Category: Uncategorized

January 2

Apologies in advance. These next couple of posts may be a bit boring. We hit up 24 wineries in 8 days which is a ridiculous amount of wineries. I mostly want to document which wineries we went to so when someone says, “I’m going to Mendoza, which winery should we visit?”, I can properly recall. So I’ll try to keep it brief and include the most beautiful pictures of wine country. If nothing else, you can scan the pics and ignore the rest. We started with Chilean wine country in Aconcagua valley.

Viña San Esteban – our first visit had a great view of the Andes. A portion of their grapes are grown on a slope that when they went to dig, they found Incan petroglyphs and have since worked with the federal government to protect and preserve the land. Note: petroglyphs are pictures carved into stone. The wines were good, but more than anything else we were just excited to be there. Viña San Esteban is the family name and the name of the winery, but the wine is actually called In Situ – which from the indigenous tongue roughly translates to “in this place” and speaks to their philosophy of ensuring that their wines reflect the character of the Aconcagua Valley.

Viña Errazuriz – This winery was incredibly beautiful and fancy. We were late for our tour, so we were only allowed a tasting, which was a shame. The wines were really good and we all especially loved the Carménère – the native-ish wine that I mentioned in a previous post. This was one of Phil’s top wines for the rest of the trip.

Flaherty Winery – This was a fun one. The guy who gave the tour was a hippy from California where he met the winemaker and then followed the winemaker to Chile in the 90’s. The wines were good, not the most memorable, but the tour was great.

Hippy on the far right and Philip staring into your soul on the far left:

Plus they’re Star Wars fans!

Thank you to a wonderful time, Aconcagua! Off to Argentina tomorrow!

Well Betsy asked for it…

December 31 and January 1!!

We spent New Years Eve in Valparaiso and you already know I love the city, and that love spread right into the new year. We celebrated by going to the market and then cooking a roast in the AirBNB. It was a hugely successful meal, especially since the oven didn’t work. So Michael cooked the roast on the stove top. It was delicious and enjoyed by the four of us and Robbert and Charlotte, one of the couples from the cooking class.

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After the super late dinner, we headed down to the water to see the fireworks. We went complete with a huge jug of water and a few bottles of wine to enjoy the show. Even getting down there was part of the fun. Within a few blocks, we were approached by a few kids who were spraying everyone walking by with flour and confetti.

That bag I’m holding above? It’s a bag of grapes. Chileans have a few NYE superstitions. One is that you have to wear yellow underwear, so, of course, we all did. The streets of Valpo and Santiago have tons of yellow underwear vendors leading up to the last day of the year. Another superstition is that you have to eat twelve grapes at midnight for good luck in the new year. If anyone needs to see it off the blog, I have a photo of Krystal eating all 12 grapes at one time. There were somewhere between 2 and 3 million people down at the water which was just a crazy energy. And then the fireworks!!

There were 16 barges off the coast setting off fireworks. We don’t have too many pictures since we were told to take nothing down to the water – no phone, no wallet, no money. So I got these pictures from Phil/Krystal and Robbert.

An amazing night in a great city!

The next morning, we packed up one AirBNB and headed off to another AirBNB in Aconcagua Valley. Side note: Aconcagua is the tallest peak outside of Asia at 22,837 feet or 6962 meters. We struggled to find the AirBNB after the guard turned us away on accident. But once we finally sorted it out, we arrived at Lupalwe – the mountain home of Andrea and Waldo. It was incredible – a house right out of a Crate and Barrel magazine with an unbelievable mountain view.

We tried to stop at the market to pick up some stuff for dinner, but had a hard time since so much was closed on New Years Day. We showed up to the house with most of the ingredients for Michael to make his bolognese. When we arrived with store bought pasta, Andrea immediately started making homemade pasta for us and opened her extensive kitchen to Michael to complete his dinner.

Here’s a picture of us enjoying our amazing meal – complete with pisco sours (the best he’s ever had per Michael) and a homemade strawberry tart that Andrea whipped up for dessert.

The great hospitality didn’t end for the next couple of days and we really enjoyed this wonderful retreat.

Here’s one of the breakfasts that Andrea had prepared for us – homemade biscuits for Avocado toast with fresh squeezed orange juice and real coffee every morning (although I nabbed the tea most days):

Meat!!! Waldo cooked us some incredible wood fire grilled beef! Note the clever bowls that Andrea thought said soups when she bought and a friend had to correct her English and let her know that she bought soap dishes instead. She loves them too much on the table though to care.

