After leaving Ayacucho, A.J. and I headed out to Cusco to see the Fiesta de Sol and hike the Salkantay Trail. At our hostel, we met up with the redheaded Canadian wonder twins -Christie and Megan- (they're not actually related), who we had met in Lima. The Fiesta de Sol is an Incan festival honoring the sun. The festival took place both in Cusco itself and on Saqsaywaman mountain. The festival was huge. The town square was completely packed at night, with a parade of musicians and people dressed in typical indigenous clothing. The festival continued on Saqsaywaman the next afternoon by a set of Incan ruins. Families spent the day cooking in the field and relaxing, and there was a dancing display.
A.J.'s friend was delayed in getting to Peru from the states, so Megan, Christie and I ended up leaving on the trek while A.J. waited in Cusco. We joined up with a friend of Megan and Christie's who they knew from Brazil. Our group of four (myself, Christie, Megan and Yoav), left bright and early in the morning to start on the trek. The Salkantay Trail is a 5 day/4 night hiking trip from Mollepata (a couple hour drive from Cusco) to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu. Our guide, Edgar, quickly christened us "Puma's Team." After breakfast in Mollepata, we began hiking through the Andes near Salkantay Mountain. We stopped for lunch (grilled fish) and posed for our first team picture.
We hiked the rest of the day to Soraypampa pass at the foot of the mountain. Soraypampa is at about 3800m above sea level, so there's no oxygen and it's freezing. Fortunately, our tour guides (Edgar, "the cooker" and "horse guy"), had all of our belongings, tents and sleeping bags waiting for us in the pass. Before dinner we got a chance to warm up a bit in our pavilion at tea time (which turned out to be a daily pre-dinner tradition involving tea, popcorn, crackers and a lot of margarine).
We spent the night doing our best to avoid losing fingers or toes to frostbite, and woke early the next morning to climb through the pass next to Salkantay mountain. We were served hot coca tea to help thaw us out and compensate for the lack of air. While I'm sure that the tea helped, climbing the side of a mountain at that altitude is one of the harder physical activities I have ever done. Basically we had to walk one switchback, stop to catch our breath, walk another, stop... But I got pictures like this one of Salkantay Mountain:
We spent the rest of the day and the next couple of days descending through valleys in the Andes, through the jungle and along railroad tracks heading towards Aguas Calientes. It was all very pretty, but aside from one head over heels fall off the side of the trail because I was looking at a sheep, there weren't too many great stories (in all fairness, I was not the only one to fall because I was watching animals). You'll just have to wait for the photo album.
Aguas Calientes has a special place in my heart as one of the least interesting, most touristy cities I have ever been to. Not much to say about it except that it's really close to Machu Picchu. Admission to Machu Picchu actually includes an option to climb a second nearby mountain, Wayna Picchu. However, only 400 people are admitted to Wayna Picchu each day, so we woke up at 3:30am to ensure that we'd get an early enough bus to make it up to the entrance in the first 400. The trail between Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu can be walked, but it was pouring rain and there are over 1000 stairs up the side of the mountain, so we took the bus. The downside of getting up there so early is that the ruins look like this:
We had a tour of the ruins from Juan Carlos (not the king of spain), who gave us many interesting "facts" about the ruins, such as the 7 hour civil war of the Incans before the arrival of the Spanish. We wandered around the ruins on our own for a bit, then climbed Wayna Picchu. It took about an hour and the entire path was a staircase up the side of the mountain. I took a rest on a wall (you can see the ruins of Machu Picchu on the mountain behind me).
We took a train back to Cusco from Aguas Calientes, rested and did some much need laundry before heading off to Lago Titicaca and Bolivia.
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