Machu Picchu

This part of the trip was definitely the bucket list item that I was trying to check off the list ;) Apparently Ryan didn't actually really know what Machu Picchu was so he didn't seem quite as excited about it until we got there. I had been hearing reports lately that the due to the tourism in the area, the site was deteriorating rather quickly, so I really wanted to see it in it's prime. After being there, I didn't really see much evidence of deterioration so I think there's still plenty of time to see it in person.

After much research, I decided the best way to do this part of the trip was to fly into Cusco, Peru, take a taxi to Ollantaytombo, then jump on the train to Aguas Caliente. All means of transportation ended up to be a great way to see the Peruvian mountains and mountain towns, so that was awesome. I had read that it was good to spend your first night in Aguas Caliente in order to adjust to the elevations of the mountain towns. I'm glad we did either way because it's a super cute little town and it made getting up and going to Machu Picchu the next morning super easy. By the time we made it to Aguas Caliente, we checked into our hotel and just wandered the town and grabbed some supper before calling it a night.

A lot of people were saying that you should get up super early to catch the first bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu in order to be the first people into the ruins...we were not that motivated. I'm sure that would have been lovely, but I think getting there well rested was even better ;) After breakfast at the hotel, we headed down the street to catch a bus up to the ruins. It turned out to be a perfect day to be there. We wandered around for a couple of hours in the ruins before it was time to climb the mountain. They only sell about 400 tickets a day for entrance to the adjacent mountain (200 for early morning and 200 for late morning). I definitely wanted to get in of that, so I had purchased that with our entrance tickets months ago.

The climb up the mountain was pretty much all stairs...but really old and really steep stairs. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty tough especially in such a high elevation...luckily we're in pretty good shape, so we faired much better than most of the other people attempting the climb. We got to the top and enjoyed the awesome views of Machu Picchu from above. If you can handle the climb it's definitely worth it.

For the way back down the mountain, there are two options: back the same way we came, or down around the other side past and ancient cave ruins (the longer option). As we started along the cave trail down, we were stopped by guides who warned us that this route would take an additional 3 hours. I think that was good that they were warning people of the additional length, but they were rather far off on time estimates as it only took us about and hour and a half. Luckily we chose to press on mostly because it was much less crowded on that route. I would say out of the 200 people who went up the mountain at our entrance time, maybe 10 of the would have gone back down the cave direction, so we nearly had the trail to ourselves!

The cave itself was kind of interesting and would have been more interesting if there wasn't 3 people sitting at the mouth of the cave smoking pot the whole time making the entire cave a little hot box.

The trail on this side was much more interesting too and a little easier than navigating all the tiny stairs packed with people.

After we made it back off of the mountain we wandered the ruins a little more before grabbing lunch and heading back down to Aguas Calientes to hop a train back to Cusco. We spent the night in Cusco and relaxed in the pool for the night after a long day of exhausting climbing.

The next morning we got to enjoy Cusco for a while. We wandered around the streets and found an awesome giant market place to wander through. Being a mountain town, there were a lot of hills and stairs for us to traverse here too. We're definitely getting our workouts in at this point.

The other big thing I wanted to do in Cusco was to visit the Saksaywaman ruins. It's up the hill (of course) from down town Cusco, so we climbed up that way. The scale of these ruins aren't nearly comparable to Machu Picchu, but the construction of them were really unique. The rocks they used for the defense walls were ridiculously massive, and the walls were formed in a zig zag shape making some of the rocks curved at the edges. They were also jointed together impressively well...masters of tetris apparently. As if that wasn't impressive enough...enter the slides...yes these ruins had giant slides carved into a large rock hill. They were incredibly slick to slide down, but so much fun! That's definitely something I've never seen/done at ruins before!

After the ruins, we headed back to catch a flight for our next adventure...Chile!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

This will probably need to be several different posts. Ryan's birthday was May 13th, so I woke up bright and early to make him birthday pancakes before work and give him his gift...a 12 day vacation to South America! Admittedly this was just as much a gift to myself as it was to him, but I planned out the whole trip months ago to take him there for his birthday. Neither of us really knew what we were getting into with this trip and we ended up being completely blown away. It was an amazing trip and it's definitely on the list of places to go back to as soon as possible!

At LARCOMAR (the Cliffside plaza below our hotel)

We left a couple of days after his birthday and after several layovers and lots of flying, we made it to Lima, Peru Saturday morning. Luckily they let us check into our hotel super early so we could rest a little before hitting up the big city. This was also great timing hotel wise because we're now Platinum Marriott members so got lots of fun perks along the way ;) Our hotel in Lima was in Miraflores, right along the coast, so we had great views of the Pacific Ocean. Over all on this trip (other than Machu Picchu) I was pleasantly surprised to see how non-touristy this area is. There were a few Europeans that we noticed, but very few Americans anywhere, which was quite refreshing!

View from our room...don't mind the dirty windows.

After napping for a bit, we started wandering around the city. Just south of Miraflores in the Barranco neighborhood which is a little more artsy and colorful and a little less big cityish. It was a super cute area to wander through and get our first taste of amazing Peruvian food. Peruvian food, by the way, may now be my favorite food ever! I could eat ceviche, causa, and empanadas among other things all the time! And the pisco drinks were great too! The first place we stopped I actually had no idea what I was ordering (it was causa). I was imagining it might be a meat dish? turns out it was a perfectly pressed tower of sweet potatoes, avocado, and seafood delishiousness that immediately became my favorite dish! I'm so glad I randomly pointed at that menu item!