See the wood fired hot tub in the back?

You should all know that many of the pictures that I post in the blog are contributed by other people. This one here was taken by Michael and speaks to how glorious the meat was:

Dinner Selfie:

Thanks to Andrea and Waldo for an incredible stay! We had a blast!

Ok – here’s the deal: I want to know what your favorites are. I’m going to number each. Please post a comment or shoot me a WhatsApp and tell me. If you are responsible for our nieces and nephews – see what their favorites are too and comment or have them send me videos. I want to know if they like the colors or the people or the animals… I thought this was awesome, so humor me and be excited with me.

1.

2.3.4.5.6.7.8. 9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16. (note here – there are planters on the window sills made out of coke bottles and real plants/flowers)17.18.19.20.21.22.23.24.25.26.

December 30-January 1

Santiago was great, but we were pumped to head to Valparaiso. Pipe, Mike’s brother, and his wife, Krystal, flew into Santiago around 3am on the 30th and after a few hours sleep that morning in the hotel, we drove to Valparaiso, via one winery stop at Casas del Bosque.

A quick note about one specific type of Chilean wine: Carménère. So Carménère was a blending grape from Bordeaux. When Chilean winemakers were buying vines from France and other parts of Europe in the mid 1800’s, the French did something a little mean: they sold this vine to the Chileans pretending that it was Merlot. It was planted along side Merlot so when it began to produce grapes, the Chileans thought it was just bad Merlot. They tried to harvest it at the same time, but it wasn’t ready. Also the leaves change color in the fall to a deep orange/red color, which Merlot does not. Back in France, Phylloxera hit which wiped out a bunch of varietals. Since Chileans didn’t realize they had Carménère and all of the Carménère in France had been wiped out, people thought this varietal was gone forever. Fast forward to 1994 and a grape expert came over to Chile and noticed that some of the “Merlot” took longer to ripen. The botanist did some research and discovered that nearly 50% of the Merlot planted in Chile was actually Carménère. It was recognized in 1998 as a distinct variety and now has an official holiday: November 24th is Carménère Day. Now that they know it’s a different grape, they produce the wine differently and it’s super delicious. The glass we had at Casas del Bosque was really full bodied and peppery. No wines are technically from Chile (or Argentina for that matter) because they were all brought over from Europe, but this is the closest thing to Chile having its own varietal.

One more quick side note: we heard another anecdote about Chilean Champagne. As some of you know, people around the world are not allowed to call sparkling wines “Champagne” unless they are specifically from the Champagne region of France. We heard a variation of this story from two different wineries, but the story I like better is that during WWII when Germany was invading France, French winemakers brought vines from Champagne to Chile to save them. After the war, the French came back for their vines and were so grateful to the Chileans that they allowed them to continue producing their sparkling under the name “champagne”. We heard there is only like one winery left that still is able to, but I’m not able to find any info on the internet, so for now, just an interesting story.

After arriving in Valpo, we popped into our AirBNB to drop off our stuff and then headed to a cooking class! Michael had booked us all as a surprise to Phil and Krystal and we were super excited to try out some Chilean dishes. It turns out that Chilean food is not difficult, but just requires a lot of chopping. Krystal rocked the Asada Leche (dessert), I worked on the ceviche and the corn dish and Pipe and Michael mostly fought through some super tiny chopping for the salsa and the ceviche.

Pebre is the name for the salsa which Chileans put on everything – bread, meat, all courses. Empanadas de Pino are the traditional empanadas that are dough filled with beef, onions, one olive and one raisin. Our teacher also talked us through the different folding techniques for the empanadas. Each filling has a different fold, so you can tell by the fold what type of filling is in the empanada.

Pastel de Choclo is a chicken dish that also has the Pino mixture from the empanadas along with one olive and one raisin. The story we got about the olive and the raisin is that they make the different bites interesting and different. After you put all of those ingredients in a single serve clay pan, you pour a corn and milk mixture (the choclo part of the dish) on top. Leche Asada is a dessert that is reminiscent of creme brûlée or the South African dish melk tart (per Phil).

