It's my birthday and I can randomly introduce a new blog feature if I want to...

Today is my birthday. I'll write about the whatwherehow of that later, but today's post is my gift to myself:

The gift of self-indulgence.

Today I want to introduce a new feature of the blog which I hope will enhance your reading experience while also helping to indulge my fantasy of pretending I'm a travel writer. The new feature is, until I can think of a punchier title, called Snapshots, and its purpose is two-fold.

First, I have realized that many of our travel experiences don't fit into my blog posts, either in terms of length or content. Often, we see, hear or experience something so random, unique and, more often than not, bizarre, that it doesn't really go with everything else I describe in a normal post. For a while, I was struggling to figure out how I could share these experiences without overloading you with information every time I write. I'm hoping my Snapshots will help rectify that problem by providing you with a- you guessed it- snapshot of a specific situation we have witnessed, either by a written account or through a photo.

The second goal of the new feature is to enable me to post more often. I simply do not have the time to write a long, informative, cohesive blog post more than once a week or so, and that is clearly unacceptable for my avid readers (Hi Dad!), who deserve better. The Snapshots will help me to post every few days, albeit with shorter posts.

So here it goes, the first of what I hope will be many Snapshots of our experiences.

Snapshot: A bus somewhere in Peru

You know, I like street food as much as the next person- that is, the next person masochistic enough to eat something with such a high probability of making them sick. But even I have my limits.

We were sitting on our ten hour bus from Copacabana, Bolivia, to Cusco, Peru, when the bus slowed down, almost to a stop, on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. As we were on the top level, we couldn’t see what was going on, but in our experience buses often stop for the most random reasons in the most god-forsakenly lost places that we didn’t think anything of this particular halt in our journey. 

The bus picked up pace again and seconds later, a woman dressed in traditional clothing appeared coming up the steps to our level. With her followed an over-powering stench of cooked meat.

The woman stopped at the top of the stairs, balanced her brightly colored bag on the ledge over the stairway, and pulled out a gigantic leg of what we guessed was roasted pork. We watched in fascination as she unsheathed a large butcher’s knife with the other hand and proceeded to hack at the pork leg with powerful, full-armed strikes of the dull knife. 

Once she had roughly cut off what she considered to be a portion of the meat, she put down the knife, grabbed the shredded meat with her bare hands and put it in a clear plastic bag, glistening pork fat running down her wrist and forearm. Then she started yelling.

“Cerdo! Cerdo caliente!!! Cerdocerdocerdo calienteeeee!”

At first, the only response was a muted bewilderment from the passengers around us, which wasn’t surprising considering the fact that we were on a bus. Ignoring the blatant lack of interest in her product, the women continued to chop away at the flesh, pausing only to try to grab our attention with her refreshingly direct sales pitch.

“Cerdocerdo caliente cerdo!!”

Slowly, one by one, several people- all of them locals- made their way up the aisle to where she was standing. Each bought a bag of the hot, fatty meat before ambling back to their seats, picking at their snack with bare hands and licking the grease off their fingers. After each sale, the woman would hack off another portion, and then another and another, until the thick leg had been whittled down to the bone. 

The strong smell of the meat permeated the entire cabin and my stomach growled in response. But I still had six hours to go in a bus without a bathroom, so for once I erred on the side of caution and decided against stuffing myself with meat of mysterious origins while in a moving vehicle. Feeling quite proud of myself for taking such an important step in self-control and responsible decision-making, I sat back in my seat and quietly judged anyone around me holding a clear plastic bag.

Once she had sold what she had, the woman wrapped up the remaining bone, wiped her knife off on some toilet paper and headed back down the stairs. Soon after, the bus slowed down to another stop, presumably to let the woman off in a place just as desolate as the one from which she had come.

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The Desert, The Beach and Stomach Flu (but not necessarily in that order)

I feel like after the last post about Machu Picchu, every post from now on is going to be a let down. I mean, one look at the title of this post shows you that it doesn’t hold a candle to a five-day trek. I’ll try to spice it up as much as I can, but sorry in advance for the disappointment…

From Cusco, we headed south in an overnight bus that was the nicest we’ve been on so far. It was similar to business class in an airplane, minus the unlimited booze. The seats were comfortable, the movies weren’t maddingly terrible and we were even served a little dinner meal, although I didn’t eat anything because my stomach was once again being crazy. To top it all off, there was a working toilet, which said “Solo Urinario,” but it’s not as if they checked…

The bus took us to Arequipa, Peru, which is a relatively large city in the middle of the Peruvian desert. It’s a modern oasis, with white-washed buildings and a pretty main plaza. Unfortunately, we barely got to enjoy it as the stomach craziness I mentioned earlier turned to a full on stomach flu (or food poisoning, but I’d hate to point fingers) that kept both V and I bed/ bathroom-ridden for three days. 

