So after a very fast paced 3 days in the jungle we had to head back to Quito again in order to leave for Peru. In reflection Ecuador is an amazing place to visit, it has some of the most diverse and interesting environment anywhere in the world, but you might want to stay away from the big cities which are congested, dangerous and generally just a bit crap.
Next stop on the list was Cuzco, a small city at the foot of the Andes. Cuzco was more or less the capital of the Inca empire until the Spanish showed up and ruined everything. From Cuzco most people get a daily train to Aguas Calientas and then to Machu Pichu for a day trip, but Heidi and I decided we woud like to the the walking trail, which takes 4 days and takes us from just outside Cuzco along the ancient trail that the royal Incas themselves used to reach Machu Pichu.
After the Spanish arrived in the 16th century the Incas rapidly lost ground until the Spanish arrived at Cuzco and hammered the last nail in the coffin. After Cuzco fell to the Spanish the the Inca royalty retreated to their secret city of Machu Pichu, which was built in the previous century as a royal and religious retreat. Originally the Inca trail led from Cuzco directly to Machu Pichu, but the Inca king saw the threat from the Spanish and had the first dozen kilometers of the trail destroyed to hide the existence of the secret city. The Spanish tried in vain to find the 'lost city of the Incas' but it wasn't discovered (by Westeners) until the early 20th century when an 11 year old Incan boy showed an American scholar the old Inca paths and took him to the 'Lost City'. At that time Machu Pichu was being used as a farm by a local family who had lived there for many many generations.
Our walking tour started at a fairly gentle level as the altitude itself made the walking difficult. The first day we covered about 14 km and really the only hard part was the last hour or so when we started to make a bit of a climb. We spent the first day getting to know everyone on the tour, there were 16 people from all around the world in our group. Most people chose to hire porters to carry their bags for them, but Heidi and I decided we would try and carry all our own equipment (apart from the tent). Even on the first day it became pretty obvious that carrying your own stuff made the walk a lot harder.
We arrived at the camp site in the early evening on the first day to fine all the tents set up, and dinner almost ready - the porters who carry all the gear also set everything up and start dinner, all before we have even arrived at the camp ground. A few years ago the average load that a porter would carry was 60kg, a back breaking load. These days the porters carry a lighter (but still amazing) 25kg on their backs, and due to a sort of Porter Union, the load is weighed every now and then to make sure it's fair, although there are some companies who still exploit the porters by smuggling through extra equipment between weigh points. It's amazing to see a porter running up a hill in make shift sandles with a gas bottle, stove, and 2 rucksacks on his back while we struggle for breath with our 8kg bags.
The second day of the trek was the hardest, and we had been told that usually people who carry their own bags decide to hire a porter for this part of the trail. We were pretty stubborn (or maybe to tight to pay the $60 fee) se we said we'd try and carry our stuff. We started out on the second day continuing the climb we had begun at the end of the first day - and it only got steeper. The second day had us passing 'Dead Woman's Pass', a gap between two mountain peaks at an elevation of 4,200m, about half the height of Mt Everest. The last 250m was very tough, the trail was very very steep, it was hard to breath and our bags seemed to get heavier with every step, but we made it eventually and the view from the pass was breathtaking (or maybe that was just the lack of oxygen).
After a brief rest at the top of Dead Woman's Pass we had to start an equally steep descent in to the valley on the other side, it was so depressing to think that we had busted our balls to get to the top of this mountain, only to have to walk down the other side again. The down hill section was easier on the lungs, but much harder on the legs, so it took just as long and was just as painful. After another 2 hours of walking we had descended over 1200m to our lunch time camp site. Everyone was pretty worn out and sore, some people (us included) were suffering a bit from altitude sickness and had signs of nausea and headaches, but a lunch break, quick nap and some pain killers seemed to help. We had travelled a really long way since we started in the morning, but it was only half way for the day, we still had another climb (even steeper than the previous climb, but a bit shorter) and then another descent.
We set out after lunch with a bit of protest, I think some people wanted to wait at the camp site for a bit longer, or maybe arrange a helicopter to the top of the next hill, but we had good guides who persuaded everyone to keep moving. Half way up the next hill, after about an hour or two of walking, we stopped at some Inca ruins to have a break. These ruins were used as an astronomy post as well as a guard house for the Inca trail, and the craftsmanship of the stones used to construct the buildings is still very impressive. The Incas understood earthquakes and how to engineer buildings to resist earth movement, and I bet these buildings will still be around n another 1000 years well after most modern buildings have collapsed.
