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Published: January 20th 2007
Cuzco, The New Apartment
Here´s me and Miguel holding it down for Peru and Canada. We have the same flag just with a different symbol in the middle. They have a sheild and we have a...maple leaf...lolCuzco
Time for Christmas and New Years and what better place to spend it than a city filled with gringos, thousands of miles away from my family and friends. Whatever, I still managed to have a good time.
We got to Cuzco which is the tourist capital of South America. It’s 3200 meters above sea level so it definitely felt like home because of the cold! We found a really nice hostel right near the main plaza so that was good. We were planning to rent quads for Christmas day but it ended up raining pretty hard so that idea got scratched. So instead we relaxed in our hostel and watched a bootlegged version of Borat haha. That movie is ridiculous but soooo funny! “Sex crime HIGH FIVE” haha.
In the meantime we arranged a trip to Macchu Picchu. We made contact with Miguels buddy Sebastion. He’s Argentinian but has lived in Canada his whole life and was traveling with his friend Jeremy, and two Australians they met, Oliver and another Jeremy. We linked up via email and met up. We booked a 4 day trip by bike and hiking (in total 200km) all the way to Macchu
Cuzco, The New Apartment
Cooking my first meal at the new crib. French toast! I loooooooooove Picchu. We left the day after xmas which was appropriate so we could get back in time for New Years!
We woke up at 2am and got picked up by the tour company and the other guys. It was a ROUGH morning and drive to the top of a near by mountain. The first day was started at 4350 meters. We got to the top right as the sun was coming up and it was so f&^%g COLD! After about 30 min of waiting to get everything set up I couldn’t feel my fingers or upper lip. Eventually we were ready and the six of us jumped on our mountain bikes and started our decent down to 1400 meters. As we were cruising down, I could totally feel the change in temperature. About half way down I could start to feel my fingers again! We came across this van that was stuck in one of the many river crossings. We started to help but couldn’t do anything because as the tires were grinding, it was sinking deeper into the rocks. Eventually a large truck rolled by and couldn’t cross because the van was in the way. So he busted
Cuzco, The New Apartment
The dining room and kitchen out a big cable and towed the van out. By this time there was a small traffic jam on this tiny dirt road. The truck got through but the one behind him got stuck hahaha! So he had to come back and do it again. We all laughed and bounced lol.
About 3 hours later we were at 2000 meters. We stopped for lunch and were COVERED in mud, rain, and other crap! The lunch was weak: bread, jam, and juice. We got a couple good pics of the locals though. We continued on for another 2 hours on flat land along a river until we made it to our 1st destination/hostel, Santa Maria, at 1400 meters. Almost 3000 meters in 5 hours. We showered, ate dinner then crashed…HARD.
The next day we woke up at 6am and started an 8 hours hike to our next hostel. Along the way we stopped at fruit trees and ate fresh fruit, rivers to take a swim, and great lookout points. We actually walked along a recently discovered Incan trail that is carved in the side of a mountain. The views were incredible! Pictures cannot do it any justice. The trail
Cuzco, The New Apartment
The hallway to the bedrooms and the living room is on the left was created 500 years ago because the Incans needed an obscure route to escape the powerful Spaniards during their crusades.
After about 6 hours of hiking we made it to a beautiful Thermal Bath area. It was huge and was all natural from the river and mountains. We relaxed our muscles and got the entire history of the Incan Empire from our guide Ricardo. He is extremely intelligent, mostly because before you can become a guide you have to go through 3 years of school. The Peruvians don’t want their history getting mixed up by uninformed Cholos lol. It took about an hour and a half to explain but all of us were soaking in natural thermal water and enjoying the amazing story of the Incas, so we didn’t care.
We started on our way again and in and hour and a half, arrived at our 2nd destination; Santa Teresa. We pretty much did the exact same thing as the night before…ate/showered/crashed.
The next morning we got a bit of a sleep in: 8am. We started walking again and the first thing we got to do is cruise across the raging river via cable car on a
Cuzco
The main square in the day.... zip line. After only an hour of walking we made it to a waterfall in the forest. We all got freezing cold water all over us and got woken up instantly! Jeremy went in naked which made for some beautiful pictures haha. This guy was constantly cracking us up! Between him and Sebastion, we all got a nice ab workout for the entire week we spent with them!
We then continued through a small amount of jungle to get to the main dirt road and walked along it for about 5-6 hours. During the walk the views were great and saw a lot of animals, nature and waterfalls. One waterfall was actually pulsing through the side of a mountain with amazing force! Check out the pics.
We eventually got to our lunch spot and could see the hills of Macchu Picchu in the distance. Excitement started to flow through me as I knew that our destination was a stones-throw away. We finished lunch and walked another hour along some railway tracks until we got to our final destination before Macchu Picchu: Aguas Calientes (which means Hot Waters in Spanish due to the many thermal baths in the area)
Cuzco
The main square in the night This was a really nice little town. It was built for Macchu Picchu visitors about 50 years ago so everything was very new. It had a Whistler feel to it because it was a resort town situated in the mountains. Evrerthing, however was ridiculously over priced…but that’s how it goes in spots like this. We got our rooms, suited up and hit the thermal baths. For the travelers that may be reading this, DO NOT VISIT THESE THERMAL SPRINGS. The water looks and smells like a toilet and honestly, I almost puked after 30 minutes in there. The employees were like “Oh it’s all good, it’s just the minerals.” MY ASS…it was shit and piss if you ask me. There were like 50 people crammed in there. We couldn’t take it any more so we took off back to our hostel and to have dinner. After this we crashed, knowing that we had an early morning hike the next day to Macchu Picchu.
Ricardo woke us up at 5:30 am, the prick. We walked for half an hour to the bottom of the Macchu Picchu stairs. We had 3071 steps to climb to reach the mystical and hidden
Cuzco
Alpacas are everywhere in this country...even at the AIRPORTS! hahaha
Harsh Alpacas society that flourished around 500 years ago. It only took us about 30 minutes and a half bucket of sweat. But, when we got to the top, the sights are indescribable. I can not simply type what I saw, because I wouldn’t do the beauty of this place any justice. It is something that every person should see for themselves. I tried to take pictures to show you its magnificence, but pictures incomparable to the sights of the sunshine bouncing off of the ancient stone and forest surrounding the area.
We climbed up Wayna Picchu which is the massive mountain in the background of every picture of Macchu Picchu. We flew up this mountain in 20 minutes when it was supposed to take the average person an hour. From this point, the ruins looked like a tiny colony in the middle of a vast mountain range (which it is) so it gave me a cool perspective. After soaking in the views a bit more, touring Macchu Picchu, taking mad pictures, and enjoying every second spent there, we descended back down to Aguas Calientes. For some reason we decided to run down the 3000 steps at TOP SPEED. I have
The Trek to Macchu Picchu
This was day 1 at 2am on the way up the mountain. That´s Sebastion on the left...pure hilarity! no idea what started it but before I knew it, me, Jeremy, Oliver and Sebastion were freakin high-tailing it! We made it to the bottom in 11 minutes hahaha.
We walked back to town, had lunch, said goodbye to Ricardo and got on a train back to Cuzco. What an amazing experience. Four days and 200 km of biking, trekking, zip-lining, and climbing to an eventual destination. This, by-far, was my most amazing experience for me so far in South America. The sights, sounds, smells, and efforts are things that I will never forget. And what made it even better is I was on my way back to the party capital for my Bday and New Years Eve…wooooooooo!
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