The main plaza in Arequipa (and thankfully, not a picture of our stomach flu...)

When we were finally able to go explore, we found that Arequipa was a nice-enough city, but it didn’t have anything that really captivated us. The main tourist attraction is the surrounding Colca Canyon for trekking, but after Machu Picchu, we were a little trekked-out, so we decided instead to head to the beach.

A two hour bus ride through the desert from Arequipa took us to the pleasant little beach resort town of Mollendo. We were first impressed by Mollendo on the bus ride there. As soon as you leave Arequipa, there is just nothing until the coast. The entire ride was through a vast nothingness that was the desert. On both sides of the bus, for as far as we could see, was a far-reaching, rolling sea of sand, rock and empty, pale mountains. It was impressive how little life there was. We saw a few brave (or incredibly naïve) cacti trying to battle through the dryness, but that was it until Mollendo. 

Even when we reached the coast, there was nothing other than the town. The desert stretches straight to the Pacific Ocean; there was no greenery to be seen along the coast. Mollendo itself was packed with people from Arequipa on their summer holidays; in fact, we did not see any other backpackers the entire time we were there! While the beach was wide and stretched to the horizon, I’ve never in my life seen so many people packed on one beach. It was a sea of brightly colored umbrellas and brown bodies. 

Now, normally I hate crowded beaches, but this one didn’t bother me at all because it was so lively! The beach was packed with families, some lounging in filled kiddie pools eating ice cream; some playing volleyball or soccer, a heated competition between two or three generations; some holding hands as they waded in the cold Pacific water. Between the groups of people were individuals walking through the crowds, selling everything from churros to cigarettes to fresh-squeezed orange juice to whole fried fish dinners. Up-beat music pulsed from hundreds of different radios, competing to be heard with the laughter and screams from the hordes. It was wonderful.

In Mollendo, we spent our days alternating between relaxing under an umbrella on the beach, reading and dozing, and walking along the “boardwalk,” eating the street food and enjoying cold beers while people watching. Among the things we ate, the most noteworthy was the screamingly fresh ceviche: raw fish marinated in lime juice and mixed with fish stock, red onion, cilantro, hot peppers and onions, served cold with the big, starchy Peruvian corn known as choclo. It was amazing. We ate it from a little street cart while sitting on plastic stools on the sidewalk- honestly, the best way to enjoy a really good meal- and washed it down with chicha morado, a sweet and spicy drink made from corn.

After relaxing in Mollendo for a few days, we headed back to Arequipa, where we splurged a little (ok, a lot…) and went out for a delicious meal at a nice restaurant. The restaurant had a white table cloth, a real wine list and artisanal bread, and we felt woefully underdressed in our backpacker clothes. The meal was incredible though. To start, we shared an appetizer of glazed guinea pig (yes, guinea pig.) in purple corn crepes. Before we flex our foodie muscles too much, I must admit it was a tiny portion of the beast, and so spiced and flavorful that we aren’t really sure what guinea pig actually tastes like by itself. After that, I had an upscale version of a typical Arequipeno (I don’t know how to make that little squiggly over my N…) dish of meat and cheese-stuffed chili pepper, while Vincent had a delicious, spicy Adobo beef stew. We washed it all down with an Argentinian red wine from Patagonia. All in all, a really good meal and worth the pricy bill (although the same meal in Europe would have cost twice as much…)

I'm taking looking like a dude to terrifying new levels...

The next day, we resigned ourselves to a full day of travelling to go back to La Paz, Bolivia, before we head south through Bolivia to Argentina. Sixteen hours and three buses later and here we are in La Paz. Tonight, we’ll take an over-night bus to Sucre, Bolivia. Fingers crossed for a working bathroom on board!

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Salkantay Trek and Machu Picchu

I've been putting off this post for two days because I simply don't know how I'm going to fit everything about our trek into one post. So please bear with me, this might be all over the place.

To get to Machu Picchu, we decided to do the five day Salkantay Trek, which is longer and more physically demanding than the Inca Trail, but cheaper and less difficult to get access to (the Inca Trail requires reservations in advance). The Salkantay Trek includes four days of hiking to Machu Picchu and one day of hiking to and around the site.

Overall, it was a challenging, beautiful, memorable experience. Challenging because it was the most consecutive physical activity we have ever done and the conditions weren't always comfortable; beautiful because the trek took us to mountain passes at 4,600 meters (15,200 ft) down to jungle paths and subtropical surroundings; memorable because it was our first overnight trek and it culminated with a visit to one of the wonders of the world.

