Salkantay Part 1

The Salkantay Trek is one of the more popular routes to hike to Machu Picchu, offering you mountains and forest, mountain passes and canyons, roads and narrow paths, camp sites and glass cabanas, chinchillas and llamas, and Inca sites and nature all in the span of four long days.

On Sunday, day 0, we stayed at the glass cabanas at Soraypampa (12,800 ft) where we met our group, enjoyed dinner, and watched the stars. Our group was made of 14 people, with couples from the US and the Netherlands, two friends from New York with one of their moms, a lady from Norway, two other friends from Korea and DC, two friends from Germany and Canada who met working in New Zealand, and us. Our guides were Elisban and Henry, who both were indigenous/mestizo. They called this our family, partly because that’s what the company, Alpaca Expeditions, does, but also because it’s part of the culture.

The Glass Cabanas

Elisban claimed that in the Andes, nobody’s your friend. Everyone’s your brother or sister, uncle or aunt. It's a collective outlook on life that helps in the success of everyone. And as we’d be Andean people for a week, living in the same kind of environment, passing by the same towns, we too should embrace the familial culture of the Andes.

Elisban was very knowledgeable and spoke very good English. We knew that any question we had for him, he’d sit us down, or walk by us, for half an hour and give a full explanation of what something is, the importance of it in Andean culture, how it is or isn’t relevant in modern Peru, and his opinions about its role in modern society. Most famously was his opinions on the Peruvian government. Nearly all of his monologues ended in something like “But the Peruvian government has never been here, guys. They’ve never been to the Andes, they don’t care about the Andes. They take the money for themselves and build a good life for themselves in Lima, while letting the Andes go to shit. But it’s okay, because we have you, the tourists. You guys are what make us happy, your interest in our region and our culture inspire us to keep on working, and the money you guys bring here is why we can be happy and successful in life. You guys are the reason that we have money, so in the end, it’s not too bad.”

We heard that monologue countless times. And though I’ll try to intersperse Elisban’s stories and thoughts throughout this article, know that any I may have missed have that as a moral.

Henry was, though less of a proficient English speaker, the lovable goofball of a guide. Elisban treated him like a son, or maybe like his little brother—the uncle of our group. He’d make jokes, telling us to call him cuy (guinea pig) and that all of his relatives are cuy. Or he’d make funny poses in pictures, feed you completely wrong information before cracking, unable to control his goofy laugh. Like if we were an hour away from somewhere, he’d say that we were five hours even when Elisban had told us that the whole section of the hike would only take three. You know, not maliciously false information, just goofy false information.

Overall, our family dynamic was great. We all enjoyed each other’s company, trusted and joked with our guides, and kept each other going even at the hardest points.

I’m really glad we booked with Alpaca, though, as Elisban told us how little by little, the hiking economy in Cusco has been bought out by foreigners looking to make a quick buck at the expense of the locals. Nowadays, Alpaca is the only indigenous owned hiking company, paying their porters, guides, and chefs a living wage. And though Elisban only usually gets a night of civilization between hikes, he loves it and he’d rather have it no other way. Though the porters carry a backbreaking load up and down mountains every day, our happiness and gratitude, their love for the nature and sharing their culture is what keeps them going. It doesn’t feel like we were abusing the locals, rather, that they’re there because us being there gives them a purpose.

Anyways, onto the hike.

The first day was certainly the hardest. Beginning at 12,800 ft, climbing all the way up to the highest point of the hike, 15,200 ft, and then down to 12,500 ft over the span of 9.5 miles, the day is not an easy way to start off the trek.

We woke up to the classic Alpaca wakeup call at 4:30 AM—a knock on the door (or tent)—calling for coca tea. People from the Andes love their coca leaves, and coca tea is just a tea brewed by sticking some leaves in hot water. Yes, coca leaves are what make cocaine, and yes, it does really wake you up in the morning. But it’s not cocaine, it’s just, uh, the same chemicals that make cocaine. Anyways, coca leaves are super prevalent in the Cusco area, and along with putting them in tea, chewing the leaves also gives you that same little boost of energy. The taste is hard to describe, but there’s more to it than just if you were to stick your average leaf in your mouth. Elisban claimed that coca leaves and coca tea help with altitude adjustment, so we chewed our fair share on the first few days.  

