An Inca-mparable Experience

We made it. We survived the 42 km Inca Trail hike from Ollantaytambo, Peru to the “Lost City of the Incas”, Machu Picchu. It truly was an unrivalled, unparalleled, unsurpassed, unmatched experience (I confess, those are all the synonyms for “incomparable” from right-clicking in Microsoft Word). Seriously, though. It was unreal. But it was no easy feat: we hiked for four days crossing three mountains passes – the highest at 4200 m, and camped at over 3600 m in the bone-chilling rain to get there. The views left us (literally) breathless. I mean, we’re strong hikers, but when you take away our O2 it’s a different game! Mind you, I guess we weren’t soooo hard done by considering we had nineteen porters, one chef, and one sous-chef catering to every back-country need of the mere sixteen people in our hiking group. These guys blew my mind. They carried 25 kg of gear each as they ran ahead (in sandals!!) to set up camp for us and get started on the next meal. Then, they welcomed us to each camp with applause and a fresh glass of boiled stream water tang. I felt like an Inca king the way they cooked for us! We ate things like quinoa porridge alongside crepes for breakfast, tea and sandwiches for brunch (that’s right – a full sit-down brunch on the mountainside about 500 vertical meters after breakfast!), avocado salad and fried fish for lunch, and alpaca steak sprinkled with fresh mint leaves alongside stuffed peppers, fried rice and fresh veg for dinner. What did YOU eat on your last camping trip?

Did I forget to mention the intended purpose of the hike? Machu Picchu anyone? For me, when it comes to ancient civilizations, ruins are ruins. You've seen one, you've seen ‘em all. Machu Picchu surprised me, though. It’s a full-on city that you can actually walk around. That said, the real draw for Elise and me from the get-go was the hike itself. Few tours meet – let alone surpass – my expectations. This hike was EPIC. It was an immense physical challenge (yes…even for me….mostly due to the altitude, but the original Inca stonework stairs – nicknamed the “gringo-killers” – would have been gruelling even at sea level). There were jaw-dropping mountain views and we had all four seasons whip through us over the course of the four days as we continuously moved between dry mountain valleys and damp cloud forests. But enough chit-chat. I think the pics below speak for themselves.

-G




4200 m! Top of the world!

Mmmmm...Alpaca

Not much ankle support for this porter...

Above the clouds, above the crowds

Those stairs are a BITCH!

Breakfast at 6 am...after we got served coffee in bed at 5:30! What luxury!!

Machu Picchu, the money shot

Hanging Tough in Arequipa Part 2

Back from the Inca Trail... more on that later.

First, here are some pics that were supposed to go with the last blog post.

-E


Peruvian Countryside



El Misti volcano



Downhill mountain biking on El Misti



Gully and our guide heading up a crazy mountain bike path.... don't worry, they both survived the way down



Santa Catalina convent in Arequipa



Plaza de Armas in Arequipa

Mmmmmm... KD.... tastes like home



Off to the Inca Trail....

Back in four days!

Hanging Tough in Arequipa

Things have gotten a little easier since that HELLISH ride. We’ve undertaken two bus rides since then and I managed to keep my dinner down. Crossing the border from Chile to Peru was also easier, maybe because we left all fruit behind.

So...Peru. Up until now, we have played it safe on this trip – staying away from shady characters at the bus station, not keeping our hundred dollar bills in our back pockets, and leaving our bling at home. But in Peru, we felt we needed to step it up a notch since it’s reputedly unsafe. So I stopped carrying a purse, Gully hid his watch, and we had lengthy serious discussions about what we would do if we were mugged or taxi-napped (Apparently a common practice in Peru, where a tourist gets into a taxi and the driver takes them hostage until the tourist pays them off). We decided on eye-gouging and crotch-kicking for muggers, or pulling a knife on the malevolent taxi driver. And above all, just generally looking tough. I bet you’re thinking “Way to go guys, those are solid plans”. Well, I can tell you that blending in is not an option – blond hair and even curly brown hair are about as rare as stop signs in Peru. That reference may not mean anything to you, but just believe me when I say that stop signs are rare here. We even had a random woman taking unsolicited photos of us in the town plaza. So we smiled and posed and hoped the picture wouldn’t end up on the internet.

