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 chest. I smashed the hell out of everything in my tent, but I have no idea if I got it, and then spent a while wondering “Did it bite me, and is it venomous?” Also kept hearing a weird buzzing noise off and on, though by morning I realized that was actually humming birds.

Around 6AM it started raining, but by 7 it stopped so I packed up my stuff and started hiking.

Climbing up the north side of the canyon was vastly different than descending the south side. The south side was desert, the north side was more low key jungle or cloud forest. It was cooler and wetter, though it didn’t actually rain. The trail was also much steeper.

In planning I was basing my estimation of my abilities based on my adventure in the Himalayas, but for some reason I was actually fairing significantly better here. Where when I started up I had planned on just getting to Santa Rosa Baja, I actually made it there in 2.5 hours. Decided to keep going.

Made it to Santa Rosa Alta 30 minutes later. Stopped there at a tienda and bought a coke while I decided if I wanted to just stop there for the day, but ultimately decided I’d just head up to Marampata and get back on my planned itinerary.

All in all, it took me 8.5 hours to climb the 4,600 vertical feet from the Rio Apurimac to Marampata, including breaks, but it surprisingly wasn’t exhausting.

Marampata turned out to actually be a very beautiful village, and I could see trekking back out there just to hang out here.

I’m staying at a guest house here which has two bed cabins for trekkers, along with spaces to pitch a tent. The price difference between cabin and camping really isn’t much, so I’m staying in a cabin because bed.

When I was planning my Nepal adventure one of the things I kept seeing over and over was that you’d meet and socialize with plenty of people hanging out in the dining area of teahouses. That was not my experience there. But hanging out in the dining area here it was. I met a young french couple who were in country for a wedding and decided to just do the trek really quickly before they headed back, and another girl from France and a girl from Australia who had met each other somewhere in South America and decided to do the trek together, and an elderly gentleman from the UK who basically uses the money he gets from subletting his apartment back home to travel the world. And we basically hung out, played cards, drank wine that one of them had packed in, and had a fun time.

Also, the food was delicious! Way better than the food I had at any teahouse in Nepal.

Tomorrow we all head up to the Choquequirao archeological site. We’re not going as a group, but I’m sure if our paths cross we’ll have some friendly chats about what we’ve seen as we’ve fanned out across the site.