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Published: June 11th 2007
What a backdrop
At Machu Picchu, with most of Huayna Picchu in the backgroundClaire started dreaming of Machu Picchu after reading Tintin's adventures about hunting down Inca gold during her primary school years. So being in La Paz, only 12 hours by bus from Cusco, the launching point for visits to Machu Picchu, proved too great a temptation, and abandoned our bikes to head north on a bus.
Not that it was that simple. It took three ticket changes to leave La Paz because of a strike (understandable) of drivers of inter-urban and regional micros, buses and trucks. The strike action included blocking the road to Perú; road blocks are a normal event in Bolivian life. Once we did get going, we had only to join the chaos of the rather casual border crossing at Desaguadero, on the shore of Lake Titicaca, and we could sit back and enjoy the world going by. From the border to Cusco we were treated to picturesque rural views as we wended through rolled gold hills that look much more fertile than the land we'd cycled through further south. Still, for all the sign of activity — cultivation and harvested grain stooked in paddocks — we didn't see a single piece of mechanised farm machinery.
Arriving
Welcome to Cusco
The altar nook at our hospedaje in an unknown city at night, as we did into Cusco, is always disorienting, but Cusco had something special in store for our welcome. As we stepped through the street door of the colonial
hospedaje in which we were staying, we were confronted by a human skull decorated with flowers and lit by the indecisive light of a guttering candle, set out in an altar nook. Disconcerting as it was to us, to the locals of Quechua heritage it is a means of honouring the dead. The building itself was beautiful, with whitewashed walls 50cm thick and not a 90 degree angle to be found.
With many buildings like this, Cusco is a beautiful city. First an Inca capital, it later became a prosperous centre of Spanish colonial rule.
In Inca stories, the Sapa Inca (supreme ruler) Pachacuti developed Cusco from the somewhat sleepy capital of a city-state to the bustling religious and political centre of the vast empire that the Incas called Tahuantinsuyu, which spread from Colombia to central Chile. The first Spaniards arrived in the city in November 1533. They seem to have sacked Cusco, as well as other Inca sites, and built on top of
Landslide at Santa Maria
We walk past workers who are clearing the road with shovels after a massive recent landslide destroyed temples or used the stone for their own important buildings, mostly churches and the mansions of the rich and influential conquistadores. On the occasions that Cusco has been badly damaged by earthquakes, it has been the Inca walls that have remained standing, such was the their knowledge of building with stone in a seismic zone.
Machu Picchu We were in Cusco to visit Machu Picchu, but how to get there? The famous Inca Trail was always out of the question: these days it is a highly regulated highway, needs to be booked months in advance, and is far too expensive, all things that put us off even though the route itself sounds enthralling. We learned that the route we had planned to take, the Salcantay trail, is now regulated and can't be done without buying a tour. Back to our research, on the web and on foot. Enter Accidental Peruvian Adventures, one of 600 tour agencies that throng the streets of Cusco and which employ the services of more than 2,000 freelance guides of varying degrees of experience, skill and knowledge of languages other than Spanish. With this mob we found a fun way to get
Road building
Two yellow road-building machines mark the end of the road on the right-hand bank of the Urubamba. Above them, a handful of men with pickaxes were hacking a path out of the rock to continue the road along this cliff face. to Machu Picchu that cost only marginally more than travelling there independently. It
was shonky, but that turned out to be half the fun, especially when we adopted a dose of Bolivian fatalism and went with the flow.
In our group was a young Canadian woman and three Peruvians, students on holiday from their university course in hotel management and tourism. Our tour comprised a 37km downhill bike ride and two days' hiking to reach Aguas Calientes, the town that serves Machu Pichhu, before a day at the site. First, though, we had to get to the start, which was most of the way up a mountain in the middle of a road-building site. To get there, we were bundled onto a local bus that had been overbooked and meant some people — not the wealthy
turistas — had to stand for hours. Once we were let off, we dodged graders and road rollers as we ate our lunch and set up our pre-loved bikes, provided by the tour agency. Our guide, a young Quechua man called Josue, had an impish face and a ready sense of humour. He needed it. The company had not provided him with the
Bridge building
This type of bridge is common in the area. Villagers lay logs across the space to be bridged, lay leafy branches across the logs, and top the lot with soil, which is packed down to fill in any gaps. equipment to change flat tyres, and we had two. His own bike had only one set of more-or-less working brakes, on the back, so he improvised by planting his feet on the front wheel as needed. However, the downhill was a magnificent plummet through cloud forest (humid, tropical forest on steep slopes characterised by the presence of clouds from which plants take moisture) on precipitous hillsides across which the road coiled in long switchbacks until finally we arrived in the township of Santa Maria. This sleepy town is on the confluence of two rivers, one the mighty Urubamba, an important river to the Incas for whom it was a celestial stream representing the Milky Way. After the aridity of the Altiplano Dave and I found it strange to be in an environment similar to home: lush vegetation, banana plants, papayas and other tropical fruits, humidity, lantana, mosquitoes and biting flies.
