The Salkantay Trail, Peru, January 2023 (Part 1 - Arriving to Cusco)
I’ve never been extremely outdoorsy but since I started dating Melissa back in March '22, she’s helped me step out of my comfort zone and has introduced me to the world of hiking and trail running. My foray into what for me have been uncharted waters has been at times rewarding and at others grueling as I’ve worked on my conditioning.
For her 30th birthday, Melissa wanted to do something big to celebrate the milestone. Always one for an adventure, she decided she wanted to hike along the Salkantay trail: a multi-day hike through the Andes mountains of Peru to arrive in the once lost Incan city of Machu Picchu.
As an avid lover of wanting to experience things very few others have done, I wanted to do it too and in November '22 we reserved our plane tickets and booked our guided tour along the trail through a Peruvian company Salkantay Trekking with their Premium 5-day/4-night, 40 mile (65 km) trek along the Salkantay trail.
Over the course of the next two months, Melissa and I trained for what would be one of the most physically demanding challenges either of us had ever endured. We went on numerous hikes and trail runs whenever we could find the time, summitting smaller mountains near us like Mt. June in order to get some conditioning in.
As 2022 was drawing to a close, our trip to Peru was drawing near. We purchased the last bit of hiking equipment we were going to be needing (I needed significantly more than she did), packed our bags, and on the eve of 2023, we boarded our first of four flights down to Cusco, the heart of the once proud and mighty Incan Empire.
After 21 hours of travel, we find Peru a nation divided. A few weeks earlier, in an attempt to stop himself from being impeached, former President Pedro Castillo was arrested and ousted from office after trying to dissolve congress on December 7th. Without the support of the military, national police, or even some of his closest ministers, the coup d’etat ended just as quickly as it started and his own security detail took him in to be arrested. Coup averted.
However, the story does not end here.
The former schoolteacher turned head of state, Castillo was the son of peasant farmers and is the first member of the country’s rural poor to reach the presidency, being seen by many in Peru’s impoverished agrarian class as “their guy.”
Castillo’s removal from office was seen by many in his base as another in a long chain of slights committed against them by an out-of-touch political class in Lima that doesn’t care about them or their living conditions. With the proverbial camel’s back now broken, Castillo’s supporters took to the streets, demanding for the resignation of Veep turned President Dina Boluarte and the reinstallation of Castillo as the rightful head of state.
After multiple weeks of protests, strikes, and road blocks, many of which left hundreds (if not thousands) of tourists stranded in various locations scattered around the country, tensions seemed to cool down in time for the holiday season. A Christmas miracle if you will.
This peace was not to last. But we’ll come back to that later.
The air in Cusco is thin, much thinner than what the average person is used to enduring. Located 11,150 feet (3,400 m) above sea level, every breath you take feels shallow. With only about 65% as much oxygen as there is at sea level, something as easy as going up a flight of stairs becomes a Herculean task. Fortunately for us, the human body is a remarkably adaptable machine, and as it feels the excess strain in trying to get the required oxygen to our muscles, it will begin to acclimate and starts to create more red blood cells in order to maximize the amount of oxygen our blood can carry.
Science lesson out of the way, when we finally arrived to our hotel in Cusco, Casa Cristobal, we had been traveling for a little over 21 hours since our journey began. For the next two days, we would begin the process of acclimating to the altitude before we’d begin our hike through the Salkantay Pass on our way to Machu Picchu. After taking advantage of the complimentary breakfast included with our stay, we each took a much needed shower and tried to get a solid nap in before really feeling ready to (try to) see the city.
On our way out, we asked the receptionist on duty where he’d recommend getting some dinner and he told us the best restaurant nearby, in his opinion, was Morena located right next to the Plaza de Armas so off we went.
Located about an eight minute walk from our hotel was Cusco’s main square, the Plaza de Armas. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site back in 1983, the square gets its name from the Spanish Conquistadors that turned the area into a weapons barrack after taking the city from the Inca in the mid-16th century.
The square has bared witness to rivers of blood being spilled. During the time of the Inca, victorious returning armies would be celebrated there and the spoils of war would be displayed and the prisoners of the same war would be trampled to death.
Once the square came under new management, the Spaniards did their own fair share of blood spilling, most famously when they quelled an Andean rebellion led by a descendant of the Inca, Tupac Amaru. Having captured him and his family, the Spanish forced Tupac to watch them kill his son, beat his wife to death, and lastly tie each of his four limbs to separate horses and pulling in opposing directions in a gruesome method of execution known as “drawing and quartering.”
In the present day you could never imagine a scene like this. The Plaza de Armas is the busy heart of the most popular tourist area in the city. Jewelry stores, high end boutique shops selling alpaca wool coats for prices over $3000 USD, tourist agency offices, and numerous restaurants now surround the square. You can even find large international franchises like Starbucks, KFC, and even a fucking McDonald’s.
Cusco has an almost exclusively tourist-driven economy. Some numbers I heard say that up to 90% of the population work in jobs connected in some way to catering to tourists. Due to the recent civil unrest (as well as rumors of protests picking back up again), the overall number of tourists in Cusco was significantly lower than normal which for us meant the restaurants in the city would be able to seat us without a reservation and with no wait times.
Arguably one of the best things about going to Peru is the favorable conversion rate: $1 USD gets you just under S/4 Peruvian Soles (PEN) while we were down there.
