Salkantay, Cuy, and Shaving

I just ate guinea pig. A whole one, head still attached. All they really do is kill them, put a hole in their stomachs, and remove the insides. After that they are stuck in an oven and then served to you. It looks exactly like a guinea pig, all crispy and brown. Its good too, not incredible, but good. Ana ate the eyes out of hers, but I didn´t.

The salkantay trek was awesome. Including machu picchu it was about 50 something miles of walking between monday and friday. We started out in the mountains and the first night of camping it got below freezing, lame to sleep in. The second day we walked 10 hours, first climing up to Salkantay (big mountain) to the highest point in the trip, 4600 meters. It is really tough to breathe, and one guy brought an oxygen tank. If you take a quick hit of oxygen, its instant rejuvenation, kind of cool actually. Coming down the other side of Salkantay you enter into a big valley, the whole trip is lord of the rings ish. The valley turns into Jungle, and you walk along cliffs with the urubamba river about 1000 feet or so beneath. This is when mosquitos come out, and around 5 o clock on the second day we found our camp, which is reminiscent of predator, especially when we found carved out chunks of cow meat on the roof of one of the buildings. That night our tent wouldn´t close so I slept under the mosquito net.

By the next day some of the sand flies and mosquitos had bitten, and they itch like hell now. We walked another 6 hours or so the next day, through the jungle and down closer to the urubamba until making camp in Santa Teresa where there were nice hot springs. Thursday was a good deal of walking, though the ground was flat which made it easier, the previous days was constant up and down. We arrived in aguas calientes (the city outside machu picchu where you have to stay a night before seeing the city) to heavy rain and lightning. Its very yosemite looking, only the valley is narrower and the mountains steeper. I took my first hot shower since Lima, and on Friday we woke up at 330 to climb the 400 something vertical steps up to the entrance of the city. All in all, really cool.

Tonight we leave, a bus to Arequipa and then I´m taking one to Pisco. I´ll leave Pisco Wednesday for Lima and get on our plane Thursday morning. Woot.