kellita the señorita the ibby dibby dow: Jungle Trek

I had been in Cuzco, patiently waiting the start of my big 5-day Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu, enjoying the charm of the city. Sunday night after I had finished packing, Karina, her roomie and I went out to dinner, a big pizza to send me off carbed up for the big trek. When we were home and in bed, me repeatedly asking my body to wake me up at 3:30am, the doorbell started blowing up. After five minutes of thinking it was a drunken bum who was really persistent, Karina finally answered it to find the owner of my tour company with the great news that my trek was cancelled. NBD. As I've said before, I'm mad flexible. "So we'll leave Tuesday then?" I said in my most casual flexible voice. Of course it wasn't that easy. The rest of my group would leave Tuesday but since I had already bought my non-refundable entrance to the big MP for Friday I would need to change my plans and join the 4-day jungle trek so as not to forfeit the entrance. I was kind of bummed about it but went with the flow. And everything turned out a-ok.

I met the tour guide, Hugo, in Plaza de Armas Tuesday morning at 7:30 to find myself surrounded by a group of young men. Hugo informed me that I was the premio or prize of the trip for I would be the only lady traveling with 15 boys. As we made our way to the tour bus I was happy to find that he was mistaken and that there were two of us women-kind.

We drove about 4 hours through the Sacred Valley, with a formal introduction of each person in the group. The weather was beautiful and sunny with great rock ballads on the radio until we reached the top of the mountain where we would begin our mountain bike dissent. When we got out of the van we could hardly see the views as dark clouds moved in and it began to seriously rain. We donned the rain ponchos we had thankfully bought for 3 soles and began riding downhill, the first part of our 4-day journey. Just like the downhill in La Paz I found myself questioning this decision as I tried to feel my fingers. But as we moved downhill, the weather got nicer and the rain thinned out. We removed clothing the closer we got to the bottom, and in an act of faith I put my rain jacket in the van for the final push through small streams, and ended up at the end muddy and soaked as the rain started again at the end. We left the bikes behind a small store and hosed off before eating a mock lunch of a pithy cheese sandwich, cookies, crackers and chips. The road ahead had flooded and therefore we wouldn't get our normal homemade lunch. Instead of driving to the next town we loaded up the backpacks and started walking. We had to wait about 30 minutes to cross the makeshift bridge as a bulldozer attempted to clear the rubble. Luckily on the other side we were able to find a shuttle into which we somehow stuffed 16 people and our gear. It was sort of like being in a sweaty sauna/locker room after a sweaty workout and the back windows fogged up as we continued on.

We arrived in Santa Maria, and I was happily surprised to be awarded my own private room. We had a bit of downtime before heading to dinner at a local restaurant, and spent most of that time rinsing mud out of our clothes and arranging everything to dry on the clotheslines. We were starving and happy for the home-cooked food. Hugo announced that breakfast would be at 6am sharp and I hit the hay directly afterward.

Wednesday morning after breakfast we again donned our ponchos and headed out for a full day of hiking. We started along the dirt road from Santa Maria where the mud was so deep the cars couldn't pass. As we waited a bit for a tractor to clear the way, Hugo picked a cocoa fruit from a tree and we all tried it. Shortly after we began our uphill hike and stopped to rest at the home of a local woman where we got to eat oranges, passionfruit, and avocado fresh from the tree. After a few hours of intense uphill hiking, we reached La Casa de Monos where we had time to relax in the hammocks and buy snacks. Hugo gave us a lesson about some of the vegetation in the area as well as some Inca history. He then painted our faces with the inside of a plant the way Inca warriors would have done. All painted up, we were ready to move on. We had lunch at a beautiful house high in the hills after a really fascinating Inca history lesson from Hugo.

After lunch we hiked back down and walked along the rocks on the river where we crossed a huge swinging bridge to recross further down-river on an interesting home-made contraption. We were rewarded for a long day when we reached the natural hot springs around 6pm. We shared beers and chatted before lounging in the pools and soothing our tired bodies. We arrived in Santa Marta around 9pm for dinner and I passed out early exhausted from the day.

Thursday morning we got to sleep in as breakfast started at 8am. I waved goodbye to the group to do some zip lining before meeting up with them for the afternoon hike. I joined a group of about 10 others for a 2-hour canopy adventure. On our way out of town we got held up as we watched 6 rather large industrial trucks struggle to drive down the narrow river-side roads. I wouldn't want that job. Because we arrived so late, we sort of had to rush through the 6 ziplines. After a quick safety lesson we climbed 20 minutes to the first line. What an amazing feeling to fly high above the trees and the rushing river.

I met back up with my group at 1:30, ate a quick lunch and we continued on to Aguas Calientes. We walked about 3.5 hours along the train tracks, and could vaguely see towers of MP way up high in the distance. It was a rather quiet hike as we were all eager to get there, and kind of tired of the rain. I was so happy to arrive to the town and to HOT SHOWERS after 3 long days in the rain.

My next mission is one of my favorite travel adventures ever. One of the guys in our group, Gaston was celebrating his 21st birthday. I had asked him earlier in the day how it was, and he said that it was good but didn't feel so much like a birthday. So I decided he needed a cake to make it official. This was not as easy as I thought at first. I started with asking locals for good bakery recommendations. I first went to a bakery close to the touristy part of town with individual cake slices that were way overpriced. Then I went from place to place to find them cakeless. I was beginning to lose hope when the owner of a grocery store pointed me to a small house across the street. She informed me that the woman who lived there made the best cakes in the world, and that she would probably make me one with a few hours notice. I knocked on the door to find she needed 3 hours, but I only had 2 before dinner. I continued wandering up and down the streets asking random strangers until I hit the jackpot. A French man overheard me asking a restaurant owner, and told me he could help. He was a pastry chef who had just relocated there, and had a HUGE pastry-chef kitchen above his home. Though the oven wasn't working, he had just made a large carrot cake that morning, and told me he could make it "sexy" for my friend's birthday. So we climbed the stairs, and chatted as he made icing before my eyes, taught me how to write on a cake, put 9 pieces of cake together and shaped, frosted and decorated it into a perfectly acceptable birthday cake complete with candles for 21. I carefully carried it through the streets and back to the hostel. After dinner we turned out the lights and sang happy birthday. I don't usually like carrot cake but it's one of the best cakes I've ever tasted. And the birthday boy told me he always orders carrot cake when he's in the states. Win. Win.

After dinner I prepared my bag for the morning and went to bed, ready for the 4am wake up and an epic day at Machu Picchu.