Trip Stats

4 months
5 countries
26 cities
62 different beds
9,200 miles on the bus
$8,500 spent (about $60 a day while traveling)

… I think I’m ready to be in one place for a while

Hostel Reviews

As a backpacker, you spend much of your time finding hostels, traveling between hostels, and staying in hostels.  When you find a good one it's s joy, and when you expect a great one and it's not it's a huge letdown.  For the trip as a whole I did a pretty good job of staying in nice ones.  In total I stayed in 29 hostels of all different variety, here's how they rank:

Get me out of here

• La Sirena, Palomino, Colombia – C-

The only hostel that I actually left earlier than I intended to.  It started off looking like a little slice of heaven, right on the beach, super chill, and hammocks to sleep in.  But that night was just terrible, it was my third straight night sleeping in a hammock, it was freezing, and hence I barely slept.  In the morning I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and I did.

Ok for a night, but wouldn’t stay much longer

• Hotel Marlin, Cartegena, Colombia – C
• Casa Mojito Hostel, Taganga, Colombia – C
• Casa Familiar, Santa Marta, Colombia – C+
• 7 Duendes Base Hostel, Salta, Argentina – B-
• Hostal Varayoc, Aguas Calientes, Peru – C+

It was somewhat unfortunate that my first hostel of the trip fell into this category, but it was only decent at best compared to some of the other places that I found.  I usually consulted Lonely Planet or Hostel World for hostel recommendations, so it was always disappointing when the place had promise but turned out to be a dud. 

Felt more like a hotel

• America del Sur Hostel Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina – B+
• Hostal Emperador, Copacabana, Bolivia – F
• Casa De Avila Hotel, Arequipa, Peru – B

Every once in a while I’d stumble into a hostel that really was a hotel, they just put more beds in the rooms.  The best by far was in Argentina, with an immaculately clean and nice hostel.  The others fell off from there, the one in Bolivia being my least favorite place of the trip.

Good, but nothing to write home about

• Hotel Pelikan, Taganga, Colombia – B
• Ayres Portenos Hostel, Buenos Aires, San Telmo, Argentina – B
• Hostel Bambu Mini, Puerto Iguazu, Argentina – B
• La Casona Hostal, Potosi, Bolivia – B
• Desert Nights, Huacachina, Peru – B

All of these hostels were great actually, absolutely nothing wrong, just got beat out by the ones that went above and beyond.  I can’t think of anything that these hostels did particularly well, or particularly different than any normal hostel, but all were a good time.

My own room!

• Hotel Anexo Mitru, Tupiza, Bolivia – B-
• Hostal Compania de Jesus, Potosi, Bolivia – B-
• Cruz de los Andes, La Paz, Bolivia – A-
• Hostal Tambo Colorado, Pisco, Peru – A-
• Ekeko Hostel, Lima, Peru – B

My first two and a half months on the road I always opted for the cheap dorm room, between 4 and 12 beds, shared bathroom.  At first I loved it, then tolerated it, finally I was over it.  It was around that time that I was in Bolivia, and so I made sure to splurge whenever possible on my own room.  It was amazing to have space to unpack my bag and have a little space to myself.  The places in Bolivia were for the most part nothing special, but the rooms in Peru were really nice, and not over the top money wise for my own room.

So good I never left the hostel

• La Brisa Loca, Santa Marta, Colombia – B+
• Arequipay Backpackers, Arequipa, Peru – B+

There were a couple hostels that were setup so that I’d never leave.  They had pools, massive televisions with binders full of DVDs, hammocks, pool tables, bars, restaurants… it was hard to get out of those hostels, let alone off the couch.  They were fun places to stay... for a while, but I didn’t fly 6,000 miles just sit in a hostel.

That little something extra

• La Casa de Felipe, Taganga, Colombia – A-
• Macondo Guesthouse, San Gil, Colombia – A
• Plantation House, Salento, Colombia – A
• The Art Factory, Buenos Aires, San Telmo, Argentina – A-
• Hostel Achalay, Bariloche, Argentina – A
• Hostel Lao, Mendoza, Argentina – A
• Pisko & Soul, Cusco, Peru – B+

This group of my favorite hostels was fairly easy to pick, as each one had some amazing to offer.  Like the Plantation House with tours of the owners coffee farm, Achalay with weekly dinners, or Lao’s free wine after 8pm that got the group to mingle.  They were also places that all had numerous activities all planned and priced out for the guests, great owners, and promoted a fun time.

