We leave the Sacred Valley and start heading towards Lares. We'll be doing more consistent climbing today, so only a 6km trek to help continue the process of our bodies adapting.
It feels bizarre - you look up a nicely sloping track going through a canyon. You're only carrying about 5kg. Down in Sydney you'd be doing a steady 5 to 6 km/hr, but not up here. Due to the altitude we are at (about 3,500m) with each breath we take in only about 2/3rds the amount of air compared to sea level. Also, because of the lowered oxygen pressure, our blood can't fully saturate with oxygen. Instead of being up near 100% here it is at 90%. These two changes may not sound like much to you, but being here it feels horrifying. A light slope and a 5kg pack feels like a steep hill and a 30kg pack!
But the views are gorgeous!
We keep scanning the cliffsides for the tombs that dot every inaccessible face. Rather than bury their dead, the Inca mummified the body then placed them in niches carved out of the rock face and covered the opening with mud bricks. Even poor people were interred with their favourite ceramic pots for use in the afterlife (and higher ranking people had gold and jewellry) so these tombs have suffered the predation of grave robbers since the Spanish conquest.
We spot one that has been plundered - but surely that shadowed figure is the mummy still in place?
Effy says no, but I'm convinced!
The track we are on is also the main route between villages for the local people. No roads up here - paved or not. We come across a local herbal healer (onion doctor) and drop in to see if we can get some eucalyptus oil for nasal congestion (the Peruvians have brought across a half-dozen species of Australian gum trees and they are flourishing here, well away from the pests that prey on them in Aus).
No luck - but these onion healers are critical to the local people, acting as combined doctors, nurses and midwives.
And then we get to meet some real locals - a herd of alpaca being brought to town. They've clearly heard of my run-in with the vicuña and are very suspicious that I might try something similar. Good country folk, they aren't in favour of any of this cross-species rubbish!
They hurried off, no doubt feeling very relieved that their good reputation was still intact!
Later on we met a group of children at a shelter, hanging around (as kids world-over) do.
We stopped to share some food & drink with them, and to laugh with the boys who were having fun with one of the donkeys (I've rarely met a more patient beast).
We then used our support vehicle to get over the next pass. It was at 4,650m - at this altitude our lungs took in about half the normal amount of air, and our oxygen saturation would have been well below 90% - we weren't sufficiently adapted as yet to attempt it on foot.
And I'm so glad we had the vehicle. It never snows at this altitude in Peru. Well, never except for now. For Nicole it was her first look at snow, her first snowball fight, and her first snow angel.
It had been a very big day.
No comments:
Post a Comment