The Ultimate Peruvian Experience

Good company, gorgeous glaciers, and a meandering trail through indigenous villages made this hike the pinnacle of our travels. We took our blistered feet and sore calf muscles on this amazing trek only one day after returning from the Inka Trail, but the experience was worth the effort. This trip was less extravagant and more hard core, especially for Cullen and Ryan who carried much more weight than the legal limit for local porters!

We took local bus transport to the start of the climb, then began our long walk along rivers and between towering rocky peaks. We camped among the misty clouds and curious cows on the first night, placing our tents virtually on top of eachother to create shelter from the frigid winds. After attacking a large communal bowl of spaghetti, we retired to our tents and spent the next 12 or so hours shifting between sleep and trying to sleep. When the dawn at last rescued us, we began hiking through the most outstanding stretch of trail we have yet seen in South America. After a short hike we spent the next hour or so walking a comfortable grade with alpine lakes and massive glacier-capped mountains greeting our gaze. Eventually we crossed a pass and descended a long way down to another small village with homes of stone and roofs of straw. After stopping to buy some hand-woven goods from the little girls who ran to meet us on the trail, we started the big climb over our last mountain pass. It was a tremendous ascent to make at the end of the day, but looking back I am happy that Peru gave us this last chance to spill our sweat here. In some way those hard climbs have strengthened the bond we made with the culture here- and gives us a window into the campesino (farmer) appreciation for the energy given by pacha mama (mother earth). On the third day, we walked downhill for a few hours until we reached a natural hot springs ¨resort.¨ After soaking in the murky but pleasingly hot waters, we finished our walk to the town of Lares. After catching the bus and eating some Top Ramen (both were incredible feats of their own), we made it to the town of Pisaq to shop and dine among the hustle and bustle of the giant Sunday market...

And that concludes our final adventure here in South America, although the journey for all of us continues. Welcome back to Colorado Ryan! We will spend tomorrow in Lima and will be back in the USA on Friday! Thank you everyone for visiting our blog and sharing your thoughts with us along the way. Please stay posted as we will continue to add new photos and stories of adventures to come.

Con mucho amor, Melissa & Cullen

Inka Trail

5am pick up and we were off for a backpack trip unlike any other we had experienced before... The five of us (including Ryan, ourselves, Ivan, and Sasha) set off from Cusco in a van towards the Sacred Valley. After a luxury breakfast (the first of many delicious meals prepared seemingly out of thin air and presented on a table with tablecloth, real silverware, and chairs), we began our journey toward the Inka`s sacred Macchu Picchu.

For the next three days, we climbed up and down valleys, through several smaller and beautiful Inka ruins (more respectfully known as constructions), passing through a range of climates from arid to jungle to cloud forest. After reaching the summit of ¨Dead Woman`s Pass¨on the second day, we began the endless rock staircase that would eventually bring us to the Sun Gate overlooking Macchu Picchu.

Maybe it was the spirit of the Inkas still conveying love and reverence for the mountains, or maybe it was the afternoon tea and cookies, but somehow the days passed like a dream and we arrived at our destination full of energy. On the last morning, we arose at 4am to eat breakfast and hit the trail in time for Cullen to be the first person to reach the Sun Gate (Ryan and I were unable to follow his deft manuvers past the slower but steady train of climbers along the narrow cliff-edged trail). We spent a long and calf muscle-burning day ascending and descending every possible staircase inside Macchu Picchu. As the sun was setting over the hill-perched remains of the majestic village, we sat quietly for a moment letting the immensity and beauty of a bygone world leave its mark on our souls.

Lago Titicaca

We arrived at sunset and the floating reed islands were glowing gold against the deep blue waters of the shallow Lago Titicaca. This small and hardy group of Peruvians live on man-made islands where even the homes and boats are made of grass. The women, like in most indigenous communities of Peru, wear brilliant colored dresses and their dark hair in long braids. During our brief visit to their home, we felt moved by their strength and beauty.

We were on our way from La Paz to Cusco on a long bus ride when we met two fellow travelers who recommended we stop for a few hours in Puno and visit these islands. What luck that we ran into them because the surprise visit to this unique culture was a special experience as we left Bolivia behind and re-entered wonderful Peru. We arrived full circle in our travels as we entered Cusco (pulled into the bus station at 4am). We feel right at home again and even joined our Spanish teachers for a few hours of volleyball before heading to the airport to pick up Ryan.

After a few misadventures in Mexico City and a quick stay in Lima, Ryan arrived last Saturday afternoon. About 12 hours later we were all on our way to the Inka Trail on route to Macchu Picchu. We just arrived from that incredible adventure around 10pm last night and are currently resting our aching feet and calf muscles- again full smiles. More photos from that journey soon!

More birds, bugs, and big animals in the Pampas

We crawled through the official jungle for 7 days trying to see animals and after just 10 minutes on a boat in the Pampas we found them all! While lounging lazily on a motor boat, we feasted our eyes on alligators, turtles, many unique and colorful birds, and even monkeys- lots of them! Pampas means the grasslands and this is where the animals are easier to see because the vegetation is less dense- we even had fish jumping into our boat, we held a baby alligator and Cullen held an anaconda snake! We spent three days with Melissa & Ilan (friends from the earlier jungle tours), four great people from Ireland, and our amazing guide Sabino.

