani we could see our tents set up on the grassy football pitch between the communal building and the school room. There was the obligatory football match which at altitude saw several of the boys puffing profusely as young kids ran rings around them to the point that the worst offenders who had been stuck in goal gave up and were seen to be having a fag on the sidelines. After the match we were taken into the homes of some of the villagers. They were single rooms made of stone with mud on the interior walls and straw rooves. In a tree outside one a llama hide was strung up to dry. The maggots which infested it made us hope that it wasn´t going to be dinner. In fact they use the hide to make the rope sacks we had seen them using to carry things in or use as binding to strap equipment to the animals. There was a small fire in one corner and the room was smokey but surprisingly warm. To the right hidden behind some blue plastic sheeting was a bedroom area and scurrying everywhere were guinea pigs which all households keep. Beside the bedroom area a llama leg and some pieces of meat and spine were hanging up to dry. There was a table with a small number of posessions dotted around. Above us was one very weak flourescent strip. Again as part of the Dragoman community projects electricity had been installed in the village but apparently most people didn´t use it unless it was a special occassion as it costs the equivelent of $3 a month to run it which most found too expensive.
Back in the village schoolroom which looked like so many others back home, decorated with pictures, alphabets and charts, we had dinner and then a Quechua language lesson with the teacher from the village and our guides. We gave the medical supplies to the teacher with hand written instructions for what each drug was used for and how to administer it as he would have to multitask as village doctor. Then he returned to teaching us - what was possibly his oldest ever remedial class.
The next morning 5 of the group decided they couldn´t continue so we said our goodbyes and started the 6 hour climb to Pumahuanca Pass at 4900m. Altitude does interesting things to people but one thing that we all found was the need to pee a lot. At our first baños stop one of the boys with the horses could be seen peering over the top of his horses neck at all of the squatting girls, ducking back each time he realised we had spotted him. After a couple of months now of bush camping and bush bañoses we have lost a lot of the inhibitions that we would feel at home about displaying ourselves to others at some of our more intimate moments.
As we climbed past glaciers, with eagles soaring overhead, the rain started. People donned brighly coloured ponchos and hunched down over their staffs so that as I looked back down the mountain it looked like I was being tailed by a bunch of extras from some psychedelic ewoks film. Then the rain turned to hail. Then snow. Some of the guys were in shorts as their trousers were sodden muddy lumps of fabric after the previous nights football. As we climbed it became a blizzard.
As we neared the top we could hear music in the distance. As we individually began to wonder if this meant we were unknowingly suffering more from altitude sickness. Or perhaps they brought out peruvian marching bands to strike up in celebration at our arrival at the summit? Instead a young Peruvian boy came sprinting past the gringos in his sandals with a large radio on his shoulder.
At the summit we made small towers with the rocks that we had carried up with us. You are meant to carry a rock commensurate with the size of your sins, to the top of the mountain for the mountain gods to cleanse and absolve you. I didn´t know if sin was viewed in a catholic sense in which case I might have a few, according to the 10 commandments in which case I was squeaky clean, or according to Quechuan belief which was an unknown quantity to me. Judging by the stones and pebbles that most carried we were a remarkably angelic bunch or a lazy bunch of gringos.
After a few sips of Pisco, the peruvian firewater, we headed down. My feet were the only part of me which were dry and it was freezing but I loved it and at no point did I wish it was over as so many of the rest of the group mumbled around me. As we descended towards our campsite beside a river and a waterfall, we watched the chinchillas scampering over the rocks. Once back at camp we gathered firewood from around the area and dried shoes and clothing over roaring flames. It was one of the girls 30th birthday and the cooks managed to make the most delicious birthday cake of layered pancakes with marmalade and icing. As we stood around the fire with full bellies, looking up at the stars and mountains around us, the sound of the waterfall still audible above the crackle of flames, we swapped English and Quechuan words with the wranglers and their families. "Chilly" we discovered is the same in both languages. Their idea of chilly though is possibly more like our understanding of "absolutley completely and utterly bloody freezing". We went to bed happy with memories of a fantastic day.
The last day of trekking was all downhill and finished in the Sacred Valley where we were met by the bus and taken, tired and filthy, to a local chicha house. Chicha is the peruvian corn beer that is brewed by families all over the rural areas. The stronger brew is mixed with strawberries and apples and though not the obvious choice of refreshment after the trek, they went down very well. It didn´t help our aim though as we played a peruvian game in which coins are thrown at a slotted table aiming for the mouth of a brass frog. A further stop at the ruins of Ollyantytambo at which point one of our guides realised that he no longer had such an attentive audience so we returned to our hotel and a very very welcomed shower.
The next day we were again up early to catch the 7.00am train to Macchupicchu. We had trekked down from the Andes and were now on the edge of the Amazon jungle with stunning green mountains jutting sharply from the ground, surrounded by humming birds and banan plants. Once we had been around the ruins, 4 of us chose to climb the mountain that stands proudly in the background of the architypal picture that you always see of Macchupiccu. After several days trekking and no lunch, the steep steps that are worn into the rock were hard work. At the top, in the afternoon rain we scrambled over a wet rockface with a 2600m drop beside us. We later discovered this was not the right way to go. Two of my compatriots donned their Mexican wrestling masks that have accompanied them everywhere to have the obligatory photo, slam diving each other at every tourist photo opportunity.
The train journey back to Cusco was the most bizarre I have ever experienced. It was a national holiday so first we had the spectacle of one of the train stewards in a white balaclava with an eerie painted on moustache, in a big ribbon covered rectangular hat and carrying a mangy looking stuffed llama, dancing up and down the aisle. This was followed by an extensive fashion show put on by the remaining male and female steawards who were using the toilet as a changing room between sachaying up the aisle with professional looking poses seen in all the best knitting magazines. I would love to see what Bob Crowe would make of these additional duties if they were incorporated into the job descriptions of railworkers back home next time they reach a stalemate in pay negotiations. Afterwards one of the boys in our group made the mistake of using the toilet, only to emerge to a carriage full of whistles and cheers which he responded to with similar poses as he paraded down the aisle, stopping for a twirl on the way back to his seat.
Back in Cusco we showered, changed and headed out where amazingly we found the energy to stay out clubbing until 7.00 the next morning. It had been an amazing few days and we certainly went out with a bang though the next morning as we enjoyed our first lie in for a while, several sore heads didn´t want to hear anything more than a whisper.
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| 10. | Cusco, Inca trails and Macchupicchu - Cusco, Peru Nov 17, 2006 |
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