Travel lightly: you are not traveling for people to see you!
October 12, 2013
In my journal, I called today "a botanist's dream day." For me, it was a second day poking along at the back of the pack, stopping as the spirit moved me to take photos of vast vistas and intimate plant forms. It seemed as if entire gardens grew in the elbows of the trees. As we descended lower, vines began hanging thickly from the canopy tempting me to swing through the forest like Tarzan (okay, not really tempting, but the thought did cross my mind). This was just the cloud forest; imagine how verdant the jungle must be! I won't bore you with dozens of pictures of ferns and flowers, just this one of bromeliads and lichens taking over a tree.
It was also a day to boost my ego. We hiked about nine miles, undulating up and down along the Santa Teresa River. In the process, we dropped another 2,000 feet in elevation, give or take. Between the fabulous trail and the decreasing elevation, I felt really strong. It's days like this that make me love hiking.
Although generally trending downhill, the trail was varied in terrain and occasionally quite challenging. As usual, I was grateful for my hiking poles. Between the trail surfaces and the wonderful array of images to photograph, it was another day during which I refused to race through Peru.
One of the best parts of the day was getting to cross the river on cable trams, an unexpected treat. The first one was fairly low and short, and only held one person. One of the boards in the bottom of it was cracked and wobbly - not real confidence inducing, but it was fun. At least for the women it was. Since Silver and Vicente were the ones pulling it back and forth across the river, they probably found it less entertaining.
The second tram was bigger and easily carried two people. It was also a little more substantially constructed. Regardless, I chose to wait until the end of the line so I could ride alone, mostly so I could film my trip across. (I'd figure out how to post it here, but it's really not very interesting.) I did my best to up the entertainment value for Silver and Vicente, too. As I climbed into the tram, my backpack caught on the cable and flung me out backwards. I'm sure it looked traumatic, but nothing but my pride was hurt.
Our destination after the second tram was lunch at the home on the other side of the river. This area has road access, at least on one side of the river. I can't help but evaluate my travel destinations for livability, and having road access raises the score a lot.
Road access also meant this day was the last one during which our gear was transported by horses. Vicente and the 911 horses also left us when we reached Playa, a small town where we met two buses which drove us about 30 minutes to a new trail. I'm sure the horsemen were all looking forward to getting home and seeing their families before they headed out with another group. We took the opportunity to have a group photo taken before they left.
From Playa we drove to the beginning of the Llactapata Inca Trail. This short trail section was one actually built by the Incas, and was immediately distinct from anything else we'd hiked on. When the Spanish conquistadors invaded the region, they noted that the royal paths were all smoothly paved with rocks carved flat, and about six horses wide. The Inca rulers had these paths built to connect all of the major cities in their empire. As a result, the Spanish found it easy to travel as they wrought ruin and destruction.
We'd decended far enough in elevation to enter an excellent coffee-growing region. Peru is apparently one of the world's biggest exporters of coffee, but the locals don't have a tradition of drinking it. They sure do brew it well for tourists, though. Strong and dark, but not at all bitter. My family has friends who run coffee farms in Kona, Hawaii, so we're quite familiar with the equipment and processes used. The equipment on our friends' farms seems quite archaic; it was interesting to see even more basic set-ups in Peru. Clearly, they process their coffee in fairly small batches and by hand.
The apparatus below would be used to sort the coffee beans after they've been removed from the cherries. (If you didn't know, coffee beans come as a pair of seeds in a small fruit that looks rather like a small cherry, and thus is called a cherry rather than a berry.) The tan square you can see behind the shed is a layer of coffee beans drying. This set-up was typical of the little coffee farms in the area.
We stopped for a coffee roasting demonstration and tasting at the farm closed to Lucma Lodge, our home for the night. The couple who owned the place roasted coffee by hand over a wood fire. I'd seen a version of the pot they used for roasting the coffee beans at a museum in Cusco. The museum said it was a corn toaster. I imagine it was used for whatever it needed to be used for. If I'd ever seen one for sale, I'd have bought it. I just love the shape of the pot. Anyway, the woman of the house let us all take a turn at stirring the roasting beans and grinding them in a big, old fashioned, hand-crank grinder. She then made some of the strongest coffee I've ever tasted. It would be sure to put hair on your chest. Of course, she was more than willing to sell us bags of roasted beans. I bought a small bag to bring home and share with Thane.
After 10 miles and a long day, we were finally home for the night. Lucma Lodge sat so well nestled in the trees, I couldn't get a good photo of it. I couldn't resist taking a picture of our towels, however. They reminded me of a microscopic parasite, but I can't recall what it's called. (Hah, I just found them on the internet. I knew I wasn't crazy. They're called tardigrades, or waterbears. They're not parasites, though, just bitty (about 1 mm long) creatures that can live in extremely harsh conditions.)
Oh, yes, I almost forgot about today's wildlife sightings. Truly exciting! Actually, the orange caterpillars were very silly and interesting. There were 30-40 of them crossing the trail single-file (well, mostly anyway). Apparently, they always do that as a means of making it less likely that they'll get eaten. I don't know if it's safety in numbers or a means of making them looking like a single bigger animal, but I guess it works.
And just for my mother-in-law, I took pictures of begonias growing in the wild. She grows many of these in planters on her deck in Wasilla, Alaska. All of the ones I saw in Peru had these small single flowers, however, not the big showy ones she grows so well.