On what turned out to be a much better tour than we ever expected, we went for a night canoe ride to find caiman (similar to alligators but more aggressive), we lounged in hammocks watching the wildlife around us (monkeys, birds, alligators all plentiful), we tredged through swamp for hours to find the anaconda, we swam with pink dolphins (and who knows what else was in the water!), and we fished parahna again then ate it for lunch! As if all of this was not enough, our incredibly friendly and informed guide gave us handmade necklaces with alligator teeth at the end of our trip! We are officially satisfied with the Bolivian Amazon and we are ready to get out of the humid bug territory tomorrow! Mike, we are proud to say that our calculations were near perfect and we will be taking just about every last one of our Malarone pills! Thank you!

Tomorrow we had a plane flight to La Paz in the morning but it got delayed until the afternoon. The tiny plane is notorious for cancellations so we are lucky that we can still leave on the same day. From this point on, we are in a race to get to Cusco before Ryan does! In just a few days we will be back to our stomping ground in beautiful Peru...

World´s Most Dangerous Road to the Jungle

We have been camping for 6 of the last 7 days and we are about to leave for more! We have time to post just a few snapshots of the last week in this Bolivian playland...

We left La Paz by bike and rode the infamous Death Ride- a 2000m screaming descent on a winding narrow dirt road next to a sheer drop-off. The riding is not technical and the only danger comes from careless car drivers who share the road... still a heart-stopper. We spent 2 nights in a small village at the bottom of the ride and then left by boat to enter the rainforest. We spent 3 days cruising along the rivers, hunting pirhanas, hiking through dense vegetation, and generally being chewed on by zillions of biting insects. At night we had campfires and we met some really great people. In fact, once we arrived at our destination of Rurrenabaque, we joined forces with two other couples and found a private guide to take us further into the ¨closed¨jungle (the part without trails).

So for the last three days, we again have been touring by boat and foot through the most green terrain we have ever seen. A local father and son took us for a fantastic backpack tour of the Madidi National Park. We saw

Huayna Potosi

Tuesday was a day of records for us... Our first night to sleep at over 16,800ft, our first summit of almost 20,000ft (short by only 20ft!), our earliest wake up time to hike (midnight, started hiking 1am), longest number of hours without going to the bathroom (roped up and harnessed for 9 hours), longest hike in the dark (6 hrs in darkness), first sunrise to view between our legs (our view as we ice climbed the last vertical 200meters and rested our heads every 5ft gasping for air), first time to hike past and along crevasses and exposed glacier ridges, and first time to feel so utterly and completely physically wasted! Awesome!

Neither pictures nor words describe the feelings we had on the mountain of Huayna Potosi right outside of La Paz... it was our first big mountain experience and as soon as we can forget the pain, we will plan to do another... it was amazing!

Tomorrow we begin our journey to the lowlands and warmer temperatures- time to treat ourselves to naps in hammocks and boat trips through steamy jungles... aaah at last my fingertips will not be numb! Love from the mountains and beyond, Melis & Cullen

Travels To Another Planet

Brrrr! Wow!!!! And that sums up our vocabulary for the last four days we spent on the so-called Southwest Circuit through the Bolivian salt flats.

It was an amazing couple of days spent bouncing along 800 miles of lonely dirt roads in a 1980 Land Cruiser. The first day was a marathon 12 hour ride through more colorful desert terrain as we rocked along to Bolivian folk tunes and a random assortment of 1980s love songs. We stopped a few times to stretch our legs at overlook sites and an old ghost town, but the icy wind and falling temperatures made us happy to crawl back in the cruiser as we continued to climb in altitude (we reached a max of 5000m or 16500ft). Night number one was our induction to survival in extreme coldness- a skill that served us well on the rest of the trip. The hospedajes were muy basico with no electricity or heating, but they did have beds and blankets which we greatly appreciated! The second hospedaje even had a little stove that they mercifully lit after only 4 hours of snuggling in our sleeping bag and drinking gallons of hot tea to maintain body heat. We can understand their need for conservation of resources, however, because there is no source of firewood for hundreds of miles in any direction. Instead, they burn the rock-hard roots of a plant that looks like moss growing on rocks. Also, they merely laughed at our intolerance for 0 degree Farenheight temperatures because they withstand coldness in their winters that drops to -100deg F!

During the following three days of 4-wheeling, we stopped at amazingly strange rock formations, lakes of a dozen colors with many species of flamingos and birds, geysers just like the ones in Yellowstone but without any fences to prevent you from falling in, thermal baths, an unearthly island studded with proud cacti, and an endless salt flat that definitely gives you the feeling of walking on the moon. On our last night we slept in an hospedaje that had salt floors, walls, and beds. The roof was made of grass and the doors were made of cacti. We discovered that Bolivian wine is not to be drinken unless absolutely necessary (which it was that night). The next morning was our favorite experience of the trip. We awoke and loaded up in the very wee hours of the morning and headed out to the moonscape salt flats to experience the sunrise in a whole new way. The transformation of the sky as the sun lit the white expanse under our feet was a really moving experience. Our second fave moment was the morning our land cruiser broke down and Cullen got his wish to take a picture of steam coming out of the engine. Actually our real favorite moment was when the engine started to work again- phew! Not a fun place to get stranded!

We arrived in Uyuni in the afternoon on Saturday and took an overnight brain-scrambling bus ride to La Paz. After catching some more sleep in a beautiful hostel, we have spent the day making arrangements for our next encounter with extreme cold- this time we are going even higher in altitude. More on that soon! Meanwhile, we wish everyone well and hope Diane had an awesome Bridal Shower- we were thinking of you all day yesterday! Love, M&C