Our first stop in Peru was Arequipa, which is the second biggest city after Lima. We were pleasantly surprised. First, because we weren’t mugged, not even once. Second, the food!!! By sheer variety and freshness, Peru has almost every country we’ve visited so far beat. And the restaurants are fantastic, and so cheap. The grocery store even has an ‘ethnic food’ section, with various Chinese and Mexican staples. We were also stopped in our tracks, jaws dropped open, when we came across something we have been sorely missing since leaving Canada – Kraft Dinner!!! Actually, it was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, which everyone knows is not as good, but sometimes you just gotta take what you can get.

Sorry, no pics at this time due to super-slow internet connection.

Borderline Inappropriate

By now you all must be wondering whether or not Elise and I survived the 36 hours on the bus from Argentina to the north of Chile. Well we did, sort of. The perpetual monotony that we endured for a day and half probably took a couple of years off my life.

We woke up in Mendoza, Argentina before sunrise on the day of departure. We watched two sunsets and another sunrise from the bus window before we arrived in Arica, Chile the next night. Stage one: bus through the Andes and cross the border into Chile. We’ve crossed borders into 19 countries so far this trip with virtually no hassles. We’ve never claimed anything at customs and never had any problems. We’ve never been searched or interrogated or fined or anything.

Our daypacks were overflowing with food that we had packed for the forthcoming 36 hours of sitting on our asses; we had about five meals in the form of semi-perishable food. When we got to the Chilean border they had everybody get off the bus and file into a building where we were lined up in front of tables facing the border guards. Out of nowhere they started passing around a styrofoam tip cup. I still have no idea what we were expected to tip for but a few of the locals were dropping in coins anyway. Personally, I don’t tip unless I receive some sort of service, and the border guards had yet to WOW me with their thorough attentiveness to my border-crossing needs. Then they asked if anyone had anything to declare, emphasizing that fruits and vegetables must all be handed over to the officers. I’ve smuggled many-a-fruit over the border to the States before and I’ve always managed to elude customs, so I wasn’t about to hand over the 4 kg of apples and oranges I had stashed in my bag to the Chilean pan-handling customs officers. For some reason, Elise and I were singled out in front of everybody and asked directly if we had any fruit to declare (I guess we looked like suspicious gringos). That’s when Elise got the jitters and gave up our bag of apples. Those intimidation tactics won’t work on me, though! I didn’t want to part with our juicy oranges so I firmly stated that the apples were all we had. I figured they’d just move on since they should be more concerned with catching drug smugglers and illegal aliens than a couple of Canadian fruit connoisseurs! I thought we were in the clear but they directed everyone over to a baggage scanner. I still had hope that we could get away with the oranges, but as soon as my bag disappeared past the rubber flaps they stopped the conveyor. The jig was up. They searched my bag. They found the oranges. Apparently they take this kind of infraction very seriously in Chile since four officers converged on me and took my passport away. As an accomplice, they searched Elise’s bag and found our hard-boiled eggs that were reserved for our breakfast the next morning! Not cool. We were detained as the entire bus waited and the driver berated us for trying to smuggle fruit across the border. I kept hearing “you pay big penalty” in Spanish as some other officers did the spin test with our eggs to see if they were hard-boiled or not (…you know, if it spins it’s cooked, if not then it’s raw). The officers looked absolutely ridiculous doing this. But, apparently cooked eggs are ok so we got those back. After ten minutes of pleading ignorance and faking that I can’t speak Spanish they finally gave me back my passport and sent us on our way. Disaster averted… for now.

Road to Chile



A glimpse of Aconcagua, the tallest mountiang in the Americas



A seemingly warm welcome

Switch back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back..........