The best of the best of the best

• Hostal El Refugio, Pucon, Chile – A+

However, only one hostel can be the favorite, and the only hostel I visited in Chile is the one.  It was just perfect, best kitchen, most comfortable bunk beds, best activities, amazing staff, and just a super chill atmosphere.  I thoroughly enjoyed every second of my time in that one.

My last big adventure – The Little Galapagos

It wasn’t really that crazy of an adventure, but for $20 it's a great bang for your buck: tons of birds, penguins (which are really birds but I feel deserve their own category), sea lions, jelly fish, and dolphins.  It was great fun.

I took a bus from Pisco to Paracas which is right on the water, and then onto a speed boat.  We saw the Candalaria, a giant picture in the sand.  It’s unknown who made it, when, or what it’s purpose, but it’s cool looking:

Then we continued on to the islands which was incredible and just filled with wildlife.  There used to be 22.5 millions bird but now only 300 thousands, which is crazy to imagine nearly 100 times more birds flying around above me.

 

It should be nothing but relaxation and smooth sailing from here on out, but if it’s not then I managed to stumble into a truly big adventure...

A bird with a 6ft wingspan

For the girl’s last day we hit up the Colca Canyon.  We were all very excited about our last big adventure sans one thing, the canyon is about 4 hours away from Arequipa, so we’d have be up at 2:30am for the bus…

I’d be lying if I said I remembered the whole day, because I was going on no sleep and much of the day was spent in a bus.  I know we drove about 3 hours to Chivay, and then another hour or so to the Cruz del Condor where you get a great view of the canyon and the birds flying.  We also stopped many time along the way at various villages with different activities:

The tour was pretty good, by far the highlight was watching the condors fly around, and we were lucky to see them as it doesn’t always happen.  Towards the end, Savannah, Sahar and I all felt like typically terrible American tourist: speaking only in loud English, being late for the bus, sleeping most of the bus ride, and being so tired at times to even leave the bus.  Overall it was a bit rough, but the condors made the whole trip worth it.

From Beans to Bar

Cusco, it's pretty amazing and annoying all the same breadth.  Here, you get solicited for things to spend your money more per meter walked than any other place I've been in South America.  I guess it’s what you get when you mix rich tourists with third world homeless.  Anyways, it gets to be just like advertisements, you just start to block them out and say ‘no gracias,’ without even listening or looking.  But for some reason, the flyer for the free entrance to the chocolate museum caught our attention.

It turned out to be a great decision, as they have a ‘create your own chocolate bar’ workshop deal, where you start with the chocolate beans and end up with your own chocolate to eat.  It was well worth the 66 soles. 

We went through the basic process:  the cacao tree, the fermentation process (which is super important and has to take places only hours after the pods have been picked), the tossing of the beans (basically mixing over heat until the beans start popping), and the removing of the skins to reveal just the cocoa beans.  We all tried eating the beans before and after tossing – both were pretty bitter, but we learned if you eat enough of the uncooked beans you begin to hallucinated.  Then we got out the mortar and pestle (my specialty) for a little bean grinding competition.  We all had 2 minutes to turn the cocoa from beans into a smooth paste, the way the Mayans used to do it.  After 2 minutes of pretty hard work our pastes were judged, and I won (nbd...) the prize of a bag of cocoa tea.  It tastes a lot like chocolate – delicious!

Then we used our hard earned chocolate paste to make two kinds of hot chocolate.  The first was the method of the ancient Mayans, just cocoa paste, boiling water, and cayenne pepper… as predicted, it was terrible.  Then we made an American version, cocoa paste, cinnamon, cloves, warm milk, and lots of sugar.  The latter was much much better.

