For better or for worse, I completely dropped the ball on my last few weeks'
worth of South America blogging. I won't make excuses, but I will point
out that combing second-world cities for reliable Internet cafes is one of the lamer
ways to spend free time abroad. If I
were to blame anyone other than myself, I'd point the finger at the group helado
runs and semi-legal archaeological expeditions that came to occupy our
off-periods toward the end.
Still, I wish I would’ve found the time to finish the job. The end of this
trip was something incredibly special, and the three weeks I neglected to write
about were probably the richest, most memorable, and most ridiculous of the
twelve. In the days following the Sacred Valley retreat the group
became thicker than thieves, rambling through a jungle, a mountain range, and
two ancient cities with hilarious, brotherly abandon. Here’s the short of
it.
CAMINO VERDE
The first week after the yoga retreat was our last in the Peruvian
Amazon. We volunteered at Camino Verde, a sustainable agriculture NGO in
the deep-woods district of Baltimoré, for seven sweltering and enjoyable days.
This place was actually in the middle of nowhere. From the already-remote
town of Porto Maldonado (10 hours from Cusco by bus), the jaw-dropping remoteness
of our destination necessitated a bumpy, off-road hour in a taxi, followed by
four more on a river skiff. Without a single road to be found in the area, our
daily commutes to the NGO from the hostel were also by water. Our six-room,
family-owned jungle lodge, El Gato, was the closest thing to a town that
we came across. Local wildlife included, but was not limited to: macaws,
caimans, piranhas, stingrays, bullet ants, anaconda, spiders (everywhere), and candiru.
Look that last one up if you’re feeling brave.
Our work at Camino dealt mainly with the maintenance and study of the many
onsite permaculture populations, which ranged from hardwood groves to coffee
bushes to wild forest whose growth is as yet unchecked. The idea of
permaculture is to support endangered plant species by cultivating them in
their native conditions - in carefully maintained ecosystems that mime the
optimal, natural milieu of the organism.
We were working to maintain this semi-artificial jungle environment
while performing routine maintenance and care on some of the endemic target
species. It was hard, hot work - most of
my time was spent sawing nonessential branches off hardwoods - but there's no
denying the positivity of the experience. The jungle offers many a rustic
pleasure: hacking open a coconut and downing the milk after a hot day, picking
starfruit off a tree in the back yard, swimming in a tributary of the Amazon, and
braving the Southwestern Hemisphere's hottest pepper after lunch (and surviving
to tell about it) are just a few. But there was a also a hidden, long-term
benefit: After that week, living conditions nearly everywhere seem utterly
luxurious. (Nights were no cooler than 90 degrees, with no less than 98%
humidity; ventilation was stifled by the essential mosquito net; no air
conditioning; no electricity; no ice.)
Although we had a good run in the jungle, I’d say our departure was slightly
more sweet than bitter. We sailed back
upriver in high spirits, looking forward to spending a night or two in the
relative luxury of Cusco’s Inti Tambo Hostel - now only one overnight bus ride away
– and then heading on to our next destination, which turned out to be my
favorite of the trip.
OLLANTAYTAMBO
Ollantaytambo is a former Incan city in the heart of the Sacred Valley that
remains so true to its ancient heritage that it looks and feels almost like an
exhibit. It’s located along the route to
the city of Machu Picchu and home to what was once a prominent Incan citadel. Despite a recent tourism surge (and a
consequent uptick in government exploitation), Ollantaytambo remains
authentically Incan: The city’s architecture, planning, and infrastructure are all
straight out of the 15th Century, or from the period of Spanish
occupation immediately afterward. At
first, it doesn’t feel completely legitimate.
Movie set? Archaeological excavation? Theme park? Nope, it’s all real –
just another little town in the Sacred Valley going unflappably about its
business as droves of incredulous tourists look on.
Our group’s official business in Ollantaytambo was a last round of Spanish
classes and a short volunteer session at a local elementary school. Translation: We had a nice amount of time for
shenanigans. In addition to our duties,
a typical day in Ollanta included ice cream, a stop by the market, a foray into
the surrounding network of mountain trails, and a stroll through some ancient
structure or another. Of these structures,
the highlight was undoubtedly the massive mountainside temple-fortress that
dominates the town from above. TJ’s and
my Ollantan Spanish teacher showed us a way to sneak in without paying a toll,
since the entire $23 entry charge is pocketed by crooked politicians; we later
showed the rest of the group the way, but were caught and shooed off after an
attempt at bribing the guards. Oh well.
I also spent afternoons wandering aimlessly through the town with a camera, shooting
the same streets that had been walked by several centuries of Inca and conquistadores. Getting a bad picture there required considerable
effort.