Pisco is a traditional liquor that most Chileans and Peruvians pair with sour mix – so we learned how to make those. Note – both Chileans and Peruvians think they way they make it is the best. Then vino is self explanatory. We didn’t make it. We just drank it. Finally – merken- we also didn’t make this. It is a Chilean spice that we picked up at the market. It is smoky and spicy delicious.

After the class, we went out to wander the streets and see some of the amazing street art. I’m going to do an entire post dedicated to this, so no pictures for now. While we were out in the streets, we saw the rest of the class who were heading to a bar, so we tagged along.

It was a great group of randoms: Tom and the girl whose name I can’t remember from Canada, Catherine from outside Seattle, Charlotte from London, Robbert from Holland. After two drinks, we went back out into the city to see what was going on.

Valparaiso is awesome.

There were musicians in the street – just playing to play – not looking for money or anything. It was legitimately just musicians who enjoyed being there and playing music.

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Also – dancers in the street!! They were all young and really incredible. It was a lot of fun seeing them and made me a little sad that Michael and I don’t know how to dance. Look at the amazing leg swoop in this video:

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And this:

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I loved it!!! And then Phil and Krystal got involved. It wasn’t pretty. It was ridiculous, but they stayed out of the way of the “professionals” and we all thoroughly enjoyed it! For those of you who don’t know Phil and Krystal – see if you can pick them out of this video:

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All in all, the city was amazing. It had such a great young, artistic feel. I loved it. I want to go back at some point and see what the city is like when it isn’t overrun by so many additional people. We’ve heard that there are 2mm additional people in the city (to add to its 1mm residents) and I’ve also heard 1mm additional people. Either way – the city didn’t feel crowded, it felt busy and exciting. I can’t wait to come back.

December 22-28

Well, we’re in Santiago, Chile for the week of Christmas. We reserved a room for seven days in a super fancy* hotel. Note: super fancy is relative after going 4 days without a shower and sandwiching that with a stay in a hostel. But seriously, this place is really nice. It’s the kind of hotel room that silently encourages you to never leave your room. So we’ve done a lot of that. A lot of sleeping, a lot of movie watching, a lot of eating and drinking wine. In short – it’s been a wonderful week.

A few things to note:

Thank you to Katie who called in our Christmas Eve reservations. This was harder than it looked. We technically had reservations for both Christmas and Christmas Eve, but both restaurants were closed and didn’t feel the need to let us know or block us from making those online reservations, so… Katie to the rescue!!

We had a late lunch/early dinner at Ox on Christmas Eve and it was incredible. The steak was amazing. The mushroom risotto was amazing. The free cotton candy that they ended dinner with was… amazing. All in all, super pleased with our meal. We spent the rest of the night facetiming with the fams and watching movies. It was not our standard Christmas by any means and we were missing family, but it was a very relaxing holiday.

On Christmas Day, we grabbed breakfast and then headed out to Christmas mass. Consistent with our holiday, we weren’t sure what the details were of Christmas morning mass, but we just headed to a close church to see what was going on. They have an 11am mass on a typical Sunday, so we just tried our luck. Sure enough, we walked in a minute or two late as they were starting their 11am mass. Perfect! No Christmas music that we recognized, but that was ok. Things got weird when there was no second reading. And then at the sign of peace everyone walked up to wish the front row peace. Then we walked up for communion and… uh oh. It’s a Christmas funeral. Definitely a casket at the altar. Language barrier. We got out of dodge fast and Michael scolded me as I took this picture on the way out:

So… after that… back to the hotel. Things were pretty quiet, so we took advantage and laid low. We sat at the pool for a few hours, had a few meals and watched a few more movies. Super relaxed Christmas, super strange Christmas.

The rest of the week has also been pretty laid back. We’ve both had a few runs, mostly in this cool park by the hotel. It has some flamingos and some beautiful flowers that remind me of my Grandma:

We also hung out at the main market for a bit. The bulk of what they’re selling is seafood.

We also spent some time at the pre Colombian art museum. It was cool, but… they highlighted a lot of artifacts from the Mayans in Mexico which surprised me. I was expecting it to be art associated with Chile and the surrounding areas. And we saw cooler stuff in Mexico City.

