The Inka Trail Days 1 & 2

[Our group of 13 starting the Inka Trail]

On my third day in Cusco, I got up at about 5:45 to get ready for Isai, one of my to-be guides for the Inka Trail, to come pick me up at 6:30. With Isai was Ken, who works for the Forest Service in California and was also going to do the trail. We walked and talked until we got to the main square of Cuzco, where the bus was going to pick us up to take us to the beginning of the trek. As soon as I got on the bus, I realized that Sarai, who I had been studying with in Valparaiso, was on the bus with her three brothers. Although we tried to organize it so that we were going to be on the same trek, we weren't sure it would happen. Along with Ken, Sarai, her brothers, and I, there were six UNC law students with on our trek and another random guy named Scott.

After we had been driving on the bus for a while, we made a stop in Ollantatambo to go to the bathroom and buy some snacks. Although I had bought some trail mix and cookies in Cusco, I bought some candy bars too. Although the candy bars were good on the trail, I brought much to much food, since they feed you three extremely good meals everyday on the trail.


[Our dining tent set up for team time our first day on the trail...]

When we were stopped, I got to meet our head guide, who, much to my surprise was a woman. Maria is one of few women guides in general, and she informed me later that even fewer women do the Inka Trail, since it is really hard work. She was really a great guide though, and really knew her stuff.

When we got to KM 82 (which is the 82nd kilometer on the railroad between Cusco and Agua Calientes, the town that lies closest to Machu Picchu), we got off the bus, met all of our porters, took a group photo and got on our way.


[Ruins that we passed on the first day. The ruins that lie along the Inka Trail can only be seen if you do the four-day hike.]

The first day was a rather leisurely hike, without too much effort that had to be put in. In some ways, that was nice since we mainly stayed together as a group and got a chance to talk and get to know each other. Although I started on the beginning of the rainy season, we had OK weather the whole time, and it only sprinkled a bit when we were hiking the fist day. Although, I did put on my poncho just in case, and then took it off when I realized how silly I looked and how much I didn't need it.


[In my awesome red poncho on day 1]

When we got to our camp, we were amazed to see that the porters had already gotten there and set up all the tents and were already preparing tea time and dinner.


[Tents already set up]

We had some time to kill before tea time, and we still had lots of energy, we tried to find something to do. First, we had a rather pathetic soccer ball that we were passing around. Then, we decided to try to make a hacky-sack out of Sarai's bandana, a hair tie, and some rocks from the river. Although our improvisation was rather impressive and the hacky sack held up pretty well, our skills in kicking the ball around were horrible. But it did pass the time before dinner. We also got entertainment in the form of a soccer game between two little boys who looked about 5 and 9 and one of our porters.


[Watching the game with much interest]

After dinner, it was basically time for bed, since we had to get up at 5:30 the next day to eat breakfast and start our big climb up Dead Woman's Pass.

On our second day, we were woken up by the porters at 5:30 with a warm coco tea, and had half an hour before we had to get all our stuff packed up before breakfast. We were amazed again at breakfast, being served pancakes, toasted bread, and an assortment of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate.


[A crude map of the elevation changes along the trail]

The second day of the trek is definately the hardest, with a 1,000 m climb up to Dead Woman's Pass, which is also the highest point on the trail (about 4,200 m or 13,000 ft.) Walking uphill for 5-6 hours was really hard work, but absolutely worth the view and sense of accomplishment at the top. (Although more amazing was probably the porters who carry up to 50 lbs of gear and still go running past you on the way up.)


[Beautiful view on the way up]


[Self proclaimed "Team Awesome" at the top of Dead Woman's Pass]


[I MADE IT!]


[Sarai and I at the top of the pass. I have to give her some credit since she was my personal porter and carried my pack to the top of the pass for me :) Made it a whole lot easier.]

Since we got done with our hike already at about 12:30, we had a lot of time to pass between lunch and dinner. Since it was raining kind of hard, and we had nothing else to do, we started playing cards - a game called mafia that is less of a card game and more of just a game. Since we didn't have enough of us to play a good game, we invited the cook and some porters to play with us. Although the whole language barrier thing was hard (since most of them speak Qetchua as their first language and Spanish as their second, and only Sarai and I speak Spanish), we ended up having a really good time and laughing a lot throughout the game.

Cuzco, Peru

When I arrived in Cuzco, Peru (after flying from Santiago to Lima to Cuzco), I was met at the airport by Henry, a guy who works at the hostel. Once at the hostal, Sami Wasay, I got checked in and got a warm cup of coca tea to help with the altitude. Cusco itself sits at about 3,000m (or about 10,000 ft).

