A guest blog written by Becky Bronson (Running to Machu Picchu – 2017)
After 10 glorious action-packed days in Peru, STRIVE’s “Adult Program” (dubbed Running to Machu Picchu) is officially over! Our journey started Sunday evening in Lima, where we were met at the airport by our Gurus for the week, Nic and Tyler. The next morning, Tyler briefed us on the week, telling us that as much as they tried to organize things, we needed to be flexible because “this is Peru and anything can happen to disrupt plans.” Amazingly, our week went completely smoothly until the very end… but more about that later. We started Monday morning at sea level in Lima with a beautiful run/walk in Miraflores along Lima’s Malecon, a gorgeous bike path which ran along the ocean. Then in the afternoon, we took a relatively short (1 ½ hour) flight to Cusco – altitude 11,152 feet! In Cusco, we met up with Scott and had our full group – 9 of us total including Nic, Tyler, and Scott.
Cusco is a beautiful city! The way the city is built into the mountains is truly astounding. It is an incredible mix of both Spanish Colonial and Incan architecture. Our hotel, the Tierra Viva, was all stone on the inside, yet it felt so warm and welcoming. In Cusco, we visited Qoricancha, the most sacred Temple of the Incas. Cusco was the capital city of the Incas and this was their main temple. When the Spanish invaded in the 1500s, they destroyed the temple and built their own church on top of it. Much of the Spanish (Colonial) temple was destroyed in subsequent earthquakes, but the Incan foundation has remained. That stone foundation apparently holds up the Colonial building today. The Spanish Temple has been re-built, but you can see the Incan work as well. The Incan masonry was amazing. They had perfected the art of putting stones together – “like lego bricks” as our guide said. They used no mortar and there were no spaces between the blocks. This was truly spectacular to see.
That first evening we had a wonderfully educational experience at the Planetarium in Cusco. The Incans knew so much and were incredibly connected to nature. They could use the light of the stars to make predictions about the weather! And they had unbelievable imaginations as they named various constellations visible in the southern hemisphere – we learned about the “Big Black Llama” which is an open space in the Milky Way, and the “Mosquito” which consists of a single star. We also got very good at spotting the Southern Cross and the two pointer stars leading to it.
The following day, we travelled from Cusco to Pisaq, which is STRIVE’s home base. Along the way, we stopped at the Ccochahuasi Animal Sanctuary and the Awanakancha Textile Center (you can read more about both of these places in a previous STRIVE Blog); suffice it to say that these two places were both unbelievably captivating and wonderful to see. Many of us bought some souvenirs at Awanakancha as the weaving was all hand done and we had an opportunity to see how the alpaca yarn was spun, naturally dyed, and woven. We then stopped for lunch a restaurant overlooking the Sacred Valley and dined outside on the porch enjoying one of the most spectacular views I have ever seen.
That afternoon in Pisaq, some of the group went for a run, while others of us biked on a dirt road along the Urubamba River. I biked, but found that I wanted to stop every 30 seconds to take pictures. The views of the mountains were just so mesmerizing! What I didn’t realize was that the scenery was about to get even more spectacular as the week went on. The following day, we did another run/bike ride from Pisaq to Calca, then were picked up in our van and driven for several hours to the hot springs in Lares. This drive was quite an adventure as it was along a narrow mountain road which would probably be one lane in the U.S., but in Peru was considered a 2-way highway. We held our breaths as our driver, Hector, expertly navigated the mountain roads, honking whenever he came to a hairpin turn (which was quite frequently).
The following day, the group went on an adventure tour which involved either zip-lining along a cliff face, or mountain climbing/rappelling, and I opted to stay back in Pisaq and visit the Pisaq ruins. It was a great morning for me, as I explored these ancient ruins and learned even more about the Incan Culture. I hiked to the top of the ruins and it was so incredibly awesome. Words cannot even describe the view from up there. So vast. So desolate. So majestic. I kept wondering “how did the Incans build all of this?” After my visit to the ruins, Hector drove me to meet up with the rest of the group, and we continued on to our next stop, the town of Ollantaytambo. This was quite another amazing town. The entire town was cobblestoned and there were water channels running through every street. Apparently these were the original Incan channels used for irrigation centuries ago. It was such a beautiful and quaint village!
