Hiking in Peru

Things in Peru got off to a bit of a rocky start…I took an overnight bus from Ecuador, which involved a 4am border crossing. I wasn’t in a great mood. They had played the same terrible movie at full volume twice during the ride down. The plot was: rich, fat, older man rigs a beauty contest so his incredibly voluptuous, vapid young girlfriend will win. Much is made of her breast size, which she (falsely) claims is natural. Then at the last minute, she develops a problem with her implants, and has to have them removed, with the implication that now she could never win the contest. I’m not sure what happens at the end, because I tuned out, but suffice to say, the plot was stupid and sexist, and only served to worsen my annoyance with being kept awake.

When I groggily stumbled off the bus to have my passport stamped, I was set upon by various men, one who grabbed my passport “to help me fill out some forms” (and then asked for a tip) and several who wanted to change my Ecuadorian currency. I remembered reading that the money changers at the border are sketchy, so I recovered my passport and pushed inside the office. Stamped passport in hand, I passed back by a uniformed man sitting at a desk who asked to see my passport and told me I needed to pay $10 for a tourist visa. It sounded fishy, but I asked the people standing around and everyone nodded. I reluctantly handed over the cash, but as soon as I got back to the bus, the driver affirmed it was a scam (it was one of the money changers who had fooled me). The bus was about to leave, but I was so mad at having been taken in (if only for $10), that I ran back and made a scene (totally unlike me, but I think I was fueled by frustration from that stupid movie). Various officials appeared, along with someone from my bus company. The money changer in question had left, but one of his comrades sheepishly explained that the guy had only wanted to help me change money. The second guy offered to give me the $10 in Peruvian soles, and retrieve the dollars from the other guy later. Done. I ran back to the bus, still angry, but glad to have caught them in their deception.

I checked into a hostel in a small beach town on the northern Peruvian coast, which I had picked because the Lonely Plant noted a hot springs/mudbath/hiking area nearby. After a few hours sleep and some legitimate currency exchange, I found a mototaxi driver to take me the 11k to the mudbath. The driver/guide looked to be in his late teens, and offered me a fair price upfront, so we set off. The guy seemed shy but friendly, and we chatted about the usual things…where I was from, what I was doing in Peru, what he liked to do for fun. The hot spring was tiny, a pool maybe 8’ square. Only one other person was there, an older mad who appeared to be a caretaker. One end of the pool had a trough containing the sulfurous mud, with which one might apply a mask. My guide put some mud on his own face to demonstrate, then applied a bit to mine. I was a tiny bit uncomfortable with him touching me rather unexpectedly, but decided to enjoy the facial treatment.

Until he decided to apply some to my back, pulling me really close to him and wrapping his arms around me in the process. I was totally taken aback and pushed him away. It was really bizarre. He gave me a blank look, as if nothing unusual had happened. It wasn’t threatening; it was just completely socially inappropriate (from my perspective) and uncomfortable. A applied the rest of my mud treatment and we talked about other things. Then I asked the caretaker about hiking possibilities, and he suggested several. The guide and I got out of the bath and started down a trail, at which point he wrapped his arms around me again. A pulled away and asked him what his deal was, and he said he just wanted to show me the way, and grabbed me again. I backed away, unsure how to respond. His gestures didn’t seem aggressive or forceful; it was more like he didn’t realize you’re not supposed to just touch people whenever you want to. But, there wasn’t anyone else around where we were, and the whole thing seemed sketchy, so I told him to just drive me back to town, which he did without further comment. Once again I was seething mad, and since we were 11k from town, I had time to decide whether I wanted to pay him, and what I wanted to say about his behavior. I decided on half of the agreed payment, and rehearsed a brief speech about the nature of sexual harassment, how it was illegal, and how it was not acceptable to touch people against their will in any context, be they clients, friends, or lovers.