After I showered and got unpacked, I asked Henry what I should do for the next two days, since I was going to be alone in Cusco until I started the Inca Trail. He told me that while I only had part of the rest of the day, I should walk around and explore the city, maybe visit some places and do some shopping.


[Church at the town square in Cuzco]


[Small streets in San Blas, where my hostel was.]

I walked down from San Blas, where my hostel was, to the main square and stopped in some shops on the way. There were a couple of things that struck me immediately about the difference between Peru and Chile. For one, things are definitely a lot cheaper in Peru - especially the souvenirs. But another is how pushy the Peruvians are! Walking around a market, they would all hassle you to buy their things, and haggle; two things pretty rare in Chile. I did end up getting some cool souvenirs for the family and some friends for pretty good prices, but not without being pretty annoyed while shopping.


[Ruins in the city that had been modified by the Spanish]

The next day, I took a tour of Incan ruins that were around Cuzco. In the end, I think I payed to much for the tour, since I had to pay for the pass to get me into all the ruins plus the tour. We went to one ruin inside the city that had been modified by the Spanish and turned into a church. But because the Inca construction was much better than the Spanish, the ruins are visible again after a big earthquake ruined all the Spanish architecture.


[Me in Sachsaywaman, ruins on the outskirts of Cuzco]

Sachsaywaman, which is pronounced like "sexy woman," are other ruins that are on the outside of Cuzco. The down side about being on the tour was not being able to explore the ruins for a longer period of time. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I would have gotten to the ruins without the tour bus.


[ruins outside Cuzco, a temple to the water Gods I believe]


[View of Cuzco at night]

Patagonia Chapter 4 - The End of the South

After we got back from Torres del Paine, are only other plan was to cross the Strait of Magellan and visit Tierra del Fuego, the biggest island in South America.

The ferry that goes from Punta Arenas only goes once a day back and forth from Porvenir, the biggest city on the Chilean side of the island. Eduardo had told us that the ferry would leave at 3 that day, get to the island at about 5, and then turn around to come back at 7, which seemed like a good block of time for us to be over on the island.


[at the Mirador, Punta Arenas in the background]

For the first part of the day, we just walked around town, went up to the mirador of the city, then went down to the town square, all the while trying to find the souvenirs that we were looking for (in my case, a sticker or two for my Nalgene water bottle), and even managed to find a little museum about the history of the Magellenes Region of Chile.


[Outside the museum, taking a very classic photo]


[In the town square. Rubbing the foot insures that you will be back in Punta Arenas someday...]

At around 2:30, we made our way over the the dock on the outskirts of the city, and went in to buy our tickets for the ferry. An old gentleman informed us that because of high winds, the ferry wouldn't be crossing today, but we could come back tomorrow and try again. This left us pretty confused, since we had just assumed that it was our plan for the day - we had made sandwiches and everything!

Since the Zona Franca, or duty-free zone, was right next to the dock, we decided that maybe we could do some shopping for the rest of the day. Duty-free shopping sounds pretty fun, but it was really quite the opposite. Most of the stores in the main mall sold completely random things - the kinds of things that come in catalogs or infomercials.


[Why would I want this?]


[Ali enjoying her sandwich in the Zona Franca mall]

After we ate lunch (yes, we had our picnic in the mall), we went to explore the other stores in the Zona. As we walked around, the whole experience got more and more bizarre. There were so many abandoned buildings and stores that looked open, but weren't... the whole thing gave me a feel of some bizarre eastern European shopping center that had taken a turn for the worse. After searching around for anything that was good to buy, we really didn't find anything and had to get out of the Zona Franca.

We decided to go to the Museo de Recuerdo, which was right by the Zona Franca. When we first entered, we thought we were in the courtyard, outside part of the museum. There were lots of old steam engines and cars all over - which may have been fun to look at, had there not been freezing temperatures and cold winds.


[El Museo de Recuerdo]

We walked to some buildings we saw, trying to find the real museum, when we realized there was none. The whole museum was this open-air part, that didn't really have a lot of context. We decided that all there was to do was take lots of silly photos on all the wagons!


[Just working out a bit...]


[We hijaked the bakery wagon... we all know how much we love that bread...]

Finally, we were done with our adventure for the day, and went back to the hostel to make dinner and relax.