On Thanksgiving Morning, our fourth or fifth morning in Ollantaytambo, we
reported to the Kuska Elementary School with picks and shovels in hand. We were going to be digging a trench.
Morale was not at its highest. On
this most American of days, we had consigned ourselves to hard labor in rural
Peru – a country with little food, no family (of ours), and the wrong kind of
football. Was this the right
decision? Was nothing sacred? We’d
signed up for this program ourselves, sure, but the timing of the occasion felt
somehow blasphemous. I imagined Uncle
Sam frowning disapprovingly from above.
The morning turned out to be absolutely beautiful. The Kuska School is situated ten minutes’
stroll from the town, on a terraced landing in a narrow part of the Valley
where verdant mountains and a winding river seemed just further than a stone’s
throw away. Thanks to the boom box, the
breeze, and the relatively diggable soil, morale picked up quickly, and the
morning passed before we knew it – and then it was lunchtime.
I’ll never forget it. It turned out
that the Kuska kids were spending the day learning about the great American
celebration of Thanksgiving. And their
teachers had endeavored, in the spirit of education, to whip up a fresh and
accurate rendition of the meal. And we - the Settlers - were invited to
attend.
Even for a Thanksgiving feast, the result was exceptional. Turkey, being unavailable, was swapped with
some of the most flavorful, succulent, perfectly prepared chicken I’ve ever
laid taste buds on; everything else was spot-on, in textbook compliance with
our great American rules and regulations.
Take note, we told the kids as we buried our faces in food.
We chowed down for a good while, and then wandered out to a gazebo in the
schoolyard, where the students treated us
to a concert. It was insane. They all played instruments – all of them –
and sang these amazing international songs, in respectable harmony and several
languages. I’ll never forget how ridiculous
and awesome it all was, how out of the clear blue sky it seemed, how incredible
the whole Thanksgiving turned out. I
wanted to dig them another trench. Definitely
a Thanksgiving for the books.
When our week was up we kissed our host families goodbye and returned to
Cusco – which, for the first time, was facing some real competition for the
title of “South America’s Coolest City”.
Our stay was supposed to last three days; a transportation strike kept
us for one more. But we needed the
rest. There was a hike ahead.
MACHU PICCHU
The moment we’d all been waiting for – the lost city in the heart of the
Sacred Valley, the crown jewel of monumental South America, the ultimate
remainder of the Incan Empire. Ahh, we
could see it already.
Now, to get there.
The vaunted Inca Trail had seemed like the go-to option – “That’s the trail
everyone does, right?” – but we ended up steering clear because, after all,
that’s the trail that everyone does. It’s supposedly overpopulated, polluted, and,
if I remember correctly, lower-altitude (meaning more bugs and more novice hikers).
Didn’t sound like our cup of coca tea.
The Salkantay Trail, on the other hand, has got it all. It’s lesser-known and lesser-travelled,
crests a 14,000–foot peak, passes by an abandoned temple (which the Inca had outfitted
with sunbeam alignment technology, á la
Indiana Jones), and generally tends toward higher elevation. We went with the Salkantay, and I regret not
one of the 37 miles.
Carpe Diem knew what they were doing in saving this hike for last. The four days on the trail were of that
certain final quality that comes at the end of a long and crazy companionship. Stories, jokes, debates, discussions, songs,
rap battles, you name it – it was there, somewhere. Rain, snow, mist, and sleet were all present
in equal proportion, but they all gave way to sunshine and overall great
weather. And, man, the landscape. It looked and felt at times
like the Lord of the Rings, at others
like Avatar, and occasionally like a
video game (I remember looking over one misty cliff, into a hard white void,
and realizing that it looked just as if the graphic designers had simply
stopped rendering the world beyond that point) but it never felt quite like
reality. Our amazing agency, Apu Andino,
took great care of us; while it would’ve made for some serious bragging rights,
I’m glad we didn’t have to carry our tents and food all four days.
The Lost City was as spectacular as I’d hoped, albeit a little more
touristy. After our four days on the
trail, where we hadn’t seen a single other hiker, I found the overwhelming
number of other travellers at Machu Picchu a little unfortunate. We persevered. Most of us spent the earlier part of the
morning skirting the city, traversing a network of roads and their adjoining
temples on a quest for the perfect view of the city itself.
In many ways, the entire complex at Machu Picchu is similar to Ollantaytambo
(with the notable exception of having been lost to the world for hundreds of
years). It feels off - like a dream, almost, or a steel-and-resin Universal
recreation of a fictional world like J.K. Rowling’s. It’s hard to believe that
it is, a part of the real world and a relatively recent fixture of
history.
(pictures coming soon)
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