Cusco and the Lares Trek
Cusco, the ancient Inca capital, is a beautiful city. It has Colonial style buildings built on Inca stone foundations, narrow cobbled streets, an impressive cathedral, and colourful markets. Unfortunately, as the gateway to the Inca Trail, it is also VERY touristy. It has hundreds of outdoor clothing shops, and people thrusting leaflets at you from all directions trying to get you to go into their designer shops, restaurants or nightclubs. There are also some very persistent sellers, who think that by shouting 'buy it Mrs!' you'll be persuaded to buy something you're clearly already wearing, such as sunglasses, or a Peruvian hat.
We arrived in the evening, at the hotel which was to be our base, off and on, for the next 9 days. It is probably the biggest hotel we have stayed in so far, with the 3 floors of rooms all overlooking a series of interconnecting inner courtyards, where comfy sofas and coffee tables provide a place for people to gather before and after their various treks.
Four of our group were doing the Inca Trail, four were just having free time in Cusco, and four of us were doing the Lares Trek. Once we had had our briefing, with our lovely diminutive guide, Alex, we were so pleased that we ended up doing the Lares Trek. For the whole 3 days there would only be the five of us on the trail, (plus 2 cooks and a porter who would go ahead of us with the pack ponies), whereas on the Inca trail you are always walking with up to 200 other tourists.
A group of us went to 'Paddy's' (which claims to be 'the world's highest 100% Irish owned pub) and ate a hearty 'last supper', before going back to make a final check of our bags and equipment for the trek.
We got picked up at 5.45am and drove out into the countryside for about an hour, before stopping at Pisac, where we visited a traditional bakery. The aroma was wonderful! The round, flat, saucer-sized breads were cooked in a huge clay oven, and scooped out with a 3 metre long paddle. They cost about 5p each, so we all bought a carrier bag full to take to the children in the highlands, who mainly just eat potatoes and maize.
Our next stop was the small town of Calca, where we went to a bustling local market, which sold every kind of produce imaginable, including corns on the cob in yellow, white and purple, and most of Peru's 4,000 different varieties of potato! We bought marbles for the boys, Jacks for the girls, colouring pencils, and fruit. We also bought coca leaves for the adults, as there is nowhere to buy them up in the highlands. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lady sitting on the ground with what seemed to be an unusual dog lying beside her on a stripy blanket. When I turned round and saw it properly, it was just a severed sheep's head! Nice!
We then drove up to the site of an Inca ruin, which was a 'walking test', as it is at just over 4,000m. We stood inside one of the round store rooms, with the stones precisely placed to form a kind of stone igloo, where the Incas stored dehydrated 'freeze dried' potatoes, which kept for up to 10 years!
Having passed the test, we drove on to the small settlement of Lares, to stock up on any last minute supplies, and then up the hill to the starting point of the trek. The cooks and porters were waiting there for us with the pack ponies, so as it was now 11am, we left them to load up, and set off.
The first part of the walk was about 3 and a half hours, heading up towards a remote black peak, beyond which would be our lunch stop, and before long we were overtaken by the ponies and cooks, all trotting along at a brisk pace, and who soon looked like little specks of colour in the distance. The scenery was beautiful, and I think I drove Tony and the guide mad, because I kept saying it was just like the west of Ireland, with the same stone walls, the same yellow lichens on the rocks, fields of potatoes everywhere, and the same small alpine flowers. The main difference was that some of the potato fields were so steep they were nearly vertical, everywhere you looked there were llamas and alpacas!
We met quite a few local children along the way, who were all really pleased to get the bread and other small gifts, and were extremely polite with their 'please and thank yous' . Apart from one little girl, who said she didn't want colouring pencils, and hadn't we got a pencil sharpener?! We were surprised at how small they were for their ages, but when we met some adults later, they were also really tiny.
Eventually we passed the black peak, and saw the welcome sight of our lunch tent (and toilet tent!) in the next little valley. The lunch was delicious, and plenty of it, so feeling refreshed and energised, we set off again to walk another 3 hours or so to our night camp.
We met even more highland children in the afternoon, some already sitting by the roadside waiting for us, and others came scampering up or down the hillside from their tiny adobe houses. Many of the little girls had their baby siblings on their backs, and one little girl, who was 7, had her 2 year old brother on her back and he had a great round chubby face, and was nearly as big as her!