Finally, we saw the final steps to making chocolate: mixing the paste with sugar for 48 hours until it is perfectly smooth, then pouring into chocolate bars.  This was the best part, as we got to pick out any mold we wanted for our chocolate and then add flavors: mint, coffee beans, nuts, coconut, whatever we wanted really.  By the end of the 2 hour workshop we all felt terrible like a kid after Halloween.  Having an empty stomach that was filled with pounds of chocolate was not a great choice before dinner.

The finished chocolate went in the refrigerator for an hour before it was ours to take home.  The consensus was clear: the tour – great, the chocolate – amazing!

PS. The girls took all the photos of this event, so I’ll add them once I get them…

If two is good, three must be better

Another trip to the airport and another person joins the crew, our friend Sahar (who originally planned to travel to Peru with Savannah) arrived to join the fun.  She could only take a week off work, so it would be an aggressive week seeing the sights of Peru.  Some of the activities: hitting up Machu Picchu (though I would skip it this time while Savannah hit it up the second time in as many days), Cusco, overnight bus, Arequipa, Colca Canyon….  I think I’ll sleep at the end of the week.

Cusco or Cuzco

Cusco is the ancient Inca capital (not Machu Picchu – who knew?), and it’s also one of the more famous cities in all of South America.  It has a bit of a strange feel that took me a while to get used to.  There’s nothing inherently special about Cusco, it’s just the closest big city to a world famous set of ruins, and as such, Cusco gets so much tourist money it doesn’t know what to do with itself.  Like, ‘why is the largest Starbucks I’ve ever seen here (and yes Savannah and I want there for coffee),’ it didn’t make a ton of sense.  But it makes the town an absolute dream, super clean, tons of great restaurants, and things just run better than your typical third world city.  There is the annoyance of everyone claiming to be Pablo Picasso and selling the same cheap art for one sol, getting offered an endless stream of terrible (so I was told) massages, and markets galore selling the same junk in every shop.  One massive market literally had 50 venders selling the same exact stuff.

The food deserves its own section.  One of my buddies from Australia told me, ‘we spend 9 days in Cusco and did nothing but eat…’ well I spent 10 (not including the Salkantay trek) and he was absolutely right!  Savannah and I found a couple amazing places and just kept eating at them.  Jake’s Café, Los Perros, and Inka Grill were among the favorites, and trust me, the food was better than I used to eat back home.

Salkantay Trek

Day 1 – 14km

The main event of Savannah and my trip together was the Salkantay trek, so when the time came to begin we were eager to get going.  However, even being super excited, the 4am wakeup call by our guide David still felt insanely early.  It would take several more hours of sleep in the van and arriving at our last town in civilization to have breakfast that we’d be awake enough to meet everyone.  The cast of characters:

EB – Art designer for sets on movies / commercials from Dallas.  She has a really cool job and a pretty interesting life.  She’s climbed to Everest base camp, Mt. Kilimanjaro, seen the Taj Mahal.  She also carries around a doll head she found in Amsterdam (Bob), who she takes picture of at each destination.  It sounded very strange at first.

Lyn – Retired salesman from Salt Lake City.  He loved to tell a lot of cheesy jokes and had a lot of one liners to add to the group which at times got annoying.  But he was generally a good time, even when he fell and hit his head on a rock on day two, and he continually kept the group updated on elevations and mileage with his GPS.

Craig – Retired teacher also from Salt Lake City.  He was soft spoken but also really funny when he did speak.  He was my favorite of the three (and Savannah said that I was his favorite too – aw shucks…).

David (our guide) – If Craig liked me best, then David decidedly liked Savannah best, like in the morning he’d usually get her up and give her the instruction for the day, not even mentioning me.  But he was also a really good guide, nice, friendly, good pace, interesting things to add, just a top notch guide and probably the best I’ve had in South America.

And then it happened… It’s strange how sickness hits, you don’t really want to admit it to yourself, but you know something is wrong and you just hope to ignore it.  I had my first toilet trouble in the breakfast bathroom and instantly took an antibiotic for travels diarrhea fearing the worst.  The next 30 minutes of windy roads decidedly didn’t help.  Then the hiking began.