The next day we woke up early to make it to the ferry by 9 a.m., needless to say it was pretty cold on the boat. We also got there kind of late, so we didn't have any seats.


[Getting in our view of the Strait of Magellan... we felt just like Darwin]


[The strait]


[It was VERY cold]

We basically spent two hours on the boat, only to spend about half an hour in Porvenir before we had to turn around and go back. We did get the chance to see a little museum by the town square, but overall I think we saw and did what there was to see and do in Porvenir.


[Maribeth by the town square]


[Saying Hello and Goodbye to Tierra del Fuego]

After we got back, we basically only had time to go eat another delicious meal, pack up our things and head to the airport!

Home again, home again

I arrived back in the United States yesterday around midday after a long trip from Valparaiso to Santiago to Atlanta to Baltimore to my house. Although it was definitely hard to leave and I was very sad at the bus station in Santiago, it is great to be home and see all my friends and family. I promise I will finish writing about Torres and Peru when we return from the Grand Canyon for Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone!!

Patagonia Chapter 3 - Parque Nacional Torres del Paine

The big attraction in Chilean Patagonia is the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, a national park dedicated to a mountain range that is completely seperate from the Andes, and includes some very interesting granite rock formations. The park has various day hikes, and also longer treks that backpackers can do to see more of the park. The most common one is called the W and takes 3-4 days. A longer trek goes around the entire park basically and takes 9-10 days.

We started our adventure to Torres by waking up and eating another delicious breakfast by Eduardo and getting on the first bus to Puerto Natales at 9 a.m. Puerto Natales is the nearest town to the park, and is about four hours away from Punta Arenas. If you are going directly to the park and have no interest in Punta Arenas, I would definately suggest going directly to Puerto Natales, since otherwise a whole day is spent travelling to the park. Once in Puerto Natales, we had to wait about two hours for the next bus to the park, so we didnt actually get into the park until 4:30 p.m.

Pictures from the Penguineros and the trip into Torres.

From there, we set up camp and made a basic dinner of ramen noodles and crackers. After dinner, we had the opportunity to talk to two guides, Pablo and Carola, who do numerous types of tours around the park. The offered up some great stories, insights, and advice about the park and were just really cool people.

On the second day in the park, we got up at 8 a.m., made our lunches and headed out to do the Torres hike, which is about 4-5 hrs in each direction. The change in scenery throughout the hike was absolutely amazing. We started off in shrublands, made our way into forests that had glacial streams running by them, and finally up to the torres. The torres (or towers) are huge granite towers that rise right above a little lake and a glacier and make an absolutely breathtaking view that was worth the entire hike and the harder part of getting up to the mirador of the towers. But the most wonderful thing about the hike was that it wasnt just the towers that were amazing and beautiful, but the entire hike along the way was as well.

Pictures from our camp and our hike to the Torres.

On our third day, we had to make our way over to the other side of the W in order to do the hike to the Grey Lake and Grey Glacier, which lies at the southern end of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field. We had to take a series of inter-park transportation that was both park of the park and private. Luckily they all worked pretty much in sync, although not quite. This was definately a time when having a car would have made it much faster to get around the park and where we needed to go. When we finally got to Lago Pehoe, we took the catamaran across to a campamento that was very windy. After eating a quick lunch, we headed down the trail to see the Glacier Grey. There were parts of the trail that were extremely windy, but all in all another beautiful trail that had beautiful views and another great end result of the glacier.

Pictures from the hike and crossing Lago Grey.

On our final day in the park, we slept in a bit, packed up all our stuff, and took the boat back across the lake to catch the bus back into Puerto Natales. The boat ride really gives an awesome view of the other attraction of the park, the Cuernos (or horns). Another crazy and beautiful rock formation that creates spectacular views in the park.

Overall the park was an amazing experience. As Carola the guide put it, there are three types of people that come to the park. There are the hardore backpackers that come with all their gear and camp, there are the people that come and stay in the refugios, but do all the hiking, and then there are the people that stay in the hotel places and dont do too much hiking. We would have liked to put ourselves in that hardcore group, but we were somewhere in between. Unfortunately, we didnt have time to do the entire W, but I would definately like to come back and do it, or the entire loop and see the parts of the park that I didnt get to see.