Inarguably one of the best things about going to Peru is the food, and let me tell you something: I’m mad. I’m mad no one told me how good the food scene was in Peru. Our entire time in Peru we did not have a single bad meal and by kicking things off at Morena, we definitely set the tone on what to expect while we were there.
We started our meal with some woodfired bruschetta on homemade bread and topped with caramelized onions, artisinal cheese, Andean chorizo sausage, chimichurri, and basil.
As a little intermezzo between courses, we ordered the cocktail special created by the restaurant’s bar manager known as “La Chula,” a delightful drink made with pineapple, orange, and passion fruit juices, sugar cane syrup, cream of coconut, and Barsol pisco, served on ice, and I can’t forget to mention, it’s made tableside.
Next up on this evening’s culinary adventure was the alpaca skewers served with white corn covered with melted Andean cheese, and locally grown fingerling potatoes smothered in ocopa sauce, a Peruvian cheese sauce containing of evaporated milk, queso fresco, and aji amarillo. The skewers were fantastic, having a flavor very much akin to beef but slightly sweeter and richer, maybe even a touch tougher and gamier, but incredible nonetheless.
Lastly I got the gnocchi in an aji de gallina sauce. The sauce was rich and creamy, made of aji amarillos, evaporated milk, garlic, red onions, and shredded pieces of chicken. The gnocchis themselves were a bit on the gummy side but if that was the weakest part of the evening then I’d say that overall everything was incredible.
Our server Grisel was also spectacular, patiently waiting for me to translate the Spanish-only menu to Melissa while also making her own recommendations. It was at this point that I started noticing a worrying trend, every local that we told our plans of going to Machu Picchu through the Salkantay Pass had the same reaction: “Oof.”
According to Grisel the Salkantay Pass is not for the faint at heart and that if we were going as a couple, everyday we would realize why we chose one another, having to help the other stand tall when the other was weak. In a beautifully touching gesture, Grisel thoughtfully sent us a dessert plate with well wishes for our long journey ahead.
The people of the Quechua tribe are still very much alive and well in Cusco and so are the beliefs of their ancestors, particularly the belief in Pachamama, the Incan goddess who represents the spirit of Mother Earth (similar to Gaia in Greek Mythology). Grisel herself was Quechua and told us she would be keeping us in her thoughts along our journey and that she knew Pachamama would look over us.
Let’s hope she’s right.
The next morning we accidentally slept in until just before 11:00. While researching things to do in Cusco, Melissa found the Free Walking Tour Cusco operated by Inkan Milky Way Tours. This indigenous family-owned company offers multiple daily tours of the city every single day, 100% free, 363 days a year (Sorry y’all. They’re closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day).
On the walk to the tour meetup location in the much smaller Plaza Kusipata, a block away from Cusco’s main square, we were stopped by a small group of women with an alpaca in toe offering to let us take a picture with them. People that have been to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame should know where this is going: Get your picture taken, now pay them for the privilege. Give them however much you want, but definitely don’t feel obligated to give them the ungodly number of S/100 each they may initially request from you.
It does make for a great photo though.
For the next three hours, our tour guide Wilfredo took us around around Old Cusco, visiting old churches built by the Spanish using the base of the Incan palaces as the foundation for their structures. Wilfredo went into in-depth detail about how the Inca would break massive stones into smaller ones and smooth them out until they can be stacked on top of one another with no gaps between them.
Notable highlights of the tour were walking by the Arch Santa Clara, built in 1835 to commemorate the Peru-Bolivian alliance pact. We also went into El Mercado de San Pedro, a massive, 4,000 square meter market whose construction in 1925 was oddly enough designed and overseen by Gustav Eiffel, the man who almost 40 years previously had done the same to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
At the end of the tour you are encouraged to tip your guide and although you are not obligated to, you better not be a cheap asshole and tip this kind person that showed you around Cusco for the last three hours at otherwise no cost.
We spent the rest of the afternoon doing a little more shopping around some of the markets in Cusco. With the protests scheduled to resume in two days, there was a weird vibe in the city. Although many people in town felt that the second round of protests wouldn’t be nearly as bad ass the first, something still felt a bit off. At one point after leaving a leather goods store I noticed multiple buildings with people in lines so long they wrapped around the block. Initially confused, I took a closer look to see what people were waiting for. They were in line for the bank…and let me tell you that as a student of history, runs on the banks are rarely a good omen of things to come.
At 5:00 PM we had a pre-departure briefing at the offices of our tour company. Here we met our guide Felix as well as our fellow tourists, filled out a few liability waivers, and had a short explanation as to the day-to-day plans of our trip.
It was at this point we were warned of the potential disruptions to our trip that could ensue as a result of the upcoming protests and were given one last opportunity to try to re-book/reschedule our trip for another time. Pretty much everyone agreed we had all come too far to turn back now so no one backed out but there was clearly feelings of unease among some members of the group.
Now with that out of the way, we could enjoy one last nice night in Cusco before roughing it on the Salkantay trail for the next few days. We had another lovely dinner next to the Plaza de Armas at Inka Grill, getting to enjoy a nice flash thunderstorm outside while being serenaded with live pan flute music and enjoying another delicious meal.
We shared the Inkagrill Platter which was a perfect sampler of various classic Peruvian dishes: stuffed potato and quinoa croquettes, corn and cheese empanadas, chicken and beef skewers, and roasted Andean potatoes. We also got ourselves a seasonal salad because odds were we weren’t going to be eating a lot of greens on the trek but we also got a banana bread pudding with homemade vanilla ice cream because life is about balance.