It was a fun start to the trek, Savannah and I trying to navigate through all the puddles and mud, us being the only two not wearing waterproof hiking boots, while also getting a nice groove going on the trail.  Everything seemed to have fixed itself since breakfast, with the only noticeable trouble being the sand fly bites that were drawing blood.

However, at snack time, I could only eat a banana, and that was mostly out of obligation to the stop.  I began to get nervous that after hours of hiking I felt no ounce of hunger, and even refused Savannah’s last cracker.  Something was clearly wrong…

At lunch I had to poop again, running up into the hills for privacy and necessity.  I could only manage a couple of bites of soup, bread, and white rice.  I felt worse than at snack time and not hungry at all.  The stuffed avocado with peppers and onions was painful to miss.

The rest of the day was dreadful, stomach turning from mild discomfort to severe pain.  It was a pretty long first day having started at 4am, and when we got to camp I could do little more than lay in the tent and focus all my attention on my bowel moments.  Savannah was an absolute angel and took great care of me, rubbing my back, feeding me sips of Gatorade, and trying to get me to eat (which in way was going to happen).  The cooks were also nice enough to make me a special tea for sickness, which I used to wash down a handful of medication.  Eastern and Western medicine working together, I just prayed my nurse wasn’t overzealous with her assessment of the effectiveness of my antibiotics.

I skipped dinner all together, choosing instead to put on all my clothes inside my sleeping bag to fend off the onslaught of cold shivers I was feeling.  I heard that dinner was amazing and the cooks busted out a flaming banana for desert which sounded incredible.  But to be honest, in that moment, I just wanted my stomach to stop hurting… and to stop pooping.

We camped that night between two towering peaks above, the Salkantay and Humantay mountains.  We’d do the Salkantay pass tomorrow.

Day 2 – 24km

I woke with the roosters feeling better, but that quickly turned to running to that bathroom and only a single scoop of eggs accompanied by a slice of bread for breakfast.  We were on the trail by half six as it continued to rain from the previous night.

The first 3 hours were all uphill until we reached Salkantay pass, 15,000ft.  Craig made a good point, ‘all the things about day 2 I thought would be difficult – elevation and steep terrain – were no problem, it was only the weather.’  The rain, wind, and elevation made it extremely cold most of the day.

I continued to feel pretty terrible and bring up the rear of the group.  Savannah was really great and would try and wait for me, even at a snail’s pace, we still ended up with a sizable distance between the two of us, but she’d still stop and wait for me in the rain.

We discussed perspective and how back home when one thing goes wrong it can be upsetting, but when you’ve been walking in the rain for hours on end it feels like the greatest relief in the world when it lets up for just a moment.

We also talked about how the simplest solution is often the most elegant.  For example, Savannah wore a $100 rain jacket from REI while I wore a free poncho I’d received as a gift from a friend.  Who do you think stayed the driest? (trick quickest – the guy wearing a trash bag….).  Or when after lunch we put plastic bags over our feet to keep them dry and they worked amazingly.  Just imagine how much water proof socks would cost (if they even exist).

Several people called me a champ on that day, and I’ll be honest that with the sickness, weather, and lack of nourishment, I was pretty proud of making to the top of that peak.

Once at the top, we made a sacrifice just as the Inca’s used to make.  We each had brought a rock up to the top, along with 3 coca leaves (which represent the most important animals to the Incan people: puma, condor, snake) for a sacrifice.  We left the leaves under the rock as we made a wish.

After a few hours decent, we stopped for lunch in a hut with a chorus or meowing cats to keep us company.  I was finally greeted with a long lost feeling – hunger, one that I thought I’d never feel again.  I managed to get my first real food of the trip: all my soup, salad, and about half a plate of food.

Sadly the day was only about half done, mileage wise, and still about 3 hours left on the trail.  We all felt defeated, and it was near agony to put back on all our wet gear and reenter the storm after just getting warm and full.  The second half was most flat and downhill, the one kicker – deep mud.  Great…

The trail quickly turned from normal mud to loose dirt, which after hours of rain was just awful.  Actually it was quite fun at first, but when we rolled into camp hours later, we were all over that whole walking thing.  Luckily ours tents were all setup under the comfort of a roof.

