Because the best travel stories don't end with ". . . and everything went according to plan"
May 8 2025 – Chiquisca to Cusco I had a fitful night of sleep last night. It was hot, humid, and the mosquitos were BAD. Even sleeping under a mosquito net they still got me. I ended up leaving in the morning probably a little later than I should have. I did stock up on …
May 7 2025 – Marampata to Chiquisca Woke up this morning and discovered you can see Choquequirao from Marampata. The past two days there was too much cloud cover for that. Had a quick breakfast, and then started downhill on my way back to the trailhead. Apparently I don’t take many pictures when I’m going …
May 6 2025 – Marampata to Choquequirao to Marampata Woke up around 5:30AM today well rested. Breakfast was at 7, then packed up and headed off to Choquequirao. Marampata and Choquequirao are at the same elevation, but the trail between them does a surprising amount of up and down and up and down. The elderly …
May 5 2025 – Playa Rosalina to Marampata Didn’t sleep too terribly well last night. It was hot – I basically laid on top of my sleeping bag sweating. I also did no research on the wildlife I’d be encountering on the trek. Around 3AM I had a rather large albino spider walk across my …
May 4 2025 – Cachora to Playa Rosalina I woke up this morning to rain. Not even a light drizzle either. I had some concerns about whether or not I could pull the trek off, or, given the steepness of the Andean countryside and the possibility of landslides, if it was even a good idea …
May 3 2025 – Cusco to Cachora The trek technically doesn’t start until tomorrow, but getting there is part of the process, so I’m including it in the trek. I am, however, having shit luck with the busses in this country. The one consistent thing that showed up in my research about this trek was …
Today I took a day trip to the town of Pisaq (pronounced Pee-Sack) to see the archeological site there. Getting there definitely turned into a misadventure. I took a colectivo. The colectivos to different destinations leave from different parts of Cusco. In the case of Pisaq, they leave from Av Puputi. The easiest way to …
May 1 2025 Today was my first sacred valley side quest. I took a colectivo to a town about 2 hours north of Cusco called Ollantaytambo. I actually loved it there. If I was more fluent in spanish and knew how to drive a motorcycle I’d bail on my coming the trek and bike-pack through …
Apr 30 2025 Today was the day I decided to visit the Incan sites in the hills outside of Cusco. Originally I was planning on hiking UP to them, but the day before I left home I decided to reverse that order and take a colectivo up and hike back to Cusco. In total I …
Apr 29 2025 I was sort of curious how the altitude of Cusco would impact me. I’ve obviously been higher than this – Gorak Shep in the Himalayas is a good 6,000 feet higher than Cusco. But my entire Himalayan adventure was paced with altitude acclimation in mind. It took me 3 days there to …