cusco, la paz, and cholita wrestling???

It soon came time for Felly to leave. We had a late night workout in the hostel, settled to bed, and enjoyed a nice breakfast. As we were touring cusco, Felly wanted to take a picture with a llama and then a baby, and paid a sol each time. Below is us kissing a llama.

After Felly left, I was ready to take a bus to my next destination. At that point, I wasn't very sure where that was. It could be arequipa, it could be puno, and it could be la paz. Since it seemed like all the buses left at night anyways, I figured I would go for La Paz and reduce the total amount of travel time. I decided to wait in a cafe, read, and perhaps update the blog. That plan was only partially successful. I did pass my time in the cafe, but mostly talking with people, including some fellow travelers, an English teacher from Idaho, and people who had just finished their studies and were teaching English locally. I hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon. Once it came time for night, we went our separate ways and I went in search of food.

As you can see here, I found it. Pictured above is alpaca on a bed on risotto. It was probably one of the tastier things I have had on this trip. 

It was soon time for me to catch the bus, so I left. The bus was largely without incident, mostly reading and talking. The parts where I got off the bus were a bit more interesting. As La Paz is in Bolivia, I had to cross the border. I had read prior to my trip that it was rather dangerous, but it defied expectations in that respect. I got the immediate impression that the area was poor, solely based on the amount of trash around. I waited in several lines, and somehow, my spanish sufficed. I got into Bolivia, as depicted below, and I had to pay a fairly exorbitant sum for the visa itself. I thought I was done at that point, and I just wanted to get back on the bus (you never want to be left in an unfamiliar area by your bus). I was wrong. They for some reason needed my passport to be photocopied, yet they did not have photocopiers. They sent me outside to the photocopier that was closed, and then I wandered until I found a sign that said fotocopias. Forgive me if that seems like a bit of a leap to think that they might have a photocopier, but when I asked the woman and pointed to the sign there seemed to be no photocopier actually inside. I walked further into Bolivia, searching and asking, but they kept pointing me to the ones I had already checked, and some suggested walking all the way back to Peru. As I came to the first photocopier, it turned out to have just opened, so I got lucky.

These are the guys (Koji and something I couldn't pronounce) who sat next to me on the bus. As well as talking, I traded Spanish lessons for a few Japanese ones that I have largely forgotten. 

As we arrived into Bolivia, a unique worry struck me, one that I hadn't had before. Yes, the city was poor, that was evident by the number of rundown buildings, but more worrying was the fact that there were no banks open (it was sunday). I had not exchanged money yet, and there were no ways to get the currency I needed. Fortunately, I found an atm at the bus terminal, so my worries were assuaged. I took a taxi to my hotel, and we chatted in spanish on the way. My taxi driver overshot his destination, so we proceeded to back up until we were approximately in the right spot. At this point I was hungry. Remember that alpaca? Well that was at 9 pm. Now it was 330 pm, and the alpaca was still the last thing I had eaten. I was ready for some food, so as soon as my bags were all in my room I quested in search of food. I saw a sign that signalled thai food, so I went in, and was asked if I were there for the wrestling. I looked in askance, confused but intrigued. I am a wrestler I replied, but still really had no idea what was going on. They were apparently in a cholita wrestling tour about to set off. I went into the tour agency, signed up, bought a snickers, and off we went.

The cholitas wrestling was held in the alto region of la paz, providing a beautiful view of the skyline

My ticket

All the "competitors" paraded around at first

That looked like it hurt

There was a lot of acrobatics too. I like the athleticism involved in some of the jumps and lifts that they did. They also did series of judo throws and bouncing off of the ropes, although the majority of the time was spent grandstanding. 

A common theme was the corrupt ref. The ref would obviously favor one wrestler to the point of hugging them, and even intervened physically, ie kicking the other wrestler while they were down. However, the ref always counted too fast, there was then an outrage from the crowd, and then eventually the good wrestler would win, in this case the guy in white.

The red guy was kinda a pimp, his entrance entailed him with two girls around each arm, dancing around. He was the good guy, and dum dum dum, he won.

They interacted with the audience a lot, going so far as to spray confetti from a bag.