He seemed shocked when I only gave him half the money, and pleaded several times that we had made an agreement. I repeated my comments about his behavior, we stared at each other for a few moments, then I turned and walked away. I was rather shaken, mostly by the confrontation, and was thinking the rest of the time I was in the town about how awkward it would be to run into him again. Luckily, I didn’t. Also luckily, I was sharing a room at the hostel with a tall, blond woman from Denmark, who perfectly understood how tiring and irritating it was to be constantly attracting objectifying attention from men. We commiserated, and I felt much better.

After that abysmal start, things got much better, and I loved my time in Peru. Besides obnoxious male behavior, the think that made the biggest impression on me in the beginning, as I traveled through northwestern Peru was the landscape. Desert. Dry and dusty, with only short scrubby trees. Coming from the cloud forest in southern Ecuador, where things are perpetually damp but also verdantly green, it was a shock but also a bit of a relief. Thoroughly dry laundry, what a treat!

My friend Alejandro and I met in the tiny coastal town of Huanchaco. I know Ale because we worked together in New York (he’s a health educator at a school clinic). He was visiting his family in Argentina, so he hopped over to join me for part of the Peru segment of my trip.

Huanchaco is famous for having fishermen who still make and use traditional reed boats. Ale braved the freezing seas to take one out for a float, promptly being drawn by the current into an area of high waves where the boat owner had told him not to go. In spite of the concerned fisherman’s wild shouting and gesturing from the shore, Ale continued unconcerned, overturning a few times but otherwise escaping unscathed. Or at least not seriously hurt…he did receive some nasty scrapes from being dragged along the rocky shore by the surf. But he felt triumphant nonetheless, and jokingly reiterated his claim to being a true fisherman for the rest of the trip.

Our first day together we went to a large local market. Ale grew up in Argentina, but hadn’t been in the sprawling chaos of a developing country market. You can buy anything from a rice cooker to a lacy pair of underwear to a fresh whole cow head. My favorite thing is too see all the fresh fruits and vegetables and the bags and bags of grains, spices, and other food sold in bulk. He proposed we share a glass of a dark purple mystery drink that the vendor said was made of corn. It was sold from a bucket, served in communal glasses. I don’t remember if it was fermented or not. This is pretty much the epitome of the street food travel advisors tell you never to eat, but Alejandro was undaunted. It was quite tasty, and neither of us suffered digestive consequences. I feel I have met my match in terms of the iron stomach!! Alison was impressed that I brush my teeth with tap water while traveling, even in the rural communities of Ecuador. But Ale may even surpass me, having drunk freely from bathroom faucets at several of the archeological sites we visited.

From Huanchaco we went to Cusco, the largest city in the Sacred Valley. This valley is home to Machu Picchu (MP), but it is also amazingly beautiful in its own right. Because of logistical complications related to reaching MP (the only way is to take a train, which fills quickly), we ended up staying 2 extra days in the Sacred Valley while waiting to go to MP. We stayed in several small towns in the highlands, mostly hiking. We took hikes to archeological sights, a salt mine, and a Incan horticultural experiment site (all cool), but the most impressive part was the beauty of the landscape. We had 360º views of steep and jagged mountain peaks, many covered in snow. There were small lakes, and rolling farmland colored red and golden and brown. There were terraces cut into the steep hillsides, so even the mountain slopes could be farmed. We walked and walked and walked, and kept repeating over and over, “I can’t believe how beautiful it is here…”

One afternoon we were walking through farmland outside a small town and saw a group of people clustered around a pile of straw. They were sifting fava beans from their husks. Several people tossed shovelfuls of the pile in the air and the heavier beans fell to the ground while the lighter husk and straw blew to the side. Several other people tossed stray beans back into the pile. We later came across another group of people in a preliminary part of the fava processing, guiding three donkeys to spin around in circles on top of the pile of favas, to break open the husks. It seemed like a pretty tedious process, and for fava beans, no less. Blech.

