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Published: November 18th 2011
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So, instead of doing the classic tour-organised trek up to Machu Picchu we decided to visit some isolated, gringo-free ruins on our own. Surprisingly, Jens (our German friend from Colca Canyon) was willing to put up with us for another trek, so together with him we decided to do the Choquequirao trek. Choquequirao is an Inca ruins site about 30km from any village with a road. So the only way to get there is to trek and camp!
We spent a day in Cusco getting everything we needed, from renting a tent, mats and a gas stove to buying cutlery, a pot and 4kg of pasta. Then we spent the evening boiling eggs... our only protein source for 4 days!
Day 1 Jens came to pick us up early from our hostel. We caught a bus to Cachora, where we had our 'last supper', the last piece of meat for several days! After that we were off with heavy backpacks but high spirits.
We started off in a valley with agricultural fields and eucalyptus trees, but soon descended into a completely different valley and had spectacular views of the sun setting behind green and snow-topped mountains.
We arrived to Chiquiska campsite after dark and had a dinner of avocado and egg sandwiches. We were happy for an early night in our 4-person tent, which was actually quite cramped for the 3 of us!
Day 2 Another early start, but this time we got trekking straight after a breakfast of egg sandwiches. We soon reached the lowest point of the trek: Playa Rosalina and the river at about 1400m. Then we started the seemingly endless steep climb up to Santa Rosa. We felt very satisfied with ourselves for completing what we thought was the hardest 3 hours of climbing of the day.
However, we discovered that whoever had told us that the climb from Santa Rosa to Marampata was less steep had been lying! We struggled uphill for another couple of hours until we found a scenic lunch spot, and then struggled to get water boiling with the gas stove. However, we managed to cook some tasty pastas, and this gave us the energy for the final climb up to Marampata, which is at around 2900m.
Although the last two hours to the camp at the bottom of the ruins were relatively
straight, we still arrived completely knackered. So, another early night after some soup and bread.
Day 3 Today started very very early for us: at 2am when we were woken up by a storm and a pool of water inside our tent! We took most of our belongings from the tent and set up camp in the men's toilet, the only dry place we could find. We spent the rest of the night there, trying our best to get some sleep.
In the morning a friendly Canadian couple took pity on us and gave us some porridge, the culinary highlight of the trip! It stopped raining around 10am, when we hung everyhing out to dry and went up to the ruins. There was a mysterious atmosphere around them, because of the remaining clouds surrounding the mountains. Slowly, the sky began to clear and we got bright sunshine!
After all of our stuff was dry we set off on a steep downhill slope. We arrived at Playa San Ignacio just in time to set up the tent in a small sheltered space, before the rain started again.
Day 4 We set off early
after a breakfast of soup and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The first bit was uphill through jungly trees and lots of flowers. Then we followed a straight-ish path along a valley, occasionally crossing small rivers and waterfalls in a much drier landscape. We stopped at another scenic spot for our last pasta with mushroom-soup and tomato sauce lunch.
At around 3pm we got onto a road where a sign indicated it was 17km to Huanipaca, our final destination. Luckily we met some horseriding locals who showed us the short-cut riverside path. This was a beautiful but tiring uphill climb through cultivated fields in a green valley.
We were very happy to reach the ugly, under-reconstruction town of Huanipaca around 5pm where Jens and Christian managed to exchange our last kilo of pasta for two bottles of Coca-cola! The sweet taste of reaching our destination!
We quickly got into a collectivo to Abancay, where we managed to catch the last bus back to Cusco. We fell into our beds at 2am, tired but with a victorious feeling.
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