At Last, Choquequirao

The morning after the horseback tour I actually set out on the trek. Naturally, the Australian couple who were allegedly sick, turned out to be an American couple who wasn´t even in Cuzco yet at the time we were originally supposed to go. This was well expected, and therefore not a big deal for me. The trek is considered hard by local standard, but this is mainly due to the fact that most trek around the area are quite easy. It featured a very long downhill descent followed by a very long uphill climb, in order to get to the site, and then backtracking the same path.

I was a bit unsure of how impressive the site will be, after having visited Machu Picchu, but I wasn´t disappointed in the least. Though the site is not completely excavated (yet?), it is very easy to fill in the blanks, and to see that it is HUGE.

This is just a small portion of it:

Some of the site is quite unusual when compared to other Inca ruins, like the big two storey houses, and the images combined in some terraces (other Inca architecture is very "clean"):

And up close:

Another surprise that the agency thought I might enjoy, was the fact that the American couple had planned to do the trek in 5 days, while I was planning on only 4. This meant that the campsite for the 3rd day was kind of far from the finish point, and consequently, I had to start the walking the next day at 4am, and made it to my destination after 6 straight hours of walking half of the downhill and all of the uphill. At least I arrived back in Cuzco quite early.

((I just realised this stupid computer won´t let me space the paragraphs, which explains why the previous post seems quite compressed as well. Maybe I´ll be able to fix it on a different occasion.))

Fun With Horses

Agencies in Peru are notorious for being less than accurate when giving the details of the activity, and I am used to that by now. That is why I found it a little hard to believe when the agency called me the evening before I was supposed to go on the trek, and told me that It´s being postponed by one day, because the Australian couple, whom the agency claimed I was to go on the trek with, are sick. "Well, how do you know they will get better in time for the day after tomorrow?" I naively asked. "Oh, don´t worry they CONFIRMED for the next day.", was the reply.

The next night I went to bed with the sound knowledge that I am to wake up in about 6 hours to go trekking. I was wrong. The night man from reception woke me up at around midnight, and told me I have a phone call from my supposed guide for tomorrow. I answered the phone, and through my veil of sleepiness, and a little bit of drunkenness (every night in Cuzco included beer), I understood that the guide is now sick, and that the trek is postponed by one more day. This time I was offered some compensation in the form of a Sacred Valley tour for the next morning. Having no better option, since it was very hard to find an agency for the trek, I accepted and went back to sleep.

In the morning I was picked up by Some locals in a cab. They explained to me that I have to wait at a certain place while they go get the other 2 girls who are doing the tour. When the two girls arrived, we had to go up a short trail and wait. I asked them what were we waiting for. For some reason the question surprised them, and they said "why, for the horses.". "Horses? What horses?", as it turned out, I was about to embark on one of the most touristic ventures I have ever taken upon myself. The girls spotted my surprise, and asked if I have never ridden a horse before. I reassured them that I had lots of riding experience on the family camel back in Israel. In actuality it turned out to be lots of fun, even though it`s one of those things I would never think of booking for myself.

2 Down, 5 to Go

I finally did it. With Machu Picchu down, I´m 2 out of 7 now.

To get to the site, I set off on a 5 day trek, called "the Salkantay". Salkantay is a sacred mountain, which is visited quite up close on the trek, and is definitely a highlight in my view, even after many other mountain views around Huaraz.

Another highlight of trek, and actually a bigger one at that, was the great group of people I got to meet (Gil, there was a Swedish couple, so we played "Plump" :)):

Their company, and the fact that I had more beer on the that trek than in my entire stay here (damn, I sucked at that drinking game), really made it a great experience.

Finally, Machu Picchu itself, was amazingly cool:

After coming back from the trek (the rest of the pics can be downloaded here), I visited Inca ruins around Cuzco, in a place called Pisac:

I also booked another trek for the next day to Choquequirao, another Inca city, like Machu Picchu, that its excavation and clearing is still a working progress. While there is no real idea as to the function of Machu Picchu, it is thought that Choquequirao was part of the last place of resistance for the Quechua people, led by Manco Inca, against the Spanish conquistadors. Unfortunately things did not go smoothly.

Sticky Powder

That would be the best way to describe sandboarding in snowboarding terms. I don’t have any pics of myself in action, mainly due to the fact that I didn’t want Doron’s camera stuffed full of sand, But in all honesty, it’s not that impressive - like slow snowboarding, without any real ability to turn (it causes to much speed lost).

To get to the dunes you ride a sand buggy - now that’s an adrenaline rush. The driver was a bit overzealous, and if it wasn’t for sand constantly flying into my eyes, I probably would have shut them voluntarily.

Another phenomena that was unique for Ica, in my trip that is, is the fact that I found the fabled Israeli hordes. Half of them were under the influence of the latest developments in DIY chemistry, the other half were just slightly annoying:

(An Israeli couple looking at some sand dunes in complete awe)
Guy: "I’ve never seen anything like this!"
Girl: "Welcome to South America MAMY, Where things you’ve never seen before exist!"

Just goes to show that the whole development of the sandy parts of Rishon was a fatal blow to the potential sandboarding tourism boom in Israel.

