Dec 18th
Although I wouldn’t consider it “sleeping in” waking up at 7:15am felt great after getting up everyday in the five o-clock hour in the Amazon. I finished packing and got ready for my hike. I was still a little bit nervous to not know anyone and I was especially nervous that my bag was going to be overweight even though I tried my hardest to only pack the essentials. I headed downstairs at 7:45am and weighted my bag in the lobby with a scale that was provided for us. I quickly realized that I was right and my bag was too heavy so I tried to shift things around, the worst part was that I still had not put my sleeping bag in my duffel bag, which will add at least another kilo. I did the best that I could and crossed my fingers then put my regular backpack in storage.
Breakfast was included with our room, but I didn’t have much time to eat since I had spent so long trying to reconfigure my bag situation. I grab some yogurt and granola and sat with the Canadians. They seem really nice, they all definitely know each other so they already have a bond, but they were all very welcoming to me.
Soon after I had a few quick bites it was time to leave. We all carried our duffels to the van and formed an assembly line passing our bags to Mario who would then throw the bags to the top of the van where the driver would secure them down. As Mario received my bag he made a grunting noise and said “that ones definitely overweight.” I hoped it wouldn’t be more of an issue and jumped in the van and we were off.
First stop was at a spot known as “sexy momma” were we saw Peruvian culture and saw the work of the Incas even though huge amount of the stone work was destroyed by the Spaniards. There was also have a statue of Christ, I think they call it ‘Blanco Christo,” that looks very much like Christ the redeemer.
Next stop was at a small Peruvian village where the women make many wearable things. We saw the process of getting the wool, dying it, spinning it into yarn, and making clothing out of it. The women in this particular village are the wives to the porters who will be carrying our bags. We saw many of the towns’ children. I feel bad that their lives are hanging around while their moms sew and sell things to tourists and that all they really have to look forward to is growing up to do the same thing. Our guide, Mario, explained to us how important the tourism dollars are to these people and pointed out the improvements that have been made to many of the local house, from cheap material to bricks with real roofs. We all laughed because a couple of the houses even had satellite TV- so we all concluded that we must be getting ripped off. I still had no cash and had done my shopping the day before so I looked around and took some pictures.
From there we headed to lunch. We went to a Peruvian buffet with all organic food. I tired many typical dished, but wasn’t a huge fan. We have learned a lot about the food here, for example Peru has 3,000 different kinds of potatoes. The Incas also were very smart with growing crops and did all sorts of things to make different kinds of crops grow at different levels of land. I’m quickly starting to realize how smart and civilized these people were even thought they lived thousands of years ago. I was lucky enough to be able to charged the whole bill on my credit card and took the cash solving my ATM dilemma. I was so relieved!
Our next stop was to get our energy. We stopped at a local bar and all tried two types of corn beer, one plain and one with strawberry. I thought the plain one was horrible, but the strawberry one was quite tasty. Mario showed us the typical way to drink here in Peru, spill a little on the ground to start off to give thanks to mother earth, blow on the beer to gift thanks to the spirits, and lastly cheers to everyone. We also played a typical drinking game that was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but loved the game. Basically you get gold coins (a little bigger than quarters) and throw it at this draw-looking table that had different holes. In the center there is a frog with an open mouth. Each hole has a different point value and the frogs’ mouth is the highest point. You stand back about 7 feet and throw the 12 gold coins towards the table, when your finished you open the draw and count up the points depending on which hole you got the coins into. The scores are recorded and tallied at the end. I was really bad at the game, but had a lot of fun playing. I need to find one of those games for home!
Once we had lots of energy we were ready for our first real ‘hike.” Which was 200 steps up to the Sun God Shine. This was the first time we got to see the work of the Incas up close. I was impressed to see two “men” carved into the side of a mountain. This blows New Hampshire’s “Old Man in the Mountain” out of the water. The mans faces are located so that the sun shines perfectly on them in the morning and also so that the southern cross constellation is ideally located next to it. The hike wasn’t too bad, lots of steps which I hate, but Mario seemed to think that we all did well and that we’d make it up Machu Picchu. The next few days will be the true test.
After we returned to the bus for a two-minute bus ride to our hotel. We settled into our rooms. I am luck and again got a double room all to myself so I spread out and tried to decide what I should do to make my backpack lighter. I also took a quick shower. We had the rest of the afternoon to do what we wanted and the group really wanted to bond so we decided to decided to grab a few bottles of alcohol and sit in the open courtyard and get to know each other. I was really glad to get to know everyone better. The group seems great; I really enjoyed hearing about peoples’ lives and travel stories. We grabbed some dinner at a local restaurant that was nothing special and shared each other company. I think this is going to be a really fun trip, even if the hiking does kill me.
I went to bed at 11am, knowing I would need to rest up and have my energy for the long day of hiking ahead of us!
Bye for now.
Love,
Katie
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