The Sacred Valley seemed very prosperous, and we weren’t sure why. It’s not that people seemed especially wealthy, but there wasn’t visible poverty. Or maybe it was that there weren’t huge income disparities. Most people dressed similarly, everyone had shoes, the houses all seemed to be in good condition and of the same clay material, no one was begging. Maybe it was the trickle-down effect of tourist dollars? (It’s really expensive to visit MP) Maybe the terrain is so beautiful and the ground looks so fertile that we just imagined prosperity. Maybe small farmers do still manage to make a good living from their land. Several people with whom I spoke said they mainly grew food for their own families, and sold a little on the side. A man on the ride from Ecuador described how the government had broken up traditional farming cooperatives about 15 years ago and given each family a tiny parcel of private land. Many people didn’t have the skills to manage their land independently, so they sold it to large companies. They were then forced to either become employees of the companies or move to the city to find work. In either case, many have ended in poverty. This didn’t appear to be the case in the Sacred Valley. One person said the land was private, but man still use the system of working in common, a process called minka. In any case, they seem to have a good thing going. I can see why the Incas called the valley “sacred” – it’s beautiful and fertile.

While in Peru I ate 3 new fruits – 2 winners and a loser. The loser was called tumbo, it’s closely related to the granadilla (a kind of passionfruit) that I LOVE. They’re both filled with a bunch of crunchy seeds in a mucousy membrane, that’s quite creepy looking. But granadillas have a sweet, delicious flavor and the poor tumbo was sour and nasty. Not to be repeated. The winners were lúguma, an orange-sized fruit with an inside the color and texture of boiled egg yolk. It had a mild sweet flavor, and got a thumbs-up for having such a unique texture for a fruit (and also being tasty). But the winner, surpassing the granadilla as my favorite weird fruit, was the cherimoya. I think I’ve actually seen cherimoya in the supermarket here (and my spellchecker recognizes them!), but I had never eaten one. And just looking at it, you might not want to. It’s about the size of a grapefruit, but can be various lobular shapes. The skin is greenish black with a scaly-looking pattern. You peel the skin, and eat the fleshy inside – the texture of a pear and the flavor of a fijoa (strawberry/pear/banana?). YUM!

Speaking culinarily, I also had some alpaca meat. Alejandro felt I was quite a traitor, because earlier in the day we had come across an alpaca while hiking and I had chirped at it in a very friendly way until it was brave enough to come and sniff my cheek. Then I ate its brethren for dinner. Quite good. Tender, mild flavor. Goes down a lot easier than guinea pig, with which you have to get quite intimate, what with all the little leg and rib bones.

Going back to the hiking adventures, we hiked to an archeological site which they say the Incas used to test farming techniques. It is a series of concentric circular terraces, cut into deep bowls in the earth. They crops would have been protected from the wind, and the elevation change is great enough that plants that normally grew in different climate zones could all be grown in one place. There was a sophisticated irrigation system, and stone steps connecting the terraces. Very cool.

That same day, after nearly 20k of hiking, we ended at a salt mine. It’s built around a warm, very saline spring coming out of a hillside. It had terraced pools, which fill with water then evaporate, leaving salt. The pools are all connected to channels, so when they have emptied out the salt they open a tiny gate that refills the pool, and the process begins again. Looking at the hillside, it looks like it’s covered in snow – but the crystals are all salt, rather than water.

We were in Peru at the height of the tourist season, and there were certainly more visible tourists in the city of Cusco than anywhere else we visited. But at the same time, when we were wandering around in the Sacred Valley, or even visiting the craft markets, it felt like there was hardly anyone around. Even at Machu Picchu, which is supposed to get more than 1000 visitors a day in the high season, when we took a hike off the beaten track, we barely saw anyone. I felt quite lucky to avoid the masses and see such beautiful places in peace and quiet.

Which brings me to Machu Picchu, the reason it occurred to me to visit Peru in the first place. It’s quite a production to go, you have to travel the last two hours by train because there are no roads, so pretty much only tourists go, so the prices are sky high and trains and hotels sell out. Our fluid and relaxed travel style (read: fly-by-the seat-of-our-pants) caused us a bit of a problem here, but after some finagling of our schedule and a bit of unplanned expense we made it to Aguas Calientes (the nearest city) and secured a hotel room. We paid dearly for a dark, musty room with bright fake flowers and super cheesy art. The classic Machu Picchu photo was gilt framed, and we took our pictures in front of it, not even guessing that could have been the closest we got to seeing Machu Picchu. Here’s what happened.