Stage two: Santiago to Arica, Chile. Things were going pretty good up until about the 22 hour mark of the bus ride. That’s when Elise’s body simply gave up. The break in the monotony came as Elise got violently ill from motion sickness and had to vomit in the already-disgusting bus lavatory. Gross. Even grosser was when the next dude to use the lavatory relieved himself of a week’s worth of constipation and clogged the toilet. The next vomit episode for Elise would be into a plastic grocery bag. As the bus twisted around the sand dunes of the Atacama Desert (the driest desert on Earth...the area where those miners were stranded) we soon ran out of grocery bags. So, as a grand finale Elise had to shamefully jump from the bus in the next town and give’er on the side of the road while the entire bus looked on. Things got a bit better after that, but with Elise out of commission I got so desperate for something to do that I almost watched the Nicolas Cage movie they were showing. Luckily, I came to my senses and unplugged my headphones after the opening credits. I think we'll fly next time.

-G

Hour 5. Looks pretty dry.

Hour 10

Hour 20

Hour 25. Yup, still dry.

I'll Never Stop Wining

We suffered through a long, hard winter (about 1 week long) but spring has finally come!!! In Mendoza, the flowers are blooming, the temperature is rising… and the wine is flowing!!
But let’s not kid ourselves, the wine always flows. In fact, that is the main reason we ended up in Mendoza – it is the biggest wine producing region of Argentina. Sure, there are mountains, but why climb a mountain when you can drink wine instead?

A popular thing to do in Mendoza is rent bikes to visit the wineries. Check out the logo of the company we rented our bikes from - so appropriate!! Unfortunately, we never found a chance to actually perform the wine tasting while on the bike…

The company was called 'Bikes and Wines'

So, we rented bikes and visited the wineries, and it was great fun. We would tell the vintners that we were Argentinean wine experts, due to the copious amounts of ten peso ($2.50) wine that we drank. And how we loved that you could purchase said wines at the grocery store. They didn’t think this was very funny. They were rather offended by our poor taste. But how can you argue with a $2.50 bottle of wine, people???
We will leave tomorrow, on an anti-adventure which may just kill us both. This trip will be epic, so epic that you may hear about it on CNN (Maybe in the 4 AM time slot when they’ve completely run out of real news to report).
Origin: Mendoza, Argentina.
Destination: Surftown, Chile.
Distance: 2370 km.
And we have to cross the Andes. To accomplish this, we will take a 6 hour bus ride followed directly by a 30 hour bus ride. We will start at 7 AM and finish at around midnight the next day. With nothing but sugar-coated dreams of the perfect wave to keep us (ok, maybe just Gully) going. Pray for us, friends!

-E

True love!

Spring in the vineyard - no leaves on the vines yet!

Anticipation!

Contemplating the next glass....

...or four!!

The Great White South

It’s always an interesting thing when you fly from the northern hemisphere to the southern. It’s like a time warp six months into the future (or past). Europe was winding down the warm weather so in our endeavour to chase summer around the globe, we flew to Argentina just as it was coming out of the winter deep freeze. Ahhh, sunny, tropical South America, right? Wrong. We thought we were gonna skip winter altogether, yet there we were, out on the Patagonian tundra layered up with all the warm clothes that we had lugged around Eastern Europe for three months. Instead of surfing and sun tanning we found ourselves hiking through meter-deep snow to get to a glacier! I had to wear my capilene long johns to walk to the grocery store for God’s sake! Another 20 hour bus ride had gotten us to Bariloche at the foot of the Argentine Andes in the so-called Lake District. (I think I’m getting used to these 20 hour bus rides. Not). I guess it just wouldn’t feel right as a couple Canucks going a whole year without getting a soaker from a slushy puddle.

Aside: Bariloche really is a nice town. It sits on a pristine mountain-fed lake with the snow-capped Andes as a backdrop. I was a bit sketched out by this one store downtown, though. Check out the last pic in the sequence below.

-G

Looks like northern Ontario with mountains



Can't wait for patio weather



Mount Tronador glacier 

Strike a pose, bird

How many mountain rainbows have you seen?

This was after a wicked skid stop by Elise



No caption needed