The Hike Up to Humantay Lake

Before making any headway towards Machu Picchu, we actually took a small diversion, climbing up to Humantay Lake, a beautiful glacially fed lake an hour uphill from our night’s camp, with the towering glacier at the top of Humantay Mountain. The hike up there was quite steep, and though we ducked around a couple of corners, the lake always seemed to be around the next one. But the diversion was worth every foot of incline; the colors at Humantay Lake were among the best of the hike—the greenery on the gray soil, the bright blue sky and the bright teal lake, the bright white clouds obscuring the gray mountain and its reflective, pure white glacier. The whole scene was just bright, teeming with cheer and joy despite little life around. The upside of staying at the glass cabanas is that we beat all the tourists from Cusco coming in from the day trip. They say thousands upon thousands come to the lake daily, but us being there at 7 AM means that the 14 of us, as well as the other two Alpaca “families” we were moving with, were the only ones there.

Humantay Lake

We headed back down to the base and changed course, now heading in the direction of the also glacially capped Salkantay mountain, towering over us. We’d seen Salkantay from the night before, as its peak is visible from the glass cabanas, but we were about to head into the belly of the beast, conquering not the mountain, but its pass. The mountain extends for a few thousand meters above the pass, and only three groups of people have ever attempted climbing it all the way. The first were a group of Argentinians, who died. Second were a group of Japanese, who died. Afterall, the Andes are a harsh environment, and weather can change really quickly. We learned this for ourselves, as what seemed like a beautiful, warm day may see the clouds roll in and rain begin in a matter of minutes. Finally, was a group of Andean people, who lived to tell the tale. After that third attempt, climbing Salkantay was deemed illegal, as it was in violation of the sanctity of the mountain.

The Andean people see mountains all as sacred, all as manifestations of the mountain god. Traditionally, in Andean culture, mountains do not have names (and hence, Machu Picchu, named for the mountain it is next to, was, before its rediscovery in 1909, nameless).

The hike to the Abra Salkantay (Salkantay Pass) was not easy. Though Zack took it like a champ, and I finished fourth in our group, every step was a new, herculean effort. I struggled to catch my breath, stopping every few steps to rescue what little oxygen I could out of the air, while also admiring the view. Even worse, my morale continued to decline as time went on, since clouds slowly obstructed an increasingly large part of the Salkantay peak, taking away that nice view that kept me going.  

But eventually, we made it, and got time to catch our breaths, put on our hats and gloves, and celebrate with a photoshoot.

The Highest Elevation on our Hike

After basking in our glory of having climbed 2,400 ft three miles above sea level, it was time to continue onwards, and luckily, downwards. I stayed ahead with Zack and Solvi, the Norwegian lady, who told us about Norway and her love for Norwegian nature. After four hours of downhill, we made it to camp site (tents this night), and I lay inca-pacitated on my foam mattress pad, unable to move even to drink my water.

The Hike Down, and me in Bed

I felt a little feverish and had no appetite, though I know realize that the fever was actually just me needing to warm up to the cold weather around me, and the lack of appetite was from the altitude mostly. I pecked at dinner, but when I left the dining tent (at like 7:00) to get to bed, I gasped. The clouds obscuring our view of Humantay Mountain from the back, which I had no idea was even there nor visible, had lifted. Thousands of stars were out, and the moon lit just enough so that we could see the crags and outline of the mountain with just enough detail. It was, truthfully, one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever laid my eyes on. And I will say, these pictures do not capture the beauty of the real view—it was just something you had to go see for yourself. I was the first out of the tent, and when others heard me gasp, they too wondered what was going on, before themselves taking a step back, admiring the view. I’d planned to go straight to bed, but we all spent the better part of an hour taking in the view with our cameras and our Inca cameras (eyes!)

On this first day, we invented a new group culture and expression, stemming from Elisban’s description of part of our hike as “Inca Flat.” The idea was that describing something as “Inca Something” meant that it was the tougher, old fashion description of something, not our weak, well-adjusted, urban idea of that word today. It became a funny joke, and we’d begin to describe everything from terrain to toilets as “Inca.”

The next morning, we had another pre-sunrise wakeup call with coca tea, where we’d see the sun rise and expose Humantay Mountain in the daylight soon after a filling breakfast. I felt a lot better after having slept in the warmth of my sleeping bag, hat, gloves, and all my clothes, and was ready to tackle a day of entire downhill.

The View of Humantay Mountain, After the Clouds Lifted in the Morning

We mostly followed a road the whole day, and we picked cocoons, ate granadillas, met a cute dog, and saw sites of like a hundred different landslides on our 11.2 mi trek down 5,300 ft.