Also – here’s a picture of El Centro:

So that’s mostly it… we have not seen enough of what Santiago has to offer, but we have really enjoyed everything we’ve seen. The neighborhood that we’re staying in, Vitacura, is really a neat neighborhood with great restaurants and beautiful buildings and parks. Definitely a recovery week that we’re enjoying to its fullest.

December 20

I forgot to post this, but thought it was too awesome to leave out. This is our Inca Trail “passport”. This is the doc that was needed to pass each check point and finally was needed to enter Machu Picchu. We did it.

December 20

OK – this is it! The end of the line for us. Our porters woke us up early – a little after 3am – and we rushed to get our stuff put together. The porters are required to be on a train by 4:45am, so they have to break camp and walk an hour or so to get to the train. Despite this, by the time we were out of our tent, they had sandwiches, snacks, clean water prepared, and of course some tea so we can wake up properly. We had already said our goodbyes the night before, so we mostly tried to stay out of their way. Once we were ready to go, Ruban, Michael and I walked about 10 minutes to the next check point. We got there early enough that we got a seat on the bench. The check point didn’t open until 5:30am, so we sat and waited with the other hikers. Our early arrival paid off once it started pouring and the hikers at the end of the line tried to push in to stand under our cover. It was nice to have that seat for two hours.

Once the check point was opened we started on the last bit of our journey. Ruban told us to go ahead and he’d meet us at the sun gate.

The rain was a little tricky – we tried to keep our backpacks dry. I pulled out the poncho I had brought for the first time. But it was hot – so after awhile, we just gained comfort with the fact that we were going to be wet and started losing layers.

There was a lot of anticipation as we did that final hike. A handful of hikers pulled off to the side at some ruins for a few minutes, but one of the groups just kept hiking, so we kept moving as well. About 15 minutes after those ruins, we started seeing clean, put together people walking towards us. Some of the people who had taken the train to Machu Picchu were hiking this portion of the Inca trail. One woman stopped me and asked how much further it was to the Sun Gate…. umm…. So we blew through the Sun Gate. As the official entrance to Machu Picchu, it’s super important and we were supposed to meet Ruban there, but… oh well. It was cloudy and we couldn’t see anything there anyways.

The clouds did break long enough to give us this shot of MP as we were hiking that morning:

So not that impressive, yet. But it was our first glimpse and we were pumped! The difficulty of the past three days of hiking had knocked our excitement and anticipation up to an eleven.

Ruban caught up to us pretty quickly and we entered Machu Picchu.

It was remarkable.

Ruban spent about two hours with us at Machu Picchu before he had to head back to Cusco. He talked through the different sections of the ruins, where the school was located, what everyday life would have looked like. He also gave us a lot of information about the different temples.

Temple for Pacha Mama: notice how the entrance is shaped similar to a mountain. Also, entering the space was supposed to be like entering Pacha Mama’s womb. The Sun Temple was directly above.

Temple of the Condor: the huge rugged stones are the wings and the stone on the ground is the beak/head. The condor is believed to be the animal that can travel between the earth and the afterlife/the heavens, so the Incas would mummify their dead and put them on the back of the condor here. That way, the condor could transfer the dead to the gods.

Beyond the temples, there was a lot of random cool stuff. Like this:

But in general, we were mostly just pumped to be there and to see how extensive the city was.

There were a lot of people and it did feel a bit touristy after so many days without showers and real bathrooms. There were a lot of selfie sticks and posing, but we just felt really proud of ourselves. I did at least.

I felt less proud of this picture:

Here’s how the interaction went:

Ruban: if you sit right there, it is the best picture

Jane (seeing that it’s muddy): sit? You want us to sit?

Ruban: yes – sit right there. Best picture.

Jane: sit? You want us to sit? (Possibly a language barrier… although we haven’t really had any issues in 3 days)

Ruban: sit.

Jane: sit?

Ruban: SIT

Jane sits.

Michael (who has been standing there for the entire conversation without saying anything): Jane! Why would you sit in that that mud?!? What is wrong with you?!?

Jane: Ruban told me to sit. 😒

So I had mud soaked through my pants for the rest of the day. The picture did turn out pretty great!

After Ruban headed back to Cusco, we still had some time to explore. We hiked to the Inca Bridge.

This was supposed to be a 90 minute trek. It took about 25. Max. Definitely a little anticlimactic. It was a pretty steep drop on the hike.

