2830m
This morning began early with the sunlight shining through our pod at around 5am. Fran and I lay there admiring the view of the valley 400m below us, constantly scanning the sky to see if we could see a condor. No luck. At 7am we radioed Brian, our guide to tell him we were leaving the pod and coming up for breakfast. Bearing in mind that the guides had to carry everything up with them, breakfast, like dinner was amazing. Fruit salad (not that I had any), bread, cheese, cold meat, honey, jam, scrambled eggs, and coffee!
We learnt during breakfast that the pods were now patented as many other places were now starting to think about copying the idea of SkyLodge, they were mostly locally owned (the site had once been a quarry and as such the developers owned the land), they are listed in Red Bull’ #1 in most extreme hotels and that they would be dismantled, one at a time and improved on, in the next two years. Brian informed us of his adventures of carrying one of the mattresses up to the lodge by carrying it on his back, and they climb UP the zip lines, hand over hand. He had almost made it over the longest one, 700m, when a just of wind hit the mattress and blew him back to the start. The guides have to not only carry drinking water for the guests, and food, but also twice each week have to take up new gas cylinders for the kitchen! Certainly keeps you fit. After breakfast we had some spare time while the guides cleaned up the kitchen and got everything in order for the morning/lunch group. Fran and I had a visit from our photographer, who took numerous photos of us inside the pod and then used his drone to get photos of us from outside.
9am saw us assemble at the top pod for our trip down via a series of zip-lines. The shortest of these was first, and it gave Brian and the other guides a chance to see how we could follow his instructions and cope with the lines. It was short, only a distance of 80-100m and we then had a look at our second line; we could barely make out the end point. As before, one of our guides went first and we got to see him disappear into the distance; this was the 700m line. As the wind was picking up we had to go in tandem, so being strapped with Fran behind me we took the step off and headed off in an ever increasing speed off to the other end. Of course, we couldn’t look scared because the drone was flying around videoing us! We flew to the end, breaking when instructed (which meant using your dominant hand to apply pressure to the line, adding friction and thus slowing you down) with our gloves and came to rest on the platform, the only pair to do so, the others had stopped early and had to be hauled in. The fourth line was supposed to be the fastest and Brian again went through the process, mentioning that this time I had to keep my head to the right. “Away from the mountain, correct?”. “No, that’s which side the front is on!”. Priorities! A couple more lines and we all made it to the bottom to be reunited with Charlie and our driver and guide for the day and Machu Picchu.
We set off for Moray, a pre-Incan salt ‘mine’ which was a series of pools fed by a salt water spring and then left to evaporate and for the locals to collect the salt. Think of a series of rice paddies blazing white in appearance and you’re pretty close. The pools were all fed either directly or indirectly by the spring, and the workers come in once or twice a week to ‘harvest’ the salt. Big wooden ‘spatulas’ are used to pile the salt crystals into a pile which is left to further dry and is then bagged and stored for a longer period of time to ensure the salt is properly dried, then sorted and sold. The farmers work in white plastic boots, bending over in the pools to collect the salt, bag it into 50kg bags and then hike up to the storage shed. A good supplementary income, but hard work!
Our next stop was Moras, a natural formed sinkhole which the Incans had added more terraces and used it to try out the best time to plant potatos or coca. This information was then passed on to the farmers; a form of ancient bio dome. Because it all had to do with fertility, they took the sinkhole to be, umm, like a part of the female anatomy and as such, had to create a terrace in the shape of a certain part of male anatomy, with two other smaller terraced sinkholes being the accompanying male parts. Charlie got the point across to the guide by stating, “Cojones!”. The guide agreed that the term would do.
Finally, we had the opportunity of lunch, arriving at 2:15 after a series of ‘exhilarating’ drives along steep gravel roads with no protection from going over the edge. The driver did drive carefully, which is why the drive took longer than expected. Lunch comprised of squash soup, a huge plate of roast chicken, potatoes, quinoa cakes and I think a tamale, but not sure. This was followed by apparently some form of tomato cooked in sugar and did not look appetising. This was left alone.
Our last stop for the day was Ollamtaytambo, an Incan city which managed to successfully fight off a Spanish attack. It was started as a pre-Incan settlement and then absorbed into the empire. It is truly a remarkable site, at the junction of three valleys, and is probably as impressive as Machu Picchu, although tomorrow will test that. It stretches out over two of the valleys and a large amount of the buildings are still intact. Of course, once the Spanish did conquer it, a lot of the imagery was destroyed. The guide pointed out several rock features; the giant wise man, ok, I can see that once you point it out, but then there was the Inca rock, and the llama, which without a picture of what the artist wanted you to see, there was no chance of visualising.
We checked into our quaint little hotel and went to their ‘parlour’ and were introduced to a local beer, which translates as ‘the barbarian’ and contains 6% alcohol.