We were to follow the roaring Urubamba on foot for the next couple of days, sometimes on made road, sometimes through campesinos' paddocks of coca, bananas and maize, sometimes on an Inca road that is still in daily use, and at the end — tediously — along the railway
track that links Aguas Calientes with the outside world.
Neither of us enjoyed being dropped into the tropics so suddenly but the company and the scenery more than made up for our discomfort. We started the hiking leg by wandering across a fresh landslide, the first of six for the day, Josue urging us to hurry because it was unstable. He was looking after us: the road beneath it was being dug out by a handful of men using shovels, and it looked as though they might be there for weeks. All the slopes around us were from the making of the world, never gentler than 45 degrees, and more often 60 or so, and our road hugged them as if onto life. In a couple of places, villagers were repairing sections of road that were barely 70cm wide and were limited on one side by cliff and on the other by thin Andean air that met solid ground a hundred metres below in the form of the Urubamba. Road building here doesn't seem to have changed much in hundreds of years, and many people use an age-old transport method — their feet.
During the lunch break one
Study in green and black
Between Santa Maria and Santa Teresa day, we talked to a
campesino (rural peasant) about costs and wages. He said that, for an 8 hour day, he would be paid a maximum of 6 soles, about $2.30. It made us think about the extra work that people take on, as he and his wife have, turning part of their home into a restaurant to feed passing hikers. And about the blessings of life in a rich, western country.
In the town of Santa Teresa, where we spent a night, we lolled in the welcoming water of hot mineral springs, gazing at the hills all around and watching the stars come out. The springs were born violently in 1998 during a huge mudslide that washed the town down the river. Locals tell the story with an edge of fear in their voices, and cross themselves when they say that, thankfully, no more than 20 people perished.
The day at Machu Picchu was magical. It started at 4:45 in the morning, with a 600m climb in altitude from Aguas Calientes up a 60 degree slope to the site, where we arrived in time to see colour seep into the world and define detail, mostly scores more
Crossing the Urubamba by cable chair
At Santa Teresa. Reo was used in the construction of the chair. slopes just as steep, and clouds forming and breaking below us. We were among the top levels of terraces at Machu Picchu to enjoy the sun breaking over the barrier of the surrounding mountains and light up the stone walls and burn the morning mist away.
What initially silenced us as we looked over Machu Picchu is the setting: it is ringed by mountains that tower above it, their valleys freefalling from near the summits into the semi-darkness of the Urubamba valley. Machu Picchu stands on a ridge between Huayna Picchu (the peak that is in the most commonly photographed view of the site) and the mountain on which the Sun Gate, on the Inca road to Cusco, sits guarding Machu Picchu. It is magnificent, and we feel certain that the Incas, whose religion was tied closely to the earth, chose the site with inspiration and awe in mind.
It is also ideal for defence, something the aggressive Incas must have valued. The previous day when we circled the base of Huayna Picchu as we followed the Urubamba, we could see nothing of Machu Picchu; from the ridge, though, you can see the whole valley clearly.
Machu
Where your coffee comes from
We met several campesinos who grow coffee along the Urubamba River. It is husked using this hand-turned machine. Coffee farmers earn 6 soles (about $2.30) a kilo. We couldn't bare to tell them that good quality roasted beans would sell for 10 or 12 times that much at home. Picchu was constructed around 1450, at the height of the Inca empire, and was abandoned less than 100 years later as the empire collapsed under Spanish conquest. Although it is only about 80km from Cusco the Spanish never found it, and so it was not destroyed as other Inca sites were. It seems to have been a royal retreat and a religious centre. About 1,200 people, mainly women, children and priests, were believed to have lived there. Now thousands of tourists a day wander around enjoying being wowed by the temples and terraces. And the stone masonry and engineering skills: the techniques they used in their drywall construction included fashioning hooks into stones to keep them stable, building on round stones which absorb earth tremors, and building walls, doorways and windows in a trapezoid, offset by 3 to 5 degrees, with the top edge shorter than the base. These allowed walls to withstand earthquakes and, even today, some stones fit together so tightly that it would be impossible to force a thin wire between them.
