Mountains contain so much beauty – in the trees, in the rivers, out in the open and inside caves, at the foot and at the peaks. They offer such a diverse landscape it’s difficult to comprehend. At the same time they can be cruel and unforgiving – terrains are challenging to traverse, orientation is difficult (unless you live in our day and age in which case – hurray for markings!), weather conditions can change in an instant. A small mistake can turn into a tragedy. Mountains are a 10/10 on the hot-crazy scale.
But are they really worth all the hype?
It’s a question whose answer we weren’t quite set on until a few years ago. As anyone who lives near a natural feature that people find interesting, be it a mountain, a forest, the sea, we couldn’t really appreciate the value of mountains. Perhaps because they have always been so accessible to us they didn’t really feel that special (context: Sofia is set in a plateau in the midst of several mountains, one of which is a national park and we even have a tram going into it). Perhaps because it’s not exactly relaxing going to the mountain – it’s certainly more taxing on both the body and mind than simply chilling at the beach.
Yet nowadays we can safely say we love the mountain and it really has a special place in our hearts.
How did it all change? It took us going half way across the world, to the Andes, to really understand what all the rave is about and to open our minds to the vertical wonders of our world.
We travelled to Peru in 2018 as part of our annual birthday retreat (Kiril is born in late September, Raya in early October, which gives us a great excuse to organize something). We initially thought about spending our 2 weeks of holiday on visiting Peru, Ecuador and maybe even Bolivia. I mean, we were going to take a long flight, we wanted to make the most of it. This was of course a ridiculous idea as these countries are huge and so full of things to explore, you could easily spend a month in just one of them. Anyway, as it happens often with our travel plans we ended up making a more reasonable itinerary.
One thing we weren’t going to miss was of course one of the world wonders – Machu Picchu. To reach the citadel (how fancy of a name is that?!) you need to start at Cusco, the old capital of Peru. You need a professional certified guide to go so you need to take an organized trip from there. There are several different treks on which you can reach Machu Picchu, the most famous being the Inka Trail. Now that one takes planning beyond what we can be bothered to do. You need to book months in advance as only a limited number of people are allowed on the trail at any given time so as to avoid soil erosion under the trampling tourist feet. And you guessed it – the tours are overbooked and we didn’t start planning our trip until 3 weeks before our flight, so this wasn’t really an option. That’s when a friend of ours and our most reliable travel recommendation engine, Ollie, shared that he’s done the Salkantay Trek. A quick search online will show you that this is the most challenging one of all the routes and we didn’t need to hear more to sign up. The sheer arrogance thinking going to the gym makes you fit for mountain trekking!
Anyway, we booked it, made our way to Cusco and at 2:30 in the morning off we went on a 4 hour jeep trip to our trek starting point! And that was the last of our reasons to complain on this whole journey. Every hour of lost sleep, every minute of gasping for air in the extremely thin atmosphere, every second of watching your step so you don’t trip and fall into the abyss – it was all worth it! The experience was so profound my heart starts racing just thinking about it!
Aaaaand because there’s sooooo much to talk about, we split this story into 3 – one for each of the 3 days on the trek (links coming soon):
Part 1 - Salkantay pass
Part 2 - the Andean jungle
Part 3 - Machu Picchu
Here is the company that took us on the trek:
Highly, highly recommended both by us and travel-master Ollie. They take care of everything – camping equipment, food, and of course explaining what’s happening. They’re also super well organized. You just need to turn up and enjoy.
Note: wear proper mountain shoes. We wore our trainers, it was doable but save yourself the trouble and a few slips and just come prepared.
Note 2: we booked the 3-day trek as we didn’t have time for more but if we were to do it again we’d book the 4-day one. It gives you more time in the mountain plus you get to visit some cool lakes and sleep in transparent igloos so you can watch the stars at night, how cool is that!
Note 3: take at least 2 days to adjust to the altitude in Cusco. We took only 1 and it wasn’t enough.