the second 4-day trek

so the first trek i did was more of a cultural experience where we stopped in villages and was introduced to how life is for the people living in the lares valley. my second trek was the inca trail - the path that the incas used to get to machu picchu. not very interactive with locals as no one lives on the trail anymore but lots of history as there were archealogical ruins all along the way.

lessons learned from the inca trail:

• napping on bus rides is GREAT if you didn´t get a lot of sleep the night before
• apparently i´m ok to trek with only two and a half hours of sleep under my belt
• trekking for four days before the inca trail is a great way to get your body warmed up and used to hours of hiking each day
• you can use celery to make tea. actually, you can use just about any fruit or vegetable to make tea.
• if you want to have a glass of wine after a day of hiking, bring a litre of it in a box (like tetra packs). one of the girls in my group had heard people say that they wished they had a beer or a glass of wine at the end of the day so she brought along a litre of white wine. yeah, it´s extra weight, but the porters carried it.
• i forgot to mention this in the post about the last trek but every night before dinner the cook and porters prepared ¨happy hour¨ for us - tea, coffee, hot chocolate, popcorn and cookies! good way to end a day of hiking and a great way of spoiling supper.
• macho tea - at least that´s what i think it is called. bascially a bunch of fruit boiled with tea and then you add either rum or white wine or whatever your choice of liquor is and add a stink load of sugar. super tasty. our guide introduced us to it after we requested a real happy hour after our longest day crossing two mountain passes (one at 4200 m). i thought we were just going to break out the wine sally brought but apparently the cook was carrying a bottle of rum for the macho tea, as well.
• drinking at higher alititudes makes everyone a cheaper drunk
• multi-day treks makes me feel like an old lady sometimes - i was in my sleeping bag by 2030/2100H the first night and 2000H the second night. granted we had 0400H or 0500H mornings but still...
• walking up seemingly endless stone steps sucks but going down steep, uneven steps sucks even more. i´m glad i brought anti-inflammatories with me or my knees would have really hurt.
• i earned myself a bit of a reputation as the crazy girl from canada as it´s not common for people to do two hikes back to back. i think i´m just going to do an eight to ten day trek next time.
• you´d think that eight days of trekking would put me off hiking for a while but i was pretty close to booking the five-day salkantay trek. if it weren´t for time and money, i´d be out in the middle of nowhere again right now.
• our guide has been taking people on different treks around cusco once a week for the past seven years. he says that we were the first group where no one opted to pay for showers on the third night. he was too polite to say it but i´m pretty sure he thought we were crazy.
• i think it´d be fun to be a tour guide - mostly because i like to talk. but even a few of the guides asked me when i was moving to cusco to guide treks.
• machu picchu - still pretty cool the second time around.
• apparently there´s a TON of trekking and hiking to be done around cusco. depending on how my future world travels go, i just may come back and spend a couple months trekking around the sacred valley here...
  

so i´ve been off trails and in cusco for a couple days now. it was kind of odd not having a destination to get to on saturday. wasn´t really sure what to do with myself and really wanted to just walk lots. my body was feeling fine. treated myself to a one hour massage ($5CDN!) but i think that´s made my body start to hurt - my shoulders and traps are killing me. i think i might splurge and go get another massage.

anyways, the plan was to go to arequipa again when i got back but there have been quite a few road blocks and demonstrations between cusco and arequipa lately (i think it´s either over a gas pipeline that the government wants to put in or a dam they want to build) and i didn´t want to get stuck on the road somewhere. that and i added up the hours it would take for me to bus from cusco to arequipa to lima up into ecuador - a 38 hour bus trip just didn´t sound all that appealing. so i´m going to go buy me flights from here to lima to tumbes (town right by the peru/ecuador border) and then just bus eight hours into ecuador. i asked about flying straight into ecuador but that would make it an international flight and would cost me an extra $500USD. i can deal with an eight hour bus ride.

this past saturday and sunday were holidays here in peru - the first being a celebration of the living and the second being a celebration of the dead. i wandered down to the cemetary and it looked like half of cusco was down there cleaning tombstones and leaving food/drink for the deceased. and cusco was SO quiet on sunday as most shops were closed.

so it´s november third. twenty-five days to go before i go back to canada. my trip is more than half over. on one hand it feels like it´s flown by but on the other hand, i´ve done SO MUCH that it feels like more than a month has gone by. i´ve met SO many people and it´s been weird running into people i now know when i´m just wandering around cusco. gives me the sense that i have a life here...but i don´t. it feels like i´ve known the people i´ve met on my trips to the jungle and while trekking forever and it´s weird to think that i will probaly never see some of them ever again. i guess that´s the bittersweet reality of traveling - you meet great people but it´s only for a short period of time. a part of me wants to just stay here for a while and continue building on those friendships and become even more familiar with the city but the reality is that i need to go - and i don´t have the guts yet to just say screw it and stay. and even if i did stay, most of the people i´ve met are traveling and aren´t staying here. and there are really great, interesting people back in calgary that i know. sometimes i just wish that i could bring together ALL the cool, interesting people i´ve met to live in one place. THAT would be fun.

but i´m not leaving yet so looking forward to the last bit! four and half weeks in and even with eight days of trekking - no injuries!!!! i have random bruises from who knows what and only a small handful of bug bites and a few scrapes and cuts but nothing´s that had to stop me. i am feeling a bit of a cold coming on but i´m hoping it won´t actually turn into a full blown cold. oh, and i lost my camera. or someone stole it. took it out with me one night (which i know was a dumb idea) and didn´t have it on me anymore when i got back. luckily, i swapped memory cards before i left so i still have all but maybe 30 pictures from the beginning of my trip that are in the camera´s memory. i heard that there´s a black market of stolen goods on saturdays and that i could possibly find my camera there but i won´t be here anymore on saturday. so i guess i´m camera shopping today!