Somewhere in the Andes

Holy shit!! The hike to Machu Picchu was, by far, the most challenging and rewarding thing that I've ever done. It was five days of non-stop hiking, but with the most beautiful scenery, and an awesome group of people. Saturday morning I left the hostel at 4am to head to Mollepata where the trailhead is. Our guide took us through several "short cuts", which just means "ridiculously steep paths". By the time we reached our first camp, after 7 hrs of hiking, I was exhausted, and slept like a baby. Our guides woke us up at 5am the next morning, with hot coka tea, and way too much energy :), and we were off. Half of us rode horse back up Salkantay Mountain- I'm so glad that I chose to do it because it was really fun, and I got to just soke up the amazing views the entire morning as we approached the summit. Once we reached the top, we only stayed for 20 minutes to avoid getting altitude sickness, and we parted with the horses. Being up against that mountain was surreal. No one has ever successful climbed to the very top (we were at the snow line, 4608m high). A couple of years ago, two professional climbers from Japan tried to climb it, and neither of them made it to the top and only one of them made it down. Walking from Salkantay down to our next camp was brutal- my knees were spent! We hiked down to 2860m, which was thankfully much warmer, and we were all able to hang out outside. After a 10 hr day, we all were ready to just chill and have a beer. Day three was luckily the "easy" day, with only 6 hrs of hiking, and only a slight decrease in elevation. It was a fun day of picking avocados, and passion fruit, and playing games on the trail. Our third night camp was Santa Teresa, and it was a blast- it's a small village where we hung out with some locals, played cards, danced and had a fire. However, up bright and squirrelly the next day for another 6 hrs of hiking, and unfortunetely it poured rain in the middle of the night, so it was nice and wet. I was so excited when we reached Aguas Calientes- hostel to stay in!! That meant hot shower, and a bed!! I went to sleep as quickly as possible because if you want to get a ticket to climb Huayna Picchu (the huge mtn next to Machu Picchu), you have to get up at 4am, and race the other backpackers up over 1000 steps to the top, as they only allow 400 people a day. This is an experience that I never want to have again in my life- it was sooo hard! I saw two people puke, a few people give up, it was loco! I made it to the top though, and got my ticket!! And totally worth it- the top of Haynu Picchu is like the top of the world. I was so tired walking around Machu Picchu, but it was so unbelievable to seeing these amazing structures at the top of a mtn, and trying to imagine how they could possibly have ever built it! I took way too many photos, but still haven't been able to get anything uploaded =/

Once back at the hostel, I switched rooms to the all girls dorm- yay! So much better- huge private bathroom, and my friend Katy was staying there also. I met so many cool people on my trek!

Today or tomorrow I am ready to burn this banana stand and get out of Cuzco. I'm headed to Lake Titticaca and the floating islands, and then on to Bolivia. I think I'm going to go with Matt, from York, that I also met on my trek.

Aw, almost forgot- went out and had cuy last night....Yup, that means guinea pig! Not the worst thing I've eaten, but I will not ever be eating it again! It's a delicacy, and actually quite expensive here. When in Rome...I also attended a cooking class yesterday where we made savichay (sp?) and pisco sours. It was really fun, and tasted pretty darn good. However, I'm crossing my fingers today, as my food choices were the poison trifecta- raw fish (savichay), raw egg (pisco sour), and rodent for dinner. Oy. So far so good though.