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 downhill. In fact, I didn’t take any on this leg.
I stopped and bought another coke in Santa Rosa Alta, then continued down and passed through Santa Rosa Baja without stopping. Made it down to the Rio Apurimac in good time, but unfortunately that’s the hot side of river, and it was already starting to get warm.
Once again I found myself running low on water. But, I did manage to stumble into Chiquisca before I ran out.
My friends from the past two nights had indeed made the trek back in a single day. None of them stopped here. However while I was sitting in the shade outside the lodge I booked I head another guest complaining about how she has to tell people she’s from San Francisco because nobody knows where Oakland is. Small world. My hometown is San Leandro, which is directly south of Oakland. So I introduced myself. Small world, and all that. Turns out she has an aunt who works at the midwestern university I used to work at too, so she’s also familiar with where I live now. Extra small world. She, her boyfriend, her best friend, her best friends boyfriend, and somebodies dad, are all doing the trek to Choquequirao and back. Based on what they were saying, and the questions they asked me, they’re woefully unprepared for what’s ahead of them. I later found out they’re part of a guided trek, so in retrospect it makes sense – they don’t have to be prepared. But they were cool. Two of them had also trekked in Nepal last year, so added an extra layer of things to talk about. And we ended up playing cards for a while until I encountered a phenomenon that I had heard is common in Nepal, though I didn’t personally experience it – Guides forcing people who aren’t part of their group to stop socializing with people in their group. In Nepal my experience was people in guided groups had no interest in socializing outside their group, which is why the only time I got any international socialization with other trekkers was my first night in Lobouche – it was the only time I happened to sit at a table with two other free independent trekkers. But here their guide definitely asked me, somewhat impolitely, to go fuck off. Another guide asked another trekker to stop sociaizing with another group despite the groups protests that they had asked him to be there. Savage, if I may say so.
Later that night a few more independent folks showed up. A kid from Germany who destroyed my illusion that all Europeans speak a billion languages. But he knew English, and he had some fun stories about his misadventures traveling through Chile and Bolivia. And a little later two British girls showed up hell bent on doing the trek I had planned on doing, and I’m pretty sure no one will ever see them again – one bought a bunch of freeze dried backpacking food in Cusco. 250 calories a package, one package a day. Mind you, when I trek I’m usually putting away 2000 calories a day and still running a serious enough calorie deficit that I end up losing weight. The other girl only brought eggs. 100 of them, which she’s keeping in her sleeping bag. I guarantee the end result of that will be both hilarious and tragic at the same time. I’m hoping they decide to turn around where I did.
Anyway, tomorrow I resume heading onward and upward. I don’t have any plans yet for what I’m going to do once I get back to the trailhead. I figure I’m going to ask around Capuliyoc and see if I can’t arrange transportation to Cachora, from there bus to Abancay, then bus back to Cusco. But we’ll see. I’m going to be winging it.