We met two little girls who had a couple of bottles of water and coke to sell. When we asked how much, the bigger girl said '2 soles', but her little sister nudged her, and said '3 soles', and a little boy perched up on a rock on the other side of the road said '15 soles'! Then we realised he was the same boy we'd already met earlier in the afternoon, further down the hill, who'd obviously taken a short cut to get in front of us to get more bread! I think he'll go far in life!
Later on, we could hear the sound of a little girl singing, away in the distance. Alex said she was probably singing to her alpacas. When we got nearer, she came to say hello, and told us her name was Dianna, and she was 8 years old. She was very shy, but after a considerable amount of coaxing, she agreed to sing the song again for us. It was a traditional Quechua song, warning people not to try and steal her alpacas, and thanking Pachamama for the green grass and fresh water. It was really quite a poignant moment for all of us.
We were all quite tired by the time we reached our camp, at 3,800m, and it was getting dark, but we could see lots of people still working away high above us in their near vertical potato fields. We were welcomed with cups of tea and freshly made popcorn, then we sorted out our tents for the night and before long supper was ready - another fabulous meal, rustled up on a two ring gas burner by the light of head torches. We sat around chatting in the meal tent for a while, but it just got too cold, and our legs started to seize up, sitting on the tiny camping stools, so we went off to our little yellow tents to try and get some sleep.
Day two did not get off to a good start! Our 5.30 alarm call was very welcome, just to get away from the misery of the tent! I think I'd only slept for about an hour and a half. It was -5c overnight, and I just couldn't stop shivering all night. I also couldn't get comfortable, and obviously if you camp in the Andes, everything is on a slope, so I kept sliding down the tent all night and ending up with my feet against the front of the tent. I also had about 3 trips to the toilet, (one of the hazards of camping next to a fast flowing stream!) and even that small exertion left me puffing and blowing. The sunrise was fabulous, but I'd woken up with a thumping headache, so didn't appreciate Tony's rendition of 'The sun has got his hat on...'!
The 10 hour walk started with a long steep climb up to the first high pass, at 4,600m, which I found really tough going! We were overtaken by a small man in an orange poncho, (the only person we saw all morning, apart from the porters), who said he was going to get fire wood. We hadn't seen a single tree since we started the trek, so we knew he was going to have a long walk! At the top, the view was amazing, the early morning mist had gone, the clouds had lifted, and we were surrounded by snowy peaks. As we came through the pass, there was the unexpected sight of a huge blue lake down in the valley, and beyond that, a small clump of trees, where the solitary orange figure was just visible. He would have to make that journey about 3 times a week. We descended onto a ridge, then began the climb to the next high pass, at 4,480m, which seemed just as bad as the first one! I thought I was going to collapse in a heap at the top, but I was revived by the stunning sight of Mt. Veronica, in the distance, at over 6,000m and covered in snow, (as well as the impression that the track now seemed to be going downhill - hurray!)
Some time later, we rounded a corner, and were all stopped dead in our tracks by the incredible view facing us accross a small ravine - thousands of layers of narrow pre-inca terraces, clinging to the mountainside, which was dappled in sunshine and soft shadows - a real out loud 'WOW' moment!
We had to skirt round some very narrow tracks right on the edge of the ravine, but I kept telling myself that the cooks and ponies had managed to get round them, so I should be ok too! By the time we got to the lunch camp, I just wanted to go to sleep. Luckily they had picked a nice sunny spot, with another stream, and lots of llamas and alpacas, so I had a 20 minute cat nap sprawled out on a tarpaulin after lunch - bliss!
The afternoon was spent proving that 'what goes up must come down', as we descended quite rapidly to 3,400m, passing lots of groups of children on the way. At one point there were so many that we had to break the bread into quarters, to make it go round, a bit like the feeding of the 5,000!
The second camp was in a tiny field next to a farmyard, beside an adobe thatched church, and another Inca ruin! what a setting! The lower altitude made all the difference, and I slept much better, although Tony didn't, as he said it was too hot!
We had another early start, heading uphill again to the impressive Inca ruin of Puma marca. What made it even more special was that we were the only ones there - apart from two horses who had done a splendid job of keeping the grass neatly manicured, yet without trampling the fabulous bushes and plants.
At lunchtime, we reached the small town of Ollantaytambo, where there was a big fiesta going on to celebrate Pentecost Sunday, but because it was in the Andes, there were also a lot of people dressed as imps, demons, and other monsters, as well as hundreds in the very colourful costumes of their various highland tribes. We sat and watched the show for a while, then made our way to the station, and got the train to Aguas Calientes where we would spend the night before going to Machu Picchu....... Goodnight