Day 1
We left from Cusco by van at 4:00am to drive to the little mountain village of Mollepata to start the trek. We attempted to sleep in the van, but the driver was keeping himself awake with loud music, so our slumber was interrupted by strains of repetitive South American dance music and, randomly, Toni Braxton. The first day, we only hiked five and a half hours up to our camp site at the base of the Salkantay Mountain. The site was breathtakingly beautiful, with views of the surrounding snow-capped mountains and the green valley below, hidden by a mysterious fog. 

It rained that night and the temperature hovered around 2°C (35°F). We were freeeeezing. Oh, and just to make things more comfortable, I had stomach issues that night that kept me awake running outside to the outhouse in the rain. 

Day 2
The next morning, we were woken up by the cook's assistant at 4:30am with steaming mugs of hot coca leaf tea. After breakfast, we set off for what would prove to be by far the most difficult day of the trek. The first four hours that morning were straight up to the Salkantay Pass, which was at 4,600 meters (15,200 ft) and covered in a thick, rainy cloud that obstructed any hope of a view of its eponymous mountain. At that altitude, any physical effort is difficult, but at 6:00 in the morning after a night of no sleep due to stomach issues and near freezing temperatures, the climb was brutal.

The climb

Truckin' up that d-amn mountain, absolutely miserable.

We made it! Salkantay Pass- 4,600 meters

After the pass, it was almost all downhill for the rest of the day. This sounds like a relief, but we still had six more hours of walking in the rain after the climb, so even the downhill started to hurt after a while. Finally, after ten hours of walking, we reached our campsite, again nestled in a stunning valley, but I was so exhausted by that point that I went straight to my tent at 5:30 pm and slept through the night.

Days 3 and 4
After Day 2, anything would seem easy, so Days 3 and 4 were pretty uneventful. Day 3, we walked around six hours through lush, sub-tropical jungle with views of rushing rivers and waterfalls. 

That afternoon, we visited some natural hot springs and soaked our aching bodies as we enjoyed views of the stark, green Andean foothills. 

Day 4, we walked only four hours through what's referred to as Machu Picchu's back door. We caught glimpses of the site far above as we walked along train tracks that wound along the sacred river in the valley below Machu Picchu. While the site is nestled in the mountains, the vegetation is strangely tropical. Everywhere we passed was green and beautiful. 

Pit stop with our trekking group

That afternoon, we reached the village of Aguas Calientes, which is the jumping off point to Machu Picchu and, frankly, a touristy, over-priced sh-t hole. If you want to be at Machu Picchu when it opens at 6:30am, you have to stay in Aguas Calientes. But you don't have to like it.

Day 5- Machu Picchu
The big day! We had another early wake-up call at 4:00am in order to trek up the 1900 steps that lead to Machu Picchu in time for its opening at 6:30. We started the walk up in the dark and as we hiked, it slowly started to get lighter. We had some pretty fabulous (god, I hate that word) views on the surrounding mountains and valley, and we got more and more excited as we went up to see the sunrise over Machu Picchu.

Unfortunately, those dreams were dashed as we finally reached the opening gate in the middle of a massive rain cloud that covered the site in mist and us in rain. We couldn't see ANYTHING. One's first glimpse at Machu Picchu from the entrance is supposed to be one of the top things to experience in the world and we could hardly see ten feet in front of us! It was heart-breaking. To make matters worse, our kind little Peruvian guide continued our tour anyway and insisted on asking us to "imagine" that we could see the mountain behind this or that temple or "imagine" we could see the terraced fields. The only thing I imagined is that I was repeatedly punching him in his cheerful little face.

The rain cloud finally blew off and once we could see the site around us, we realized just how incredible Machu Picchu was. The site is massive and situated in one of the most stunning locations I can imagine. All around us were deep green, dome-shaped mountains set against a hazy blue sky. Where I expected ruins of rock walls were wonderfully preserved houses and buildings and alley-ways. While there were tons of people and big tour groups, it was still possible to escape the crowds and wander through the town without seeing another person. It was magical and mysterious and exceeded all of our expectations.

After exploring the ruins for a few hours, I hiked up the Waynapicchu Mountain (the big mountain in all of the pictures you see of Machu Picchu) while Vincent hiked up the Machu Picchu Mountain (an even bigger mountain above the site). Both of us had amazing views and much-needed alone time, and thoroughly enjoyed hiking away from the crowds.


We stayed at the site until mid-afternoon, when we returned to Aguas Calientes to catch our train back to Cusco. By that time, we were physically exhausted from five days of hiking and camping, and were ready for gringo food, hot showers and an actual bed instead of camp pads. We were also happy and invigorated from the challenge and the incredible experience of visiting Machu Picchu. 

Next on the itinerary are Arequipa and possibly the Peruvian coast. I promise I’ll write about Cusco next time!

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