Passion et Liberté: The Peruvian Highlands and the Andes

From the north till the south of Peru a long and high stretch is playing an at most important rule, being beautiful and astonishing. :) The Andes are connecting the North of South America with the South and therefore are the longest continental mountain range in the world. It is the home of the Aymara and Quechua people, the llamas, vicunjas, alpacas, viscachas, the Andean puma, the condor and more. The most beautiful of the Andes is the Cordillera Blanca in northern Peru, but unfortunately as I cut my foot while surfing I made it this time only around the southern part, around Cusco and in the direction to Bolivia.

A good place to start in southern Peru is Cusco, an Inca Empire Ex-Capital with an astonishing architecture and lively streets and bars. It's at 3400 meters altitude so its a good place to acclimatize. The market is great, the food is perfect and the ceviche is fresh! :) It has a lot history and places to go, but it's also full with bars and pubs (it even has a McDonalds, KFC, the highest Irish pub in the world and more) and you can party all night. But, watch your bags and belongings while you party. I lost some warm clothes and stuff.

Everyday a jugo gives energy and vitamins! :)

The market, and loafs of bread which came in handy but that I'll describe later.

The lunch area, really cheap and tasty.

Caldo de Gallina or chicken soup, mostly served in the morning. But there's also excellent ceviche and all kinds of potato and meat including beef and alpaca.

I love those little fellows so I didn't eat them, but they are a national recipe, the Guinea pig.

This is a part of the market where only meat or better said parts of animals, strange parts of animals are sold. I wonder why people buy a piece of a cows mouth with some teeth. Loads of them are specialized only for the mouth and jaws. :)

But then if you move further out of Cusco you will find beauty, nature and nice people living simple lives..

..and some quinoa drying in the sun. For those who don't know what quinoa is, it's a special and sacred grain-like crop which is one of the best replacements for meat.

A good start to get out of Cusco and the most played one is Machu Picchu. I don't think I have to explain a place everybody knows. This old Inca ruin was a well hidden Inca city in the high Andean jungle. Today it's visited by 2000 tourist per day. I usually don't go to places like this. But, it has a special energy and it's magical. It's actually bigger than I thought, so I ran around all day, slept around on the grass and enjoyed the view. There are several options to visit it. The cheapest one is to walk around 7 days from Cusco. A more expensive one is a bus from Cusco to the hidroelectric plant near Aguas Calientes. The rest you walk for two hours to that city. The third and horribly expensive one is a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes. From Aguas Calientes you can take a bus to the top or walk for 1-2 hours.

And then I found the lost city Machu Picchu. :) It's nicely built and the best rock "bricks" and carvings are seen on the religious buildings. They have some tourist llamas too so you can hug them and take some photos. The ones in the wild are not like this. They run away or the farmers scare you away.

I arrived and entered with the first 20 people into the city. The entrance ticket is expensive. At least I saw the ruins without crowds in the morning.

They built the whole city from giant rocks on the top of the mountain. I don't understand how they could carve all that rock and build a city. But apparently they did. And on some places you can't even fit a paper in between them.

But enough of that. The real experience of the Andes and the nature is to get out and do some trekking. The longest trek I did was the Ausangate trek, I crossed 5000 meter passes sleeping on that elevation too. But I had a lot of acclimatization and coca leaves. The Peruvian Andes go over 6700 meters but the weather conditions were not good. Actually on my last trek at Ausangate I had 5 days of rain, snow and hail. The self inflating mattress I had broke so I had to sleep on 2 big loafs of bread in a plastic bag I bought in Cusco for several nights. It actually worked really well. :) The nights are freezing, below zero and everything is all the time wet or frozen.

The Quechua people, they are really nice and humble. The deeper you go into the mountains they get scared and sometimes I had a whole village hiding in their houses and the dogs attacking me in front. They are scared of foreigners and sometimes they don't understand any Spanish. The dogs are the real killers and they sometimes hunt you down like wolfs. Throwing rocks helps a lot so you literally don't get eaten. :)

Mud bricks for the houses.

Never ever would I do the mistake of not bringing dulce (candy) with myself. On every corner children are begging for candy and they get really sad when you don't have any. :(

The cutest of all, alpacas. They are used for meat and fur and they are everywhere.

A sacred plant, coca. Chewing the leaves with an activating sweet supplement helps with dizziness, hunger, altitude sickness, headache, but doesn't give you the high as the drug cocaine. It's a must in the mountains.

The sacred mountain Ausangate in the clouds.

I found a host in the night. A Quechua who invited me to his home. We cooked and shared a meal, I spoke in broken Spanish, he in some Quechua. The communication was based basically on smiles. We ate, I slept in the house, helped him with carrying water in the morning for the alpacas he has, left him some medicine and continued further into the mountains.

The kitchen.

His alpacas.

His house.

Hot springs on the way.

Apu Ausangate, a sacred mountain for the locals. I wanted them to understand me. But they always ran away, and I was taking garbage I found of the mountain and I was cleaning it. :)

I passed many glaciers and sleeping underneath them is fun while they make sounds in the night.

God or good energy or Jah or whatever you call it is everywhere. It's not only in the shining gold, it's in every rock, in every plant, in music, in me, in you and all around us.