Our first night

We all took off after our bath in the hot springs on our first trek with the bags. Because of the altitude, we were all huffing and puffing quite a bit, but we made it through because of the great company and scenery. We hiked up about 300 meters that first day to 3700 feet.

We stopped along the way because a young girl had some chicha, a local corn beer. We all tried it, but not after pouring some to the Mother Earth (pachamama) and saluting to all of the different mountains around. The mountains were considered gods to the incas and so they saluted them a lot. The chicha was actually used for ceremonies in ancient times. Scott was not a big fan, but I quite liked it!


We stopped for our first night right next to a local house. We had to carry our sleeping bags, but the horses carried the tents and they were even all set up for us by the time we arrived. We were so spoiled! It was really wonderful, though. There were many dogs barking in the night and it was quite cold, so none of us slept as well as we would have liked, but we trekked on the next day.

These were a couple of cute kids that came up to our tents to greet us. Actually, I think they wanted gifts from us, so we gave them bread and candies.

The next morning before we took off, we stopped into the house that we slept next to. It was a dirt floor in one big room. There was a big loft that held their food supplies. You can see the mother and some of her children here next to their stove. They don't use wood to keep it going, but grass and llama poo. Amazing that it didn't stink! They kept the grass and poo in one corner We saw little guinea pigs running around in there, too. They are eaten only on special occassions. This mother had been a widow for about a year and had 5 kids to take care of. It brought tears to my eyes to see them in this little house, knowing that they lay down animal skins at night to sleep all together. We gave them some food and went on our way, but we couldn't get them out of our minds. It is amazing to see how other people live. SAS travel, the tour ageny we used is very good to these people and pays them to use their land. They also recommend that the hikers bring rice and other food to the family, so this helps them out at least some.

Here are some other kids that we met along the way. Aren't they handsome!?