Another hour or two of climbing brought us to the top of the second mountain pass, and we were treated to a full 360 degree view of the valleys and mountains below us. Everyone was really happy because this was the end of the hardest part of the trek, from here on it was all down hill, more or less. The following descent was just as tricky as the first we had completed earlier but our spirits were a lot higher so it didn't seem nearly as bad. By the late afternoon we had reached another set of ruins used as a guard house, astrological post and a half-way boarding house for the ancient 'Chuskies' or messengers. The ancient messegers would set out from Cuzco, run the whole trail and rest in designated spots where they could pass a message to another person for them to continue. In this way messages were passed very quickly through the Inca empire. The entire Inca Trail is about 45 kms in length and a good messenger would have completed the entire trek in one day. The world record time to complete the inca trail was set by a porter a few years ago and stands at 3 hrs and 45 min for the entire trail that took us 4 days. Impressive.
After looking through the ruins for a bit we had a short walk to the camp site and rested for night. The thrd day of walking was much easier and took us through many old runs and important sights used by the Incas at a more relaxed pace. We arrived at the camp ste for that night by lunch time and had our first hot shower in 3 days. And of course there was beer, which was drunk in great quantities.
For the final day of our trek we woke up at 4am in the freezing cold. We had a quick breakfast and started to line up at the gates of thr Machu Pichu national park which opened at 530am. One the dat the gates opened and we started to file through, it was still another hour or two walk to reach the actual site of the Sun Gate and Lost City. We started our walk in the dark and gradually the light from the sun started to chase the darkness away. After a walk which seemed to be much longer than it actually was, we reached the Sun Gate - an elevated mountian pass entrance to the city which was deisgned by the Inca's to impress people as they entered the sacred city. Machu Pichu is situated in a valley, completely surrounded by mountians - this helped to hide the city from the Spanish who came very close to actual site but still couldn't see it. We waited for another half an hour for the sun to rise above the mountians and as the first rays of sun started light the city up we started our slow walk down the last part of the Inca trail to the city. Already there were lots of tourists in the city who had cuahgt the train, and we felt a little cheated becuase the tourists who had caught the train were able to snatch up the additional tickets to hike Wana Pichu, the tall steep mountian adjacent to the city which the builders and planners used to build the Machu Pichu in the shape of a flying condor. Despite missing out on Wanu Pichu we still had all morning to explore the ruins, our guides took us around and gave us a really good idea of what life would have been like for the nobles and religious people living here. The city had everything really, farms on the terrances for food, religious sites to appease the gods, shops for locals to trade (Inca's didn't have money), tradesmens shops, spirings and fountians and even a local sun dial for eveyone to plan their days. The stars and heavens were very important to the Incas and many of the buildings are constructed to align to one or more astrological events during the year. For example there is one rock in the shape of the shouthern cross which, when the the stars align and the southern cross matches the excat shape of the rock from a certain perspetive, indicates the winter solistice - an important day for the Incas as it indicated that the days would get longer and warmer and was the start of the festivities (you would celebrate too if you managed to survive the winter in the Andes...)
Exploring Machu Pichu for a day was really interesting, and the ruins are still in impressivly good condition. Aparetnly the tourist trade is starting to take a toll though and future plans will restrict the number of tourists and where they can walk, we were pretty lucky to be able to freely roam where we want. In the early afternoon, we took a bus from the site to the local town of Aguas Calientas where we had a hotel room booked. It was nice to relax a bit, have lunch, a few beers and stinking hot shower. We slept very well that night.
The next day we took the train back to Cuzco where we spent a few more days exploring. We managed to time our visit well because we were around for the winter solstice, and locals were in full festival mode. There were parades every day, all day in the streets with very elaborate floats, signing and dancing. It was really cool to sit on the balcony of a roof top bar and take in the sights whilst relaxing. Now that's my kind of cultural sightseeing.
After a few days in Cuzco we caught a flight to La Paz, via just about every other small town airport in South America, it took ages. In my view La Paz is simmilar to Quito, but a bit safer. It is one of the most poluted citites in the world and its hard to walk the streets withough getting short breath from both thr alitutde and the smog which covers the city like a blanket. We did find some good food, and a few markets that sold good cheap stuff (Bolivia is the poorest Sth American nation) but I'd say 2 days at the most is enough. We had one night out with some friends and suffered the next day with a combined hangover/altitude sickness which is like a fever, upset stomach and bad headache. Not pleasant.The Inca Trail was the last thing that Heidi and I had booked in advance, and really at this point our focus was starting to shift towards coming home. Every day we were a little more excited and started to plan what we'd be doing when we did finally get back. We had a few days to kill in Bolivia and decided that we should make the most of our time and book a tour to the salt flats near Uyuni. We caught a terrible 10hr overnight bus from La Paz to Uyuni. When we finally got off the bus, we were shocked by the temperature which was well below freezing, no one had told us it would be this cold and we were not really prepared for it. We booked a tour and shivered while we waited for it to leave.