We got up before 5am, to arrive at the gates early and be allowed to enter a trail inside the park that only 400 people a day could walk. When we arrived, the park was blanketed by a fog as thick as pea soup. We couldn’t see anything, much less the supposedly amazing view over the ruins and into the mountains. But, after a few wrong turns, we found the gate at the trailhead and started hiking. The trail ascended rapidly, and the hills dropped off steeply to our sides. Fog prevented us from seeing more than a few yards in any direction, so we didn’t really have a sense of where we were going. We hiked steadily up for maybe an hour and a half, but couldn’t see anything. I was really tired, having slept poorly the night before and gotten up so early. We were hoping the fog would burn off, so we would get to see the view that was the point of the hike. And so, in spite of feeling a bit odd, we indulged in a 2 hour nap on the side of the trail! And sure enough, after 2 hours of sleep, when we opened our eyes we were greeted with a breath-taking view. We were about ¾ of the way up a steep, cloud-forested mountain, looking over a river valley. We pushed on, first dipping down to an archeological site on the back side of the mountain, then circling back up a STEEP trail to the peak. For all their short legs, the Incans built TALL steps! It was a seemingly endless stair climb, steeper and steeper until we actually had to climb a ladder up a rock face. Eventually we came to the peak of the mountain, and looked out down over the other side, where we could see the ruins of Machu Picchu. We realized that we had actually scaled the rock spire that is the backdrop of the famous image of Machu Picchu!

Coming down the front of the spire was even sketchier than climbing up the back. Steep, narrow steps, one side of which clung to the mountain, the other side of which plunged off into a rocky abyss. With nary a hand rail. There had been a casual warning at the trailhead that people should be fit in order to take this hike, but I had no idea... I think if it had not been foggy when I started and had actually known the hike I was in for, I might have had second thoughts! However, the view was well worth it, and I triumphantly reentered the park to see the ruins close-up, legs shaking with fatigue (and perhaps relief that I hadn’t dropped off the cliff.)

I could go on about Machu Picchu…there is a mysterious and interesting history, and the images of such an ancient city perched in the mountains are eerie and incredible), but it’s time to wrap up this travelogue.

The last story is from my taxi ride to the airport. I eventually gave in to the $15 taxi, after doggedly trying to take a $.30 van/bus (against everyone’s advice…I love riding public buses and I think people’s anxiety about theft is a bit extreme). Even at 8pm, with a van passing every 3 minutes, the vehicles were so jammed with commuters that no one would let me and my big back pack on. When was the last time you rode in a minivan with 20 people??. So I hopped in a hotel/airport shuttle that happened to pass by, and had a luxury van to myself. Inevitably, the driver started to quiz me as to my relationship status, why an attractive young woman like me would be single, if I planned to have children, yada, yada, yada. To shift the focus, I asked him about his family. A wife and three kids, the oldest of which had been born when the driver was about 20. He said, “I was really young.” A started talking about the work I had done in Ecuador with family planning, and asked if he had planned to have a child at 20. Definitely not, he said, but they hadn’t been using any method of birth control, and thus had three kids in close succession. Then, deciding that three was plenty, the wife had gotten an IUD and had been using it ever since (maybe 15 years).

This conversation was enjoyable to me on several levels. First, it was a successful break from the sexual innuendo of “do you have a boyfriend?” Second, I’m impressed with how open and frank people in Latin America are (especially men) about talking about contraception. I mean, how often do you have a casual conversation about sexual health with someone you meet on the street in the U.S.? It’s pretty amazing to be able to, without putting people off. I like to think it’s an indication of healthy social progress. Third, his was a success story. He and his wife both recognized that the kids were coming earlier and faster than they wanted, and were able to put on the brakes. Hooray for public health!

And with that, I was at the airport, happy to end my Peruvian adventure with a male interaction about which I felt good, remembering all the beautiful images of the Sacred Valley.