The next morning, the group went out for a long run/bike ride, and Tyler told us that the scenery would be some of the most spectacular that we would see, so I opted to walk and take pictures. It seemed like the scenery was ever-changing, almost every 10 – 20 steps that I took! I was very glad for that opportunity to just take it all in and capture much of it on my camera.
Following that run, our group divided up and spent the remainder of the day and evening with Peruvian families for a “homestay” visit. My husband and I were with our son, Scott, and our Peruvian family consisted of a woman with 2 children – an 8 year old boy and 4-year old girl. It was interesting to see how they lived, and to get a sense of their culture. Luckily for us, Scott was fluent in Spanish, so he was able to help us out in the communication department! We had a very enjoyable time playing with the kids (my husband taught them some card games and tricks, and played a little bit of checkers and even chess with the boy, though the rules were modified a bit).
The next morning, after a very early breakfast with our families, we said our good-byes and began the last leg of our journey – the trip to Machu Picchu! Many people take a train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes which is the launching place for visitors to Machu Picchu, and it is about a two hour train ride. Instead of that, we had an amazing tour arranged by Nic and Tyler that took us by van over the mountains. We were driven for about 2 hours to the top of a mountain pass (elevation about 14,400 feet) and then biked down the mountain road about 2 ½ hours to an elevation of about 4,500 feet! It was amazing to experience the change from the high mountains down into the rain forest.
Following lunch, we then drove up again over another mountain pass – only this time the road was unpaved, and seemed even narrower than the ones we had been on earlier, with of course no guard rails. The most harrowing part of the trip occurred when we came face to face with a truck coming the other way. The truck was on the cliff side, and our driver pulled over toward the mountain side of the road to allow the truck to pass, but we immediately hit a sharp rock and got a flat tire. Both our van and the truck were basically wedged in and unable to move, and one of our guides had to get out and direct the truck forward so that he could safely get past us without going off over the cliff. The good part about all this was that it took our guides about a half-hour to change the tire, so we had another great opportunity to take some truly spectacular photos! Once the tire was changed, we travelled another hour to the town of “Hidro Electrica” which was as far as our van could go. From there, we hiked for 6 miles along some railroad tracks to Aguas Calientes, the gateway into Machu Picchu!
We had a choice to either hike up (1800 steps) to Machu Picchu the following morning, or to take a bus up, and after the long day we had just had, I opted for the bus, though most of the group hiked. Whether hiking or bussing, we had to start out at 4 am, as the bus line formed very early, and the hikers were allowed to begin quite early in order to get to Machu Picchu before sunrise. When we got in the bus line at 4:00 am, there were already about 200 people in front of us!
Machu Picchu was astounding – an amazing testimony to the incredible engineering knowledge of the Incas. It is so remote and in such an unforgiving part of the world, and yet there is this entire stone city built into the hills. According to our guide, 80% of this city is original Incan and only 20% of it is restored. The first view of it was just breath-taking, as we came around a corner, and the city was laid out in front of us. Words cannot even begin to describe this. I thought I had seen it all when I visited the Pisaq ruins a couple of days ago, but this dwarfed that by several orders of magnitude! The majesty of this place was simply beyond belief.
So… we come now to the end of our trip. As I mentioned earlier, everything went incredibly smoothly during the week (even counting the flat tire), and we were all exhausted and exhilarated as we descended from Machu Picchu and took a 2 hour train ride back to Ollantaytambo to get our luggage, then another 2 hour bus ride back to Cusco.
I could go into more detail about our departure from Cusco and return home to the States, but honestly, that would be the subject of a whole other blog, and this one is long enough. Suffice it to say that if you are parents of STRIVE high-schoolers or College Interns, or if you are just someone browsing the STRIVE website and reading this blog – if you want to experience the most incredible trip of a lifetime, this STRIVE Running to Machu Picchu Adult Trip is the trip for you! You don’t even need to be a runner to enjoy it! Thank you Nic and Tyler for making this experience one that we will remember for a long time!
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