The fighting was filled with antics, from hitting each other over the head with crates and chairs, to forcibly kissing cholitas or missing and kissing the ref, to stealing food/ drinks from the audience and bashing each other over the head with it. Altogether, a very bizarre, yet interesting, and slightly fun experience.

He lost, and he looked ever so sad.

It was funny, people were not supposed to throw things, yet the ground was littered with plastic bottles. The crowd was really invested into the fights, from booing at the evil fighters, to throwing things. The kids would slip through the narrow bars to collect the bottles that had been thrown. One adorable little girl who was sitting right next to me did so as well, and I threw (and missed, I have terrible hand eye coordination) the bottles at the evil competitor. When she dragged one of the broken crates that had nails sticking out and gestured towards it as well, I chided her peligroso (dangerous)

After some walking, I found the place that served me what is below. 

I got my food. In this case, it was middle eastern, and quite tasty too :)

machu picchu at last!!

Hey, quick note is that the fb and blog pics are basically the same in this one, but I wanted to give an account to the pictures in the blog.

It was weird, being the final day of trekking and all. Still, it is not often you wake up to a view like that.

Or that

Did I mention that the porters are awesome. Well they are. They were responsible for carrying all the food, chairs, etc. Also, this was where we ate, and in the morning, we always had the choice of hot cocoa, coca tea, and regular types of tea.

llama!

We started to climb, and with my backpack on again, the individual steps were more difficult. Remind me not to be 230lbs anytime soon. However, the clear advantage of climbing more is that you get better views like the one above.

We also had to climb through caves, another thing that I did not expect from the inca trail. 

Sea of mist. When we got to the summit of one of the passes, we all commented on the "great view" because we could see a whole 30 ft in front of us.

that mountain just looked really cool

more caves, wet along the sides.

This is the guide, ramiro. With a fairly thick accent and a sprinkling of quechua names, it was pretty hard to understand/pay attention in the lectures about the various incan ruins. One quick and slightly funny anecdote. There was one incan ruin, not sure the name but  sounded like gibberish, gibberish gibberish, mama wanker giberish, and while I didn't get it at first, the british couple was chortling in the back. Also, it may be hard to believe, but he said he was over 60. That is impressive right there, because he put us to shame with a plodding but steady pace. He would wait for the people with altitude sickness.

incan ruins

apparently, machu picchu is home to orchids.

We had the option of taking detours to more incan ruins. We invariably went for more incan ruins, even though we walked an extra hour for them

These are the monkey steps, also known as the tourist killer. See ramiro just casually walking up. Yeah, the rest of us were using all 4's, thus the moniker monkey steps. I don't want to know why they were called the tourist killer

These monkey steps are probably some of the steepest we faced.

Our first view of machu picchu.

close up

I would definitely say that psychologically, this day was the easiest day. On the first day, you can turn back. It would be lame, but it is well within the realm of possibility. On the second day, you can still turn back, although now it gets rather tedious. But on the third day, it is literally closer to the end if you just keep going than if you turn back, adding a little incentive to our tired legs.

  The actual hiking on every day lasted for a while. With a brief intermission for incan ruins and lunch, we hiked from 6am to about 5 pm every day. On every day but the third, by the end you were like, this is beautiful and all, but I could really go for the tent right about now. On the third day however, rejuvenated with finally seeing machu picchu, it felt as if I was not tired at all. However, some in our group were just mentally done and wanted to get out. On our way from the sun gate where the above pictures of machu were taken, ramiro told us that we had two options, either walk for 2 hrs from machu to aguas calientes, or take the bus. He told us this at about 430, and the funny thing was that he said the last bus was at 5. Given that we were at least a good 30 minutes away, this put a spring in our step. We did make it, and with plenty of time to spare. I think Ramiro told us 5 as a way of incentivizing us to move faster, as we left on a bus at 5:20. Still, it felt great to be on that bus, and before I knew it, I was in aguas calientes. We were at a restaurant called machu pisco, and my banana milk shake simply tasted divine after all the trekking. Felly also joined us, which was exciting. He had just missed the departure to the Inca trail because he had booked his plane ticket to Quito rather than Lima, meaning he had about 50 some odd hours of bus. His bus was just a little bit later than expected, so he missed the transportation that I had set up.