Most of the tourists focus on the main attractions, and it was with a sense of privilege (and relief!) that we found many quiet
spots where we could enjoy the human and natural beauty of the place. We could contemplate the stories of this place, and the landscape, and be reminded of the veracity of something V.S. Naipaul said in a book on a visit to India:
"No city or landscape is truly real unless it has been given the quality of myth by writer, painter or by its association with great events." Ausangate While we were searching for ways to get Machu Picchu, we happened across a trek in the Cordillera de Garabaya, a circumnavigation of Nevado Ausangate, a great lump on one-time volcano that reaches 6,372m above sea level. It is the highest mountain in the region and is sacred to the Andean peoples, who consider it to be the place where llamas and alpacas originated. They could well be right, judging by the numbers we saw.
Who better to organise such a jaunt than our friends at Accidental Peruvian Adventures. The office came up trumps... but we'll get to that in time.
The day we caught the bus to the rural village of T'inqui, at the head of the trek, 5-and-a-half hours' drive through writhing mountainside
road from Cusco, we were charmed. It happened to be the fiesta of Q'oylla Ritti, part Quechua ritual, part Catholic, to celebrate the spirit of Ausangate, and
cusqueñas (residents of Cusco) were heading there in droves. Usually there are 2 buses a day to T'inqui; on the auspicious day we left they were going every 20 minutes. We were put on a comfortable bus. That meant a bigger bus, a bus bigger than the mountain route was designed to take. Off we set, up and down and around a couple of mountain ranges on roads that in Australia would be considered single lane. Mostly dirt, hairpin bends, bits fallen out of the road and lying hundreds of metres down the mountain slope, slopes of 60 degrees, the odd crash barrier for decorative appeal only. Add to the mix the width of the bus and a long wheel base... well, let's just say that we were really, really glad to arrive in T'inqui, cautious though the driver was.
We did the trek in style by hiring, via Accidental, a guide-cum-cook, an
arriero (horse handler), and two ponies to carry our gear. What we actually got was two
arrieros, although it
hardly mattered as the route was obvious. It was quite strange for us after travelling for so long with such economy of weight on the bikes to turn up for the trek and meet Justo and Jose who had 6 large sacks of equipment, including a cooking marquee, a 2-ring gas burner of cast iron and a large bottle of gas. However, as the ponies didn't baulk at this, we assumed it to be a normal load. At lunchtimes and in the evenings Justo would set up the portable kitchen and turn out a two-course cooked meal of typical peasant dishes for us. This is luxury compared with our cycling menu and hiking lunches at home. We felt uncomfortable being waited on and fed first, and not doing our share of the cooking, and packing up and unpacking of gear, but took comfort from the knowledge that Justo and Jose were earning a good wage for their families.
The trek itself was a leisurely 4-and-a-half days, designed for people who aren't as fit and acclimatised as us. On each full day, we climbed through a pass, the highest being Abra Palomani, at 5,200m our highest altitude yet. It's funny
what altitude does to a body: Claire felt as though she was edging along like an invalid, breathing as though she had one lung — but we were travelling much faster, and much more comfortably, than several other foreigners on the same trek. (So much for Accidental's promise that we would be the only group on the circuit!) The locals jogged along, singing and joking with each other, never out of breath. We were well above any tree line, so our vistas were uninterrupted: alpine slopes with valleys of snaking streams feeding peaty bog plant; the massif of Ausangate, jagged rock and glaciers, and surrounding hills of smooth earthy colours, sedimentary rocks in orange, red-purple, and ochres. Huge scree slopes, and hills that are ancient morraines have been left by receding glaciers, and glacial valleys radiate from the mountain. Everywhere there are Quechua herders caring for alpacas, llamas and sheep. Although this wilderness is peopled, it is nevertheless remote. One day while we ate lunch we watched a little girl of about 7 whose job was as a herder to a large flock of sheep and alpacas. She lived with her family in a stone and mud-brick hut 2 days
Temples
The temple of the sun with it's solstice window above what may have been a temple of Pachamama, the Earth Mother, below walk to the nearest village, so we reckoned she had never been to school, and was perhaps unlikely to if her work is too important to the family income to allow for time off for school. She was an odd mixture of old and very young: seriously keeping a weather eye on the family's wealth as it wandered over the hillside, and suddenly forgetting about the animals as she broke into a skip or a run as part of the drama in a private game. Justo and Jose cooked too much lunch so that they had a full meal and a takeaway to present to her.