One of Many Landslides we Saw

It started raining after lunch, and we all activated our ponchos, laughing at how silly they looked. The road we took followed a river as it cut a valley between mountains on either side. I commented on how the trail we were on wasn’t all that inspiring. It was, after all, a road. A dirt road, but a road. The view was, for the most part, beautiful, but it was very cloudy and we couldn’t see all that far ahead. We stayed the night at “hobbit houses” of which I have no pictures, but it was nice to be indoors and have somewhere we could dry our clothes so we didn’t end up with the same stink-bomb situation that we had with the Amazon tour.

The Hike, Day 2

This night was our most serious, in terms of Elisban’s pre-dinner “happy hour” monologues. Before dinner each night, we had a “happy hour,” which, for most tours, is a time for us to all talk and relax before dinner. But Elisban decided that for us, it’d be a time to tell us about Peru and the Andes—in my opinion, a much more welcome thing, as we could talk as a group over dinner.  

Our conversation began discussing the hobbit houses we were staying at. This is, for lack of a better term, Hobbit House V2. The first were destroyed in a landslide in 2020, after the family that kept them was already struggling due to the lack of tourism caused by COVID. One of the two brothers who ran the houses and his family were the only ones in them at the time of the landslide, killing them all. The other brother has continued on the legacy, rebuilding the houses on the other side of the river, trying to recover.

Stories of tragedy and compounding sadness are all too common in the Andes, and since the government does not invest in infrastructure nor in schooling here, there is little hope for change. The government doesn’t act like the Andes are a part of Peru, claiming that the people here hardly know to speak Spanish, and know nothing about Peru. In my opinion, they, and the people in the jungle, know the most about Peru, but again, it’s the corrupt government’s way of keeping itself corrupt.

And the government knows its corrupt, and can see through its own BS. Walking around Lima in our one day there before Cusco, we saw that every major square was closed, and had a set of police in riot gear policing it. The government is scared of revolt, knowing that everyone knows of its corruption.  

The story tragedy in the Andes begins with the corruption in the government a long time ago, which kept the Andes poor and it’s “solution,” the Shining Path—a terrorist group that killed two members of Elisban’s family. The Shining Path was a force to be reckoned with in the region, often promising wealth and security for the small price of joining. Shining Path is still existing today, causing trouble, though it’s much, much taken care of.

Keeping the Andes poor, most notably, and rather recently, though, was president (or more accurately, lunatic dictator) Alberto Fujimori. He won the presidency off of the promise to completely eliminate terrorism from the country. And he nearly succeeded on that promise. Once he entered office, his policies effectively ended the terrorism problem in the Andes, and the region became much safer. But, that is mostly not why we remember Fujimori today.

Fujimori was a total tyrant who was more loyal to his ancestral Japan than his home of Peru. Fujimori, for example, replaced the old currency of the Inti, named for the Quechua sun god, with the Sol. The Sol, though paying homage to the old Inti, erased the obvious Quechua connection to Peru and reestablished Lima’s disproportionate power and importance in the country. Fujimori let the Inti be used for three days before the currency became worthless, which meant that the majority of those in the Andes were unable to exchange their cash in time. Elisban said that his mother has stacks upon stacks of Intis that she never had the time to exchange, which now sit, worthless, and a reminder of a time that was.

Fujimori privatized the train system, which used to bring goods from the jungle and the Andes into civilization and acted as a source of income for the region, and after landslides destroyed the portions heading into the jungle and to Cusco, the private company changed gears. Instead of fixing the rail and making it an economic opportunity for the people, it decided to jack up its prices, increase in luxury, not fix the destroyed portions of the track, and use it nearly exclusively as transport for tourists to and from Machu Picchu. Nowadays, you cannot take the train from Cusco, only from Ollantaytambo, to which you have to take a two-hour car or van. And the train is still very slow and rickety. It is in clear, dire need of updating, however IncaRail makes enough money already, so if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Fujimori stole everything from Peru, and put the country in 50 years’ worth of debt to the IMF.

Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail, but got let out last year after the constitutional court ordered his release. His release was incredibly frustrating for many in the Andes, who saw that this tyrant that stole everything from them is allowed to get away.

And this, scarily, is recent. This isn’t old history—Fujimori was president from 1991 to 2000.

We slept like babies in our nice beds that night, and got a nice sleep in the next morning.