After this, Michael was still looking for some more hikes, so he went off to try to hike Mount Machu Picchu. They wouldn’t let him do the hike because it was too late in the day and they didn’t realize he was in beast mode, ready to run up any mountain in record time. So he instead hiked back to the Sun Gate to see what we had missed that morning.

I, however, went to the bar. I got a beer and ate the sandwich and the apple that Alberto had packed for me that morning and relaxed! My legs were completely useless at this point (and for several days after). Once Michael got back from his extra hikes, we grabbed a bus and headed to Aguas Calientes, the town where we needed to pick up our extra bags and grab the train back to Cusco. The train ride was really beautiful and we had the chance to sit opposite some guys that had been on the trail with us from the Netherlands. Really interesting conversation comparing travel stories.

That night we had Indian from the place across the street from our hostel and we slept hard. The next day we flew out of Cusco around 7pm, so we packed up our things, checked out of our room and spent the day in town. We sent our laundry off, both got super cheap massages, had lunch and some more beers and got to spend more time with Patsy and Alexa before heading to the airport.

Our overnight flight took us to Santiago, Chile. We’re here for the next week and we’re planning on relaxing, getting a Brazil visa and celebrating Christmas before heading to wine country.

A big thank you to the people of Peru who welcomed us for these past 10 or so days. We’ve enjoyed your beautiful country and we’re super grateful that you’ve preserved it and shared it with us. Also a big shout out to Ruban… truly the most interesting man in the world.

December 19

OK – Day Three! We have Dead Woman’s Pass behind us and we’re ready to crank through another day of “Inca Flat” and some intense downhill hiking. Here’s a picture that shows how far we had come since Dead Woman’s Pass. In the center of the picture, at the top, you can see the pass. We then hiked all the way down and passed where this picture was taken to reach the second pass on day three.

We have two passes during today’s hike which is about 16 kilometers long. So it’s the longest day, technically, but should be significantly easier than the prior day.

Here is us at the second pass (I believe):

During the hike, we got to visit several locations of Inca ruins: Runkurakay, Sayaqmarca, and PhuyuPatamarca. Ruban gave us a lot of information about these sites – what they were used for, who lived there, etc. I don’t really remember any of it. Sorry.

I do remember, however, the story he told us about this flower. Finally, a really cool orchid!

The Quechua word for this orchid translates to “tear drop”. So apparently a military general wanted to marry the princess and went to the Inca to ask to marry her. They were super in love. The Inca said no, so the two ran away together along the Inca trail, heading for the jungle. The Inca sent his army after them to retrieve his daughter and the general was killed. The princess was so distraught and their love was so strong that when he was killed and she sat on the trail crying, her tears went into the ground and these orchids began to grow there.

We camped at Wiñay Wayna, Quechua for “forever young”. This is also the site of another Inca ruin that is considered the small Machu Picchu.

After exploring a little bit, we went back to the camp site for tea and dinner. Plus, Ruban taught us a dice game that was a bit confusing but a lot of fun. Our last night camping on the Inca Trail was still a bit wet, but not nearly as cold as the prior night. We got settled in, with a 3am wake up call to finish the trail the next morning and head to Machu Picchu!

December 18

OK – this is it! This is the day that we’ve done all our training for… oh yeah – we didn’t do any training. A lot of people who do this trek train for it. They do stair steppers and challenging hikes to prepare themselves for this day. We did none of that. I woke up in a near panic about it. Michael was not concerned. We were woken up with coca tea at 6am, had breakfast, packed up our bags and were on the trail a little before 7am. On the first day, Michael spent much of the hike forging ahead, setting our pace. It’s not my favorite way to hike, but it was ok. Typically, on our hikes, we stay right together. It’s good for me because when a portion of the hike is tough, Michael will often give me encouragement or just directly tell me to keep going or to pull it together. We were not 20 minutes into day two and I was melting down. I was completely overwhelmed by what was coming our way that day and every time I got to the top of an incline, I was greeted with more hills, but no Michael. He was putting too much space between us and I lost it. Quickly. Seriously, I’m not sure we were even out of the camp site and I was in tears. The next time I caught up to him, I yelled and felt much better. I think more than anything, I just needed to get some of that anxiety out.