The salt flats are a pretty amazing place, it used to be the sea floor but through tectonic movement f the earths plates the sea floor was pushed to an elevation of about 4000m, in some places up around 5000m above sea level. The water that was trapped formed a huge salt lake which eventually evaporated away leaving vast salt plains ranging in depth from 10m to 150m. In some areas there are still pockets of water deep under ground and this artesian basin keeps evaporating causing the changing patterns of the salt plains - it looks kind of like a carpenter has cut huge blocks of salt and fitted them together.
Our first day took us through a train grave yard, there was lots of mining and exporting going on in the past and once a steam engine had reached it's useful life they just pushed it out in to the desert and let it rust. There must have been dozens and dozens of huge engines littering the plains, a very strange sight.
After the train yards we saw the proper salt plains and drove around 'Fish Island' (no idea why its called fish island, there are no fish) which is full of cacti, some over 12 meters tall. A cactus grows 1m every 100 years so the oldest cacti are over 1000 years old, not bad for a plant that gets barely any water.
We drove to the very middle of the salt flats where there is a perfectly flat view of the horizon in every direction, no trees, hills, or buildings to obstruct the view.
We saw the places where the locals harvest the salt - they use power tools to smash the top layer then gather it up in to little hills. It kind of looks like giant salt ant hills for as far as you can see
On our first night we stayed in a hotel made entorely out of bricks cut from the salt plains and surprisingly these salt bricks make a very building material. It was cold as hell, but the walls were very strong, just like normal bricks. Our second day took us to some lakes which were colored from the mineral deposits present - green, blue and red. We also visited some volcanoes which were still active, proof of this was the steam pouring from the top of one of the bigger volcanoes.
The landscape on the second day was more like Mars, compared to the Lunar land scape of the first day on the salt plains. On the third day we got up really early to see the sun rise over the plains and drove to some natural geysers which were throwing steam and water heated by volcanic action dozens of meters in to the air.
We had to get from Bolivia to Chile so instead of a round trip (back to Lima, then flying to Santiago) we decided we would just leave the tour at the most southern most destination near the border and get a bus over to Chile, it took a while but we eventually made it to San Pedro in Chile.
San Pedro is a town built entirley to accomodate the tourists, so the prices were steep and people were a little bit pushy but overall its an ok place. We still had a day to kill before we were due to fly to Santiago, so we took a tour of the sand dunes and did some sand boarding. Basicall, sandboarding is exactly the same as snow boarding, but down huge sand dunes. The only downside is that once you make your way down you have to climb all the way back up again. Having never snowboarded before we were a little slow to start,but eventually we got the hang of it and soon enough we were tearing down the dunes, we fell lots and managed to get sand in places that sand should never go. After a few hours and a very uncomfortable ride though the canyons home (think of sand paper everywhere) we got back, had a long shower and caught a flight to Santiago.
We were hoping that we could change our tickets at the airport in San Pedro to havea direct flioght from San Pedro to Santiago to Auckland to New Zealand, but the people at the airport proved pretty incompetant, so we had to settle for a stopver day in Santiago. We did some sightseeing and a walking tour but by this stage our minds were so fixed on coming home that we couldn't really think about anything else. The last few days after leaving Peru seemed to drag on for a nearly infinite time, and everytime we thought we were getting closer to leaving something would happen to postpone our plans. It was kind of frustrating, but we just had to wait. Finally it was time to get to the airport at Santiago to catch our flights home, and we were both a little nervous because the weather in Chile had been quite bad and we thought (trusting our luck) that the flights may have been delayed or cancelled.
Everything worked out fine though and we caught our flight to Auckland, 14 hours never lasted so long. Now we're on the flight from Auckland to Melbourne and its hard to think about anything else apart from going home. The last 8 months have been a fantastic adventure that I know we'll never forget but I've never wanted to come home more than I do now. I'm sure than in the next few weeks we'll be telling our friends stories of all the laces we've been, and things we've done. We've been from the highest deserts in the world to the lowest point of the globe, from freezing European winter to scorching Middle Eastern sun, and from the the most developed cities in the world to some of the most rural villages. But right now all I can think of is Vegemite, my own bed and not having to pack my damn bag every morning!
And now we are home, it feels so good to be back in our familir city, to see all our friends and family and think of having a nice normal life again. It's the small things that I appreciate so much, like being able to talk to the person whi is making my coffee and being able to use the bathroom whenever I like without having to climb down from the top bunk and wake everyone up. Heidi will start uni really soon, and I've got a cool new job lined up so we will be back to the real world very soon. And if you thought that an 8 month trip would kill the travel bug, it hasn't, it's merely stunned it for a while, we've already started thinking about the places we want to go back and see. Thanks for reading!
