Week 10, continued: The Lares Trek & Machu Picchu (posted by Anne)

We started the three-day trek by waking up at 4:30 a.m.  We went on the bus and began to go up and around mountains to go to the Lares hot springs.  The hot springs were separated into different pools depending on their heat.

We had one other person walking with us. Her name was Susanne, and she was from Australia. Our tour guide was Fernando, who was from a small town near Cuzco. Susanne is 61 and has been traveling for 4 months, starting in Mexico, then through Guatemala and Colombia. Fernando was our guide and he is 29. He has done around 400 treks, and he was in charge of the porters and the horsemen who carried all of our stuff. Fernando was fluent in three languages: Quechua, Spanish, and English.

After the hot springs, we took a half hour drive to the starting point. We walked around 4 or 5 kilometers to a small town for lunch. There were ladies selling souvenirs and woven clothes, so Eliza and I bought gloves. When we were eating a delicious lunch, it started to HAIL!

We hiked to our campsite, which was next to a high elevation lagoon.

The next morning, we woke up at 5:30 a.m., with warm drinks. That morning, we started hiking up the Condor Pass, the summit being at 4,700 meters -- or about 15,400 feet, which is higher than the Grand Teton in Wyoming. I thought it was hard because of the high altitude - it made me feel exhausted much more quickly because I was so out of breath. At the pass, we had hot drinks and a snack looking at the beautiful views of snow-peaked mountains and low valleys with lagoons.

From there we started going downhill to Canchacancha, a small town. It had no roads but only trails. They had no running water and only recently got electricity. We set up camp, and had a delicious lunch once again, with platters of rice, salad, beef, and pasta.

After lunch, we went to a traditional home, and put on the traditional clothes.  We met Theodora, who was the wife to one of the horsemen on our trek. We learned about how she was from a small village across the Sacred Valley and that she came to the village to marry José. It was an arranged marriage. We also learned about how hard she works: knitting clothes, cooking, and farming.

We ended that day looking at the Milky Way.

The next morning, we had a quick walk down the valley to our lunch spot and from there we drove to Ollantaytambo. At Ollantaytambo, we took the train to Agua Calientes, the weird town only there because of Machu Picchu.

In the morning, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get onto one of the first buses to Machu Picchu. I feel like the most interesting part was how well preserved it was. We learned that there are usually about 5,000 people who visit Machu Picchu every day! I loved seeing what they think is an Acllahuasi (kind of like a nunnery).