Barranco neighborhood

wandering down the waterfront cliffs

so much new construction going on...Brutalism is alive and well here

Amazing colors everywhere!

Causa...it is amazing...droooooool...

After wandering aimlessly around Barranco, we cleaned up at the hotel and caught a taxi over to the historic district of Lima on the east side of the city. It was a Saturday night, so it was quite bustling. We wandered around to some of the big churches, where we saw several weddings going on! They were all public churches though, so we wandered around them as the weddings were in session which was kind of strange, but a fun thing to watch!

Convento de San Francisco

Cathedral of Lima

Convento de San Francisco with a wedding going on...

Promenade

Walking back towards the center of the city, we wandered through an area that reminded me a lot of Rome. Lots of old architecture still but a promenade packed with people and lined with all kinds of stores and bright lights. It was a little too packed to really stick around too much, so we continued to wander on through. It was a bit far to actually walk all the way back to the hotel from the historic area, but there was one other sight I wanted to see the first night that was on the way and walkable, so we made our way over to the Magical Fountain Park! It is literally a whole big park scattered with super unique and artistic fountains! Talking to a Peruvian later, we found out that locals were actually pretty upset that the city was making this park because there's a large lack of water supply to local neighborhoods and what they do have is already really expensive, so making a whole park of water fountains seemed like a terrible idea. It was originally a free public space, but now they charge an entry fee (of about $1) which has left it pretty accessible to the general public while still recuperating all of the costs for the construction and now the money goes back into city infrastructure, so the Peruvians are happy.

Even late at night when we got there, the place was packed with what seemed like mostly locals. There were fountains of so many shapes and sizes, some with colorful lights or light shows. One was a tunnel that you could walk through. One was a water park that you could play in where the spouts were turned on and off and people hopped around it. There was a smaller water park area just for kids too. There were a few giant fountains were they were doing a fountain show to music at. It was so pretty to wander through!

 

After that little excursion we headed back to Miraflores for some dinner and getting ready for flying out again the next morning! More on our next adventures in the next blog!

Local Adventures...

Our last few weekends haven't been too exciting, mostly because we were busy studying for one of many architecture registration exams...which we both passed! We have had some great weather lately though, so we've taken advantage of that with some close to Seattle hikes and such!

 

Last weekend I also participated in my first trail run. It was like a normal timed race except it was on trails through the woods. It felt so different than my normal road races. It was super frustrating that I couldn't go my normal race pace, but once I got over that, it was a lot of fun. There were definitely hills and mud and logs to jump over and rocks. It made for an interesting 5+ miles. I would definitely try one of those again!

A couple of weekends ago Ryan had an afternoon of client meetings on the Eastside, so I dropped him off and Ben and I climbed up a mountain. It was an awesome hike. It was close to Seattle, but somehow not very packed at all, I maybe saw 15-20 people on the trail. It was super steep, to the point of using hands to pull myself up at points and the top was mostly boulders to scramble over. That made the short 2 miles seem a lot longer. The top was beautiful! 360 degree views on a ridge of boulders and it happened to be perfectly sunny out!

Last weekend after my trail run, I apparently thought it was a brilliant idea to climb a mountain as well. It was actually supposed to be a 3 mile hike into a lake, but it was really a 2 mile hike up to the ridge then a mile hike down to the lake on the other side. We got to the top of the ridge, enjoyed the view of the lake from the top and turned around. It was still a really pretty hike though and not too packed with people again!

Blanca Lake

First backpacking trip of the year was a huge success!! It's been a warm spring, but there is still a little snow in the mountain and apparently quite a bit at Blanca Lake. We picked this hike because there was still a little snow, but the trail was traversable, so we could make it there at least. It was also a short enough hike that if need be we could have turned it into a day hike. Turns out it was the perfect little overnighter.

The hike says it was 3.5 miles into the lake, but it felt like way more than that! Maybe it was the big packs we were carrying or the snow we had to traverse starting about halfway there, or maybe it was just because it was a 3,300 ft elevation gain! Either way, by the time we got to the lake, I was pretty happy I didn't have to turn around and go back the same day. I was also pretty excited that on the way out to the trail we stopped at the new Chik-Fil-A in Bellevue and had gotten an extra sandwich for lunch...it was amazing to bust it out at the end of the hike!

This was my first time snow camping, and it was a perfect experience. It was actually about 60+ degrees and sunny when we got to the lake despite the lake being partially frozen and there being snow everywhere. We found ourselves an open snowy area to set up camp and proceeded to stomp out a platform for our tent. I'm not entirely sure if we were camping on land or over frozen water or most likely over driftwood at the bank. There was enough snow to keep us up either way.

As it got later more and more day hikers started heading home and we ended up having the lake almost to ourselves. There were about 3 or 4 other campsites set up for the night, but they were far enough away from ours that it felt like we were alone. Since it was a perfectly clear night, we ended up sleeping in the tent without the rain fly on, so it was just a mesh enclosure and we even left the door open, so it was like we were sleeping in the open air. It did get a bit chilly, but I stayed warm enough bundled in my sleeping back. It must have been below freezing because there was a new layer of ice over the lake that was thawed the day before. As soon as the sun started coming up though it warmed right up!

I ended up being so warm as we were packing up that it was shorts and a tank top for the walk back out! It was a great trip and I'm really glad we went when there was still some snow on the ground, it was absolutely beautiful!