 Next on the agenda was relaxing, hot showers, dinner and a ceremony recognizing the porters and soon I was off to bed. It was hard to sleep because we were placed right next to raging rapids and there was no window to separate the sound. It felt like as soon as I drifted off to sleep, I had a flashlight in my face, waking me up for our sunrise tour of machu picchu. 

It was worth it though, as I try(and perhaps fail) to portray in the following photos. I think in hindsight the reason that everyone should go for the early morning wake up is because the lighting is really cool, as well as the fact that there are only a few tourists, so it feels like you have this incan wonder to yourself. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. except in a few cases.

hawk chillin on a rock

so the incans built that rock as a facsimile of the mountain range behind it. I just thought it was really cool that Felly's hat also happened to line up with the mountain.

After about 4 hours hiking around machu picchu, felly and I were about done. We did the posing, we did the tour, we even explored for a little, but soon tourists flocked around, and I wanted to preserve in my mind that idea of machu picchu deserted, an incan jewel to myself. We headed back, ate some overpriced pizza, and played a pleasant game of hearts where I shot the moon (always an andrenaline pumping moment. And then, because we were in aguas calientes, literally hot water, we went to the hot springs.

The water was kinda grimy but felt good after so much trekking. Still, the fountains to wash off were much needed. A train and a bus later, we were in cusco, where we said goodbye to the group and I end this blog post.

machu picchu part 2

Wakeup at 5 does not agree with me, whatever timezone I am in. It did not help that the porters provided scalding hot tea in metal cups. I tried to pick it up and proceeded to spill it all over me and my roommate Kari and our sleeping bags. Using my pants as a towel, I managed to mop up most of it before it seeped into our sleeping gear. 

I gave up in terms of the bag situation. One always has the option of paying the porters an extra 100 soles or approx 40 dollars for carrying your bags. On the hardest day, with a 1200 m altitude climb and a seriously heavy pack, I thought it was worth it.

While slightly cold in the morning, hiking quickly warmed me up to the point that I was only wearing a light rainjacket. I really loved the mystique of the mist in machu picchu.

We took a lot of pictures of the same mountain, because as we changed elevation, the view changed as well. Plus on a hard day like this, it was nice to have the excuse, oh I just have to stop and take a picture.

We hiked through areas that I didn't really expect when thinking abstractly of the inca trail. Apparently there are jungles in the incan trail. Who knew?

We had a lot of uphill. The group started to separate, with the bulk of the group straggling, while myself, mary and toby pressed forward. Without my giant backpack, it wasn't nearly as bad. Still, there were a lot of steps. A lot.

I should talk about the porters. They were badass. Carrying significantly more than everyone else ( you can kinda see in their huge bags), taking less breaks, and setting up the campsite before we even got there, these men were heroes. Considering that some of them were over 60, they put us slow westerners to shame. They also ran, literally ran down the stairs where we slowly eased ourselves down every step.

More stairs. What a surprise

I told you that we took a lot of pictures of that mountain.

More stairs. 

We had to search for water, because the elusive water station that the guide Ramero told us about never seemed to come. Toby and I kept asking porters how soon the water stream would come, and they answer never seemed to diminish. When we asked a porter who said that it was an hour away, as opposed to the twenty minutes away, twenty minutes ago, we searched for a stream and purified our water. Of course, the water station was right around the corner, where we then waited up for the group.

I am not going to lie; this was a hard trek. I pushed my limits, but somehow managed to keep going, even with my legs and lungs burning. I was the first from our group, with Toby and Mary close behind. Then we got to enjoy the view for a good 45 minutes as the rest of the group caught up.

Me at the top of the mountain. This is the highest up a mountain I have ever been, with Dead Womans Pass registering at 4200 m or approx 14000 feet. Again, that does not make for easy hiking.

Nearby mountain

It was really cool, a man was playing a very mournful tone on his wind flute. As the group came in, they were greeted with an awesome soundtrack.

just some perspective, see that valley that barely registers as a speck. Yeah, that is where we started from.

The rest did eventually join us, and we posed at the top of the mountain

 We had another 5 hours of hiking from there, first down the stairs. Our legs were like jelly as we finally made our way into the camp site.

Sanctuary at last!!