To top things off, I was even offered, for the first time ever abroad, drugs in Hebrew ("Yarok O Lavan?").

I left after one day. Destination: Cuzco.

Gastronomical Update

I haven’t posted in a while, and will probably won’t have time tonight to update regarding what I’ve been doing, but I would like to do a quick culinary review of my trip to Peru:


Name: Pisco Sour

Type: Alcoholic beverage

Short description: Peru’s National cocktail (or Chile’s if you ask a Chilean). made of Pisco (Peruvian grape brandy), lime juice, some egg white and crushed ice. In short, a chick drink.

Visual impression: Like lemonade with a big head of white foam.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Lemon juice with a bit (just a bit) of alcohol.

Grade out of 10: 5


Name: Cuy

Type: Meat dish

Short description: Roasted guinea pig. Served on festive occasions and every Peruvian’s favorite.

Sample pic (for illustration purposes alone):



Guinea Pig





Cuy




Visual impression: Like a chicken with a rat’s head.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): The skin is crispy and very good. There isn’t much meat, but whatever I managed to find was kind of like quail (meaning like chicken but more tender and more greasy).

Grade out of 10: 8.5


Name: Ceviche

Type: Sea food dish.

Short description: Raw fish and/or shellfish marinated (and thus "cooked") in some lemon juice. It is possible, and not very hard, to find this dish in Israel, but it is considered something of a national dish in Peru.

Visual impression: As expected.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Hey, It’s lightly cooked seafood - how can you go wrong (well except from adding loads of coriander)?

Grade out of 10: 9 (would have been a 10 if it wasn’t for the Peruvian affection for coriander).


Name: Chicha (aka "Pure Evil")

Type: Alcoholic beverage.

Short description: A Peruvian beer (home brew) made from corn fermented in human spit. In all fairness, it should be noted that the locals claim that in nowadays Chicha goes under a more standard fermentation process. It should also be noted that after trying it, I don´t believe them.

Visual impression: murky rust water, with a big head of foam.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Before taking a sip I took a whiff. Bad idea. It smells like stomach acid. The taste is like expired beer, or maybe an extremely sour alcoholic apple cider.

Grade out of 10: -1576


Name: Chicha Morada

Type: Sometimes beverage, sometimes dessert jello.

Short description: Strong purple colored drink or jello. Served at room temperature.

Visual impression: See "short description".

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Sweet and fruity. Reminiscent of quince marmalade.

Grade out of 10: 7


Name: Alpaca Steak

Type: Meat dish.

Short description: Well, it’s alpaca meat.

Visual impression: Looks just like any other beef steak.

Taste (and smell, if relevant): Tastes just like any other beef steak.

Grade out of 10: 10 (Like any beef steak)


Next time (in about 5 days) I`ll finally have time to tell about Cuzco (my current whereabouts).

The Way Inn Lodge, and the Way Out of Huaraz (Sniff, Sniff)

Upon finishing the trek, I went for a day of rock climbing at Chancos, a short drive from Huaraz, and even did a bit of outdoor lead climbing for the first time. It was fun.

The next day, Ashley (the welsh from the Santa Cruz trek) and I moved to a new hostel, about 13 km out of Huaraz, in the mountains, called "The Way Inn Lodge".


The place was great, just great vistas and outdoor activity out of the city. I found some partners for some outdoor bouldering (lots of fun, accompanied by bleeding toes and fingers):

((Is that an extremely cool chalk bag or what?))

And did some great day walks:

I spent about 5 days there, hiking, climbing, getting bitten by sandflies and sunburning my upper lip (I have a bit of a Baron Harkonnen look going now), but the time has come to (very sadly) move on. I´m taking the night bus to Lima tonight, and from there a 5 hour bus to Ica, the best place in Peru for sandboarding and earthquakes.

BTW no. 1:
A file containing all the pics (both for this post and the Santa Cruz one) can be downloaded here.

BTW no. 2:
I fixed the poll and you´re all invited to get me to drink peruvian spit beer.

Laid Back Trekking

With Steve on his way, I wasted no time getting back to the great outdoors, and headed off to do the 4 day Santa Cruz trek.

Again, I did the trek through an agency. Since this trek is much more popular than the Huayhuash, our group consisted of 8(!) people. The large number f people on the group made me a bit worried, but in hindsight these people where the main reason I enjoyed the trek so much, even though we suffered bad visibililty for some of the highlights. The group was made up of a German couple, a Dutch couple, a French guy and a Taiwnanese girl (also a couple), a Welsh guy, and myself. There were all very nice and funny (especially fabrice, the frenchman, who kept making fun of the brit).

As I said, visibility wasn´t very good, and we didn´t even get to see Alpamayo, a mountain that was declared by UNESCO as "the world´s most beautiful mountain". I did however see a cloud that kind of looked like Givat Hamorè.

Is Someone Trying to Tell Me Something?

After Steve had his fit, which was very scary, I managed to get him to our hostel, with the help of our guide, Heimer. Once there, I explained to Steve again what happened, for the tenth time, as he was extremely confused. I had encountered in the past a person suffering from exhaustion and dehydration getting a seizure, so i figured Steve just had to try and take it easy. We took long long showers, relaxed a bit and decided to try and find something to eat (about 7 hours had passed since we had lunch, which consisted mainly of crackers).

