Disaster Recap

Since coming home, my days have consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, then going back to bed while perusing Facebook on my laptop. Going through all the pictures of our travels, I'm thoroughly amazed that we accomplished so much and emerged virtually unscathed. Bowels and gastrointestinal tracts included. Which brings to mind our initial goals for the trip:

a) not dying
b) having a greater summer than any of you will ever experience
c) learning to eat spicy food
d) avoid getting explosive diarrhea
e) successfully communicating in Spanish

A) is a phenomal accomplishment, but we did have some close calls... During the run to the heights of Machu Picchu I gave up on relying on my cheap windup flashlight. Consequently, I tumbled down a set of stairs and rolled my ankle over a misplaced step, almost sending me over a cliff. Biking down the World's Most Dangerous Road - the entire 8 hour bike ride was a near death experience. In the beginning you speed past glaciers and mountain snow passes at 50 km/hr, and after descending into the jungle, it becomes a gravel road where your bike tires are literally inches from a 3300 ft drop to the left, with cascades pouring down on the right. It requires extreme concentration, and we had little mountain biking experience, save for the Banos expedition/day of hell (please see Banos post). After a challenging turn, I looked up from my handlebars for 2 seconds, which sent my bike straight towards the drop, and so, completely terrified, I swung back and forth, wildly overcompensating trying to right myself back into a straight line, while hurtling towards yet another gut-wrenching curve. To eliminate excessive disaster possibilities, we went with Gravity, the most expensive and most reputable of all the guiding companies. They said that only one person had ever died under their care while tackling the WMDR. He was in his 50s, and they supposed that he suffered a heart attack, because there were no cries and no brake marks before he went over the drop. Before they built a newer road several years ago, this road used to average a fatality every week.

Where the road started in La Cumbre, at 4700m

The road ended in Coroico, 1100m after biking like this for 4 hours

B) This one is tough to judge, especially after learning of the incredible places where our other friends were travelling - all over Europe, Egypt, Senegal, Costa Rica, Japan, etc. Except none of their travels were as thoroughly documented as ours and the only proof was their photos which could have been cleverly photoshopped, so we'll still take the honours. However, my younger sister (the biggest newborn, as described here) experienced Snoop Dogg live at Bluesfest, a secret dream of mine that will probably never be realized, so we'll call it a tie.

C) Surprisingly enough, spicy food is a rare commodity in the South American places that we travelled to. Most of their typical food is actually really boring, consisting mainly of soup, rice and potatoes. Cool fact: the Incans grew over 3,000 different types of potatoes. Anyways, we tried enough rediculous foods to last a lifetime, which we described in this fantastic post. Which leads to the next goal...

D) I don't want to get too detailed with this topic, but I will say that I got the loosey gooseys more than once. Meghan can speak for herself if she wants to. There are a number of possibilities - seasickness, high altitude, lack of sleep, drinking the water... but I think one episode could be attributed to the fried pig skins and raw onions that a bought for $1 from a street vendor in Banos. Immediately before horseback riding. Sometimes you have to learn lessons the hard way. Luckily it never got to the explosive level, so I still say this goal was successfully accomplished. For all you present and future travellers, I strongly recommend that you bring Ciprofloxacin, an anti-explosive diarrhea wonder drug.

E) This goal is still iffy, but you can't say it wasn't attained for lack of trying, as evidenced by this conversation and this one later on. Having a background in French helped immensely because the languages are so similar, but really all you need is a positive attitude and an open mind. I constantly made mistakes and so was constantly the laughingstock (I once claimed that I was a man, intending to say that I was hungry), but it's all in good fun. Once you explain that you speak muy poco Espanol but you're willing to learn and practise, everyone becomes very patient and helpful. Having a pocket dictionary is oh so very handy as well.

So it's been a full week since my plane touched down in Canada, and I'm actually really happy to be back. Not much has changed, except that my driving skills have significantly deteriorated, not that they were very stellar to begin with. My parents took me to Zehrs and I wandered into the cereal aisle where I stood, amazed, at all the varieties staring back at me. Our grocery bill has doubled since I've come home, I'm not even kidding.

Anyways I've given it 7 days, but I still have... the itch. It won't go away and I think about it constantly. The travelling itch, I mean! Two months just doesn't do justice to South America, and I'm envious of all our travelling companions that we met who went on to the salt flats in Bolivia, surfed in Venezuela and saw the Igazu falls in Brazil. I'm determined to go back there one day, but it won't stop at that continent. I want to do all the wonders of the world, especially the pyramids, as well as the Mayan and Aztec worlds. So I guess what I mean to say is that I hope this won't be the last post, because the future holds so many possibilities for disaster travelling. Anyone want to join?