The park is also great because it caters to all kinds of visitors. The hardore backpackers and hikers and go there thing, while people who are only interested in a day hike to see the torres can do that as well. However, the park can also get quite expensive quite fast. If you dont bring all the supplies that you need and all the food that you need, you can buy it there at a hefty price and even some of the campsites cost money. If you want to stay somewhere other than a tent and not cook your own food, it gets even more expensive (30$ a night for a bed and $8 for breakfast, for example). This park was definately a place that I loved and that I really would have liked to share with my family (I especially think my Dad would love it), and is a place that I want to return to in the future. I have been there, but not quite done that.

We break from your regularly scheduled broadcast...

Sorry that I havent finished with my stories about the south of Chile yet, but I am now in Cuzco, Peru, getting ready to hike the Inka Trail for four days and three nights.

While sipping my coco tea (dont worry, its not a drug!) and taking the beautiful sights of this ancient city, I might have time to finish writing about the south. If not, there will be a lot of blog posts about Patagonia, Cuzco, The Inka Trail, Macchu Picchu and my despedida all at once!

Patagonia Chapter 2 - Los Penguinos!

[Magellanic Penguins!]

At 4 pm on our official first day in Punta Arenas, we went on a tour of the penguin colony at Seno Otway, which is about 75 km outside of Punta Arenas. Eduardo had basically organized it for us, telling us how much it cost and calling the company to come pick us up directly from the hostel. I believe it was 7.000 pesos (14 USD) for the transportation and the 4.000 (8 USD) pesos for entrance to the area.


[baby penguinos]

Basically, we got to walk around an area where the penguins go from their burrows to the ocean. From late November to early December, the penguins eggs are hatching, so we also got to see lots of babies hanging around.


[Penguinos getting really close!]

There were also times when the penguins were ridiculously close to us and the walkway that we were permitted on. It was so cute to see the little guys waddling around paying no mind to all the attention they were getting from the visitors.


[Alli, me and Maribeth at the beach overlook]

We had been advised by some friends that this penguin colony wasn't a fantastic exciting experience, but despite this, we went anyway because we wanted to see some penguins up close. We were very pleasantly surprised by the experience. It wasn't too cold, we got to see the penguins doing there thing and there were a good number of them, and not a lot of tourists. There weren't tons and tons of penguins like there are supposed to be at the Isla Magdalena colony, but there was still a good number and we were glad to see penguins!


[the four of us at Seno Otway]

Patagonia Chapter 1 - To the end of the world and back...

Zach, Maribeth, Allison, and I left December 1st at about 6:00 from Vina to go to the Santiago airport, where our cheap flight left at about midnight to take us to Punta Arenas. Fortunately, we got to meet up with some of the kids that were leaving to go home at the airport and got some last goodbyes in before they went back to the real world.


[on the bus into town, Zach and Maribeth in front, Alli and I behind]

When we got to the airport in Punta Arenas, it was about 3 am and starting to get light outside. Ben made a nice point that Punta Arenas isn't even as far south as Stockholm is north, which explained why it was darker outside than I had expected it to be, comparing it to Swedish summer.

We got a bus to the center that cost about 4 USD per person, and walked the rest of the way to the hostel. We were staying at Hostal Independencia, which was recommended to us by two ISAers that had stayed there during there trip. I also HIGHLY recommend it for various reasons. Among many others, when we got there at 4 oclock or so, Eduardo was there to check us in.

We woke up at about 11 and had the wonderful breakfast that was included in the price of the room. There was warm bread, jam, coffee, yogurt, and freshly cooked eggs. It was so delicious and really kept hunger away until lunchtime.

Eduardo then explained to us everything about everything we needed to know. We knew exactly what we wanted to do, but we didn't really know how to do any of it. In regards to the park, he explained that our best bet would be to camp, since it was by far the cheapest, and that we could rent whatever we needed from him. He also suggested a route to take given the amount of time that we had. He gave us all the information that we would need to get around the park and see the best things that there were to see. Without all this information, our trip to the park probably would not have been as spectacular as it was.

He also gave us the information that we needed to see the Magellanic Penguins at Seno Otway, which will have a further appearance in Patagonia Chapter 2 - Los Penguinos!

De Viaje!

My blog may be MIA for the next week, since I am going to Punta Arenas and southern Patagonia.

Punta Arenas is the southern most city in the world, sitting right on the Strait of Magellan. We (Alli, Maribeth, Zach and I) will be there for a couple of days - we currently have plans to see penguins and Tierra del Fuego, which lies right across the strait from Punta Arenas.

Then, we'll head a bit north to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine National Park, which is supposed to be amazing. We'll hike around the park for a bit and then head back to Punta Arenas and fly home.

We'll see how this adventure goes!