During the trek we were generally above 4,000m. It was warm and burning in the sun, but the moment we were in shade, the air lost its warmth. Once the sun sets, it gets cold very quickly, and we were forced to eat dinner early and retreat to the tent for warmth, not venturing out again until the sun hit it in the morning. On the third night, we ate dinner by the nursing home hour of 5:15, and were in our sleeping bags by 6. It was so cold that night that
Dave's contact lens solution, which is saline, froze inside our tent. In the morning we had "snow" inside the tent, too, which Claire released in flurries all over both of us when she knocked the tent inner. However, we were cosy inside our down bags and Claire's 3-season tent, a companion of 15 years, stood up to the rigours of altitude surprisingly well. No matter how cold it was, the
arrieros wore only sandals on their feet.
On the last night of the hike, Jose got wasted on some local whisky and was so ill the next morning we had to leave him behind. He came up to say goodbye, all teary and full of farewell hugs, and slurring so eloquently we couldn't understand a thing he said.
When we got back to T'inqui we found a suprise waiting for us from our friends at Accidental Peruvian Adventures. They had happily organised the hike for the dates we asked for — and had neglected to tell us that there was no bus back to Cusco on the last day. After looking at a couple of options, and not sure whether anything would materialise because of our Spanish skills,
we secured the local taxi for the drive back, for 130 soles (about $50).
The driver was a maniac with an ego. He demonstrated his best driving skills in the mountains: overtaking on blind corners, overtaking a vehicle and then stopping in front of it to negotiate a speed bump by driving across it using the whole road width, speeding up as we came into hairpin bends, and then fishtailing through them, overtaking in dust when visibility was about 2 metres. He had no idea how to use the gears to help the car around bends. Once he diverted up a side track to overtake a bus, and we had to get out and walk for part of the way because the chassis kept hitting dirt. Of course, the bus stayed ahead of us, which gave him the opportunity to overtake it blind a bit later. Our remonstrations for him to calm down had little effect.
When we finally arrived in the valley in which Cusco lies, we started breathing again and prised our fingers from the door handles. We relaxed a little too early. We could no longer fall off a mountain, but we were driving directly
A quiet spot
Machu Picchu into the setting sun, which had dipped below the sun visor. Our man had not yet exhausted his repertoire. He still overtook on blind corners. Now he added overtaking into the face of oncoming vehicles that were almost on us, usually completely under-powered, overtaking when he was blinded by the sun and couldn't see anything — we couldn't see anything and we were wearing sunglasses, which he wasn't! Like most Peruvians, he drove close to the middle of the road, and when another vehicle approached, moved over so there was just enough room for it to pass. He must have a keenly tuned sense of visual space, because there wasn't room for a flattened cat between vehicles. When Justo, who came to Cusco with us, couldn't wait to escape that car we knew we had been blessed with a unique driving experience.
On the way down the mountain we had passed two cyclists going up. How we wished we could swap places, even though they had a good 3 or 4 hours of uphill to ride still. We thought of all the hours we've been on the roads on the bikes, and how much safer we've felt on two
Young woman and her baby, Cusco
Women continue to follow an ancient tradition of carrying children and goods on their backs, bundled in a square cloth, generally in horizontal bands of bright colours, known as an aguayo wheels and doing our own steering.
Naturally, Cusco was a welcome sight. We went out to dinner that night to celebrate Dave's birthday, which had been during the trek, and it ended up being something much bigger: a mindful celebration of the joy of being alive.
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Pat & Pete
non-member comment
Two Treks
Well, we don't quite know where to begin. This fabulous trip is a world away from our wet Welsh valley and we are only just beginning to realise what we have missed. The photographs and narrative give us a vivid picture and sensation of being there. Visual reality!. Thank you. Now, keep pedalling. (and, a belated Happy Birthday)