-V

One last disaster

This is going to be a quick post.... thought we´d squeeze in one last disaster before heading home on the 10th. I´m fairly certain this will be the disaster to end all disasters. Has anyone ever heard of the World´s Most Dangerous Road? We´re going to be conquering in about 10 hours from now starting at 8 am Bolivian time, and you can all follow along as we race downhill on our mountainbikes at breakneck speed, descending 3600m in altitude within a span of 4 hours...



http://www.gravitybolivia.com/view?page=12

Wish us luck! Thanks for reading :)

So long, Peru!

We´re getting kicked out of Peru because we´re too big.

Just kidding, our 3 week whirlwind tour is coming to an end and tomorrow we head to La Paz, Bolivia for a couple of days. We´ve been travelling with an awesome group of people with Tucan Travel, the cheapest tour group that we could find, and it´s been one fantastic disaster after another. We´re all around the same age group, mostly Brits and Irish, and everyone shares our thirst for travel and adventure. Tom is the most British person we´ve ever met; tall and lanky, moans about mundane things like the butter being too hard to spread, can´t rap for the life of him and is a superstar on the football field. Aid has the strongest accent I´ve ever heard and half of our conversations our incomprehendable, but he´s a complete gentlemen. Sarah and Nicky are two very lovely English girls, and cracking dancers as well. Jesse and Joel are the youngest Brits and can drink everyone under the table.
Suse is our Australian tour guide and we suspect that she´s a superhero by night. She´s been travelling on every continent, used to be a 18-wheeler truck driver and qualified to be on the Australian olympics team for high jump, and she´s only 28 years old. She conducted an 8 month tour through Africa last year and managed to concoct a different menu for dinner each night. Needless to say, nobody has lost any weight on this tour. Our truck driver is a South African named Vess, and he´s especially great with us and pulls over whenever someone´s rough night out.
As Canadians, we´re obligated to represent our country in all aspects, whether it be through showing our football skills at an altitude of 4000 m or seeing who can dance on the bar until 5am. Being such an international group, we often have stimulating conversations where we´re fielded questions such as ´Why do you call it a washroom when you don´t go there to wash yourselves?´ or ´Why do you use the metric system but still measure height and weight in feet and pounds?´ and my personal favourite ´Why do you club baby seals?´ Because it makes them taste better.
We´ve been having a great time so far, with some of the highlights including sandboarding in the Huacachina desert, watching condors soar on the thermal currents of Colca Canyon and staying with a Peruvian family while wearing their traditional clothing at Lake Titicaca. Only a couple more days in Bolivia before we head home. Tomorrow we´ll explore the markets in La Paz. I hear they sell everything there from uranium to AK-47s, so some of you should expect some interesting souvenirs.

Cheers,
V

Machu Picchu - we did it!

Our group at the beginning of the Inca Trail

Hiking the Inca Trail to get to Machu Picchu was basically the premise for our entire trip to South America. Although nothing could have prepared us better for the gruelling trek than two months of disaster travelling, I was still nervous about how the whole trip would pan out. Two nights before the hike, I was struck with a horrible cold but nothing could have stopped me at this point. Here´s a rundown of the 4 most arduous but rewarding days of my life so far:

Day 1

The first day was hot, dusty, and long. After an overnight stay in the neighbouring town of Ollaytaytambo, our group of 7 was met by our guide, Julio César. We could not have asked for a more amazing guide - this was Julio´s 500th Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu in just 14 years, making him an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience. They let in 500 people per day, including civilians, guides and porters, and at this point in time the Inca Trail is booked solid through to November. We spent most of the day listening to Julio point out surrounding landscapes and Incan ruins, as well as getting used to the terrain and setting a comfortable walking pace. After walking from sun-up to sun-down, we finally arrived at our first campsite where we were greeted with cheers and applause from our porters. This is something that we´ve encountered throughout all of our travels in Peru and Ecuador - no matter where we go, the service and food are always beyond spectacular. Every night we´d be enthusiastically greeted by our crew, and they would have our tents and eating areas beautifully set up. There was even individual wash up stations with clean water and soap for all of us before our meals. Our cook, Carlitos, was phenomenal and somehow managed to make different delicious concoctions every day of our trek in the middle of the Andean mountains. Oh and every morning we were awoken with steaming mugs of delicious hot chocolate.