I chose a chinese place (lots of them in Peru), and had an Okay meal. Steve managed to eat some soup, and was working on finishing his glass of water, when it happened again. Steve went into a fit of convulsions, and I had to hold him down, while trying to control the situation (a type of control which was comprised of an assortment of curse words, mostly in arabic, and a lot of shouting at the few people who happened to be there to get someone who can help).

Before long, the locals stopped a taxi for us, and Steve regained enough composure to be taken to the hospital. The hospital staff spoke almost no English, so I utilized the many hours I spent as a child watching Panto on TV. Finally an English speaking doctor came, and Steve and I managed to explain what happened.

Steve Stayed at the hospital for 2 days, while I made some errands, and mostly visited with him. After 2 days, Steve was discharged, and traveled to Lima for further testing (more details are on his blog, see the link in the second post).

This would be a good time to mention that so far, every major travelling experience for has involved a travelling companion being admitted to a hospital. Is this supposed to be some kind of message for me? If so, it´s probably in Spanish, and that`s why I don`t understand it.

Soroche and Seizures - Welcome to Huaraz!

What I didn`t mention on my previous post was that before I slept like a baby, I had a short chat with Steve, an american guy who was planning on doing the famous 10 day Huayhuash trek.

We ended up going to the same hostel in Huaraz (the hostel I had planned on was closed when we arrived), and spent a few days of acclimatizing with some day trips:

Laguna Churup (meaning "silence" in Quechua)

Lake Villakocha(?)

The original plan had been to find more people, in order to lower costs, but the city was quite backpacker free at the time, possibly due to the earthquake that may have scared people off (even though it was no where near Huaraz). So, as it turned out, it was just Steve, a guide named Heimer, our donkey driver Eddilberto, and myself. The trek was beautiful - following are some choice pics (if you´re interested, you can find all the pics I took on the trek and day walks on a 40 Mb file downloadable from here. Just choose one of the servers, usually Rapidshare is the easiest, and follow the instructions).

A massive glacier:

Going up to one of the passes:

One of the many alpine lakes in the region:

Can you spot the Viscacha?

Here it is:

Once again, same as in Nepal, I had to deal with AMS, aka altitude sickness, aka Soroche, which
meant frequent headaches. There was a period of 2 days I was a bit overcome with AMS, practically crawling from campsite to campsite, and spending 14 hours a day sleeping. This had my guide a bit worried. He had encouraged us along the trek to drink mate de coca (coca leaf herbal tea), which the Peruvians believe is very good in treating Soroche, and was quite clueless as to what else can be done.

When we met another guide at one of the passes, I overheard the short consultation, and even with my (virtually non existent) Spanish managed to extract the following dialog (roughly translated):

Heimer: "The Israeli has bad Soroche."

Other guide: "Did you give him mate de coca"?

Heimer: "Yes, of course I did!"

Other guide: "Oh. Too bad."

How reassuring.

Anyway, as concerned as he was, Heimer didn´t think that avoiding taking lunch breaks at 5000 meters high mountain passes might help a bit as well. At least I survived.

The really unusual part of this experience, and the main reason I didn´t really have time for updates, came 5 minutes after we got off the bus back in Huaraz. Steve took about 10 steps and suddenly collapsed in a fit of convulsions. Thank god the good people of Peru helped out, and except for a very confused American I didn´t have to handle any other immediate threats. Or so I thought.

Yes, I´m still alive

This is the first real update of what´s been going on with me since I got to Lima, about 2-3 weeks ago. I didn´t like Lima at all, partly because of the ominous descriptions of crime in the big city Lonely Planet is busting with, and partly because it just didn´t seem tht interesting. The few things I managed to accomplish in my the short time I spent there were:

- Eating in a popular ceviche restaurant (the dish was nice, even though they bombarded it with coriander).

- Coming to grips with the fact that everybody in Peru (possibly in all of South America) has better spanish than me, even that dumbass Israeli who took a piss in the river which his guide was using to wash food and dishes (we´ll get to that in a later post). It turns out that: a. "Buenos dias" is not enough. b. Even though spanish and french seem similar to me, nobody understands me when I use a not so eloquent mixture of french babble and english.

- Lonely Planet tells of a place called "Plaza San Martin", which features a statue of Madre Patria, the symbolic mother of Peru. The thing that drew my attention to it, is the story behind the culpture: itturns out that the spanish had given specific orders to give the statue a crown of flames (llama in spanish), so the the local peruvian artist supposedly placed a small figure of a llama on its head. To my giant disappointment the top of the statue´s head isn`t visible from street level. Oh well.

- The hostel I stayed in had a DVD player, and so I finally saw "Pirates of the Caribean 3" (boring), "Borat" (fucking funny as hell) and fragments of "Hostel 2" (don´t even ask).
During those 2 days I also managed the rather simple task of buying an overnight bus ticket to Huaraz, the alleged trekking capital of Peru, which was a bit expensive but well worth it - I slept like a baby.