Now that we had that out of the way… I spent a lot of time trying to forgot how hard it was. The scenery was beautiful, thankfully, and Michael documented it for your enjoyment:

There were two stopping points along the first uphill battle. Reminder that we started the day at 3000 meters (~9800 feet) and are heading up to 4200 meters (~13,800 feet) to Dead Woman’s Pass. In case those numbers mean nothing to you, as they had previously meant nothing to me, that’s a huge uphill hike and the altitude could make it much more difficult. Thankfully we’ve been acclimating for about a week, so the altitude wasn’t that much of an issue.

The first rest stop was suppose to be about 1.5 hours into our morning hike. The second rests stop was another 2 hours after that. Then finally we had the hardest stretch to the top which was suppose to be another 1.5 hours. So about five hours to hike to the first pass. We had a total of 11 kilometers to hike that day. I don’t remember how many were in that first uphill stretch. Maybe 5?

So Michael and I were trekking along. Ruban had been hanging back a bit, letting us take our own pace. He caught up to us after about 2 hours or so and I asked how much further to that first stop. I was swimming in some serious self doubt since we should have hit that first rest awhile ago. Ruban told us it’s as another 30 minutes to the rest. Now I was really panicking. How could it possibly be another 30 minutes. We were screwing up. We hit the rest stop about 15 minutes after that and were subsequently informed that it was the second stop. We had somehow missed that first rest stop. Despite my pessimism, we were dominating the hike and had cranked through about 3.5 hours of hiking in just over 2.5 hours. You cannot imagine my relief. Just a few more hours to the pass.

Dead Woman’s Pass. Here is a picture as we approached. It is called Dead Woman’s Pass because you can see the profile of a woman laying down. The pass is over her throat in the lowest point. Her face is just to the left (distinctive nose) and her chest is to the right.

As we hiked up the mountain each day, I spent some of the time saying a rosary… ish. Jane’s version of a rosary. I got the 10 Hail Marys per decade and the Our Father and the Glory Be. Now that I’m googling it, I did the prayers out of order and I can tell you what I missed: The Apostles’ Creed. Also, with the mysteries – I roughly know what the mysteries are (joyful, sorrowful, and glorious) but I don’t totally know which go in glorious and which go in joyful, so I just best guessed on my day 1 hike. By this second day instead of mysteries after each decade, I just sang Godspell and Christmas songs at the mysteries time. Apologies to my religious scholars.

I also mixed in some prayers to Pacha Mama in there… Mother Earth in Quechua.

You know that we made it eventually, because I’m blogging from a hotel room now. It was amazing:

This is definitely one of those moments where I felt a ton of accomplishment. Once at the top, we relaxed for a bit. Ruban played his traditional flute in honor of and thanksgiving to Pacha Mama.

We met a few people on this hike up today. We met an Aussie couple who we think may have broken up before the trip was over and we met a mother/daughter pair from New Zealand, Patsy and Alexa, who we ended up hanging out with a few more times before leaving Peru. Super cool women who dominated Dead Woman’s Pass and were a blast to spend time with. Hopefully we’ll get to meet back up with them either in New Zealand or when they come to visit New Orleans in 2019!

It as all downhill from this point for the day.

A few things we learned: the potato is the only plant that the Incas could grow over 4000 meters in altitude. Natural lupins grow out here but are toxic – they have to be washed for a week in the stream before they are ok to eat. There is a similar process required of natural quinoa that grows here.

We saw a bunch of plants along the way and Ruban pointed out which plants are used to cure colds, which are for flus and fevers, and which are used “for the lungs”, whatever that means.

I was promised 400 varieties of orchids on the second half of day two. So I’m not sure if this was an Inca story exaggerated or if we were just unlucky. We did see some beautiful sceneries and flowers despite the lack of orchids.

So all in all it was a really tough day. It was supposed to be. We knew it was going to be, but I definitely struggled today. We arrived at camp pretty early – maybe 2pm – and had the afternoon to explore the campsite and nap. We hiked a little further along the trail and took this picture of the campsite:

We came down that mountain to the camp site and as you can tell from this picture, our day three hike was going to start with an uphill battle as well.

The camp was at Pacaymayu which is still about 3600 meters in altitude. We arrived before the rain which was great, but it rained on and off for the rest of the afternoon and night. We got some water in the tent and I “slept” with wet feet. Not ideal. Despite the beauty and the wonderful food and cool people, I was ready to keep moving on this journey.