Day 2

The only way to describe the second day was god-awful. There was 7 km of constant uphill hiking needed to reach the dreaded Dead Woman´s Pass or Warmiwañusca and each step was more painstaking than the last. I now have calf muscles bigger than my waist to show for it. The worst part is that we were walking at an altitude of more than 4000m, making it difficult to fill our lungs with air. It was kind of like trying to climb uphill for six hours with a 10 pound weight sitting on your chest. As we meandered along the valleysides, we could hear Julio playing El Condor Pasa on his flute from a distance. It was encouraging, if not a bit insulting, that he had so much more energy than we did.

Us at the top of Dead Woman´s Pass - 4200 m above sea level

Julio encouraging (mocking?) us along the trail

Day 3
This was the best day ever! After reaching the highest point of the hike at the first pass, the hiking on day 3 was easy-peasy. As we began our descent, the pine forests and dusty rocks turned into lush rainforest vegetation, and on either side of the trail there were orchids, purple lupins, red mosses and hummingbirds. The way to the last campsite was almost entirely downhill, and by the end of the day we picked up the pace until we were almost running fullspeed down the trail. It´s amazing how much everyone´s strength and stamina improved. We were almost euphoric when the last campsite came into view, with everyone congratulating and high-fiving one another. Wiñay Wayna is the last stop for everyone before they leave for Machu Picchu the following day, and the entire town was buzzing with excitement. At dinner I was so pumped up that I couldn´t sit still - we had almost conquered the Incan trail, I could finally breathe without difficulty, and I didn´t need three pairs of socks to sleep that night - what more could you need from life?

Taking things easy on day 3

Day 4

We woke up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am. Somehow we had convinced ourselves that we needed to be the first to reach Machu Picchu, to make Julio proud for his landmark 500th trip. By quarter past 4, we were the first ones to reach the control point, where we had to wait for the gates to open in the morning. Other groups had the same idea, and we sat there grinning in the dark, where the other groups found us and groaned with disappointment as they realized they were the second, third, forth, etc. to reach the gates. Julio warned us that every day groups were very competitive when it came to reaching the ruins first, and that often people were pushed off of the path when they got in the way. I thought it was a bad idea, but when the gates finally opened a surge of adrenaline rushed through me and suddenly I was ahead of the pack with Chris, a fellow Canadian. We realized it was very possible that we could be the first to reach the ruins, and so we sprinted the entire path under the cover of complete darkness while tumbling down rocks, heaving ourselves up the steps and pushing spiderwebs from our faces. As we reached the last leg of the trail, the sun began to peak over the ruins, revealing that we were indeed the first to reach the eastern gates of famous Incan ruins. Exhausted, sweating but exhilarated, what else would two triumphant Canadians do on Canada Day as the sun rises over Machu Picchu? Belt out Oh Canada to the rest of the world, of course!

Getting ready to burst through the gates at 5:30 am

Sprinting up ridiculous Incan steps to be the first at the sun gate

And Machu Picchu itself? It was incredible, but I wouldn´t do it any justice by writing about it. Plus you´re all going to hike the Inca Trail yourselves one day, right?

-V


Machu Picchu Stats:

• Total length of Inca Trail: 45 Km
  
• Altitude at Kilometre 82 (the starting point): 2600m
  
• Highest altitude at Warmiwañusca: 4200m
  
• Hours spent hiking/climbing/crawling: 25 hrs
  
• Record time for completing the Inca Trail: 3.5 hrs
  
• Number of times I felt like giving up: none
  
• Best meal during hike: Mashed potatoes stuffed with carrots and peas, chicken breast with rolled mozarella cheese and ham and pasta salad. Finished with a cinnamon and clove mulled wine.

p.s. we haven´t posted any photos of Machu Picchu itself for those of you out there who are like us and want to see it for yourself.

-meghan

Happy Canada Day!

While disaster travelling has its perks, there are a couple things we miss from home besides friends and family. On this day, we´d like you all to take a moment and appreciate the simple things our great nation has to offer:

• Being able to say ´eh´ without being mocked mercilessly
• Being able to sleep in past 6 on Sundays without being woken by firecrackers and religious processions
• Clean, pure, 100% drinkable water
• Peanut butter
• Toilets (how many of you have managed squatting over a hole in the ground?)
• Toilet seats
• Water pressure
• Walk/Don´t Walk signals
• Pedestrian right of way
• Long summer nights

Happy Birthday Canada!