We all cleaned our things as best we could, and put on a heavenly feeling change of dry clothes before my first tea time and dinner with the group.  Lyn had brought wine and we finished that off before crashing early, deserving, after a long hard day.

Day 3 – 14km (easy)

If the theme of day 2 was struggle, day 3 was recovery.  We slept in (well 7am), and only had to hike on a flat trail until lunch, and our next camp.  It was glorious. 

That morning I also ate my first breakfast and amazingly felt great all day (odd how much food helps while hiking – who knew).  We opted for walking on the dirt road instead of the true trail to avoid landslides.  We did have to cross one section where a previous landslide had occurred.  There was lots of water and it was super deep mud.  No cars or even horses could get across.

That night the campsite was much more modern: next to a general store, picnic tables, and a shower with about 2 minutes of hot water (but still – HOT WATER!).  It was luxurious.  We sat around drinking and playing cards until dinner and nightfall.  Then we choked down a nightcap pisco shot by candlelight before turning in for the night.

Day 4 – 12km

Today we made a great call, skipping the first 7 miles of pure mud to sleep in and ride in a warm bus to the better trail.

After a much more normal start to the day, breakfast at eight and a bit of sunshine, we got going, riding in the bus along the river for about two hours til we reached the railroad tracks, and our trek continued.

The trail was very mild today, flat and easy with little rain until we reached Aguas Calientes and our hostel for the night.  An actual hot shower and a real bed was an amazing change of pace.

As a group we hit up the hot springs, to share a few drinks and soak our battered bodies.  I was feeling much more myself, nearing 110% (my norm), while Savannah was starting to head the other direction.  After feeling great for nearly the whole first four days, her right knee was starting to act up, and give her serious trouble on steps, mostly downhill though.  The schedule the whole next day, however, was exploring the thousands of steps of Machu Picchu.  Timing for our struggles was not on our side during this trip.

We hit dinner as a group as well, and then to bed early, as hours later we’d be walking up to Machu Picchu.   

Day 5 – Machu Picchu

Up bright an early once again, this time before 4am, in order to walk the forty minutes of flat followed by forty-five up stairs in order to beat the first buses to Machu Picchu.  Walking the start of the day with flashlights and through fog, we made it just minutes before the crowds began to form.

Here are a few of the shots that I got before the crowds and fog rolled in:

David then took us on a 2-hour tour of the ruins, here are the best parts that I remember:

• Cusco (Inca capital) looks like a puma.  Machu Picchu (no one knows its purpose) is like a condor.
• Bingham (from Yale University) – discovered the site in 1911 by accident.  He took all the artifacts (though no treasure was found) back to the US, but I guess we’re slowly giving them back to Peru.
• We saw where the Inca Trail comes into Machu Picchu, the trail to the sun gate, and the temple for the sun – where the sunrise shines through the windows at summer and winter solstices.
• We learned how the Inca’s used to cut stones to perfect proportions and shapes (along the rock’s natural cracks) to make stones that fit perfectly together.
• We saw an ancient sundial and learned of the film crew whose camera fell and broke off a corner.  The Peruvian who authorized the crew was sent to prison as punishment for the damage.

We had the rest of the afternoon to explore, but after several more hours, Sav and I were just exhausted and returned to Aguas Calientes to relax in a café and wait for our train and then bus back to Cusco that night. 

We were utterly exhausted when our journey finally came to a close, but it was well worth the fatigue, for such an amazing experience.

Do not get cocky

I'd been really good about my eating: no salads, no drinks with ice, avoiding all water... but my Aussie friends from the start of the trip said that everyone eventually get’s sick.  I thought I'd been diligent enough to avoid it, but clearly I let me guard down, just for a second I forgot about the dangers of South American cuisine, and right at the start of a 5-day, 85km trek, it hit me...

The Sacred Valley

Savannah and my first adventure in Peru was the Sacred Valley Tour.  Most people know of Machu Picchu but the areas surrounding Cusco are littered with other ancient ruins, so we decided to take an all day tour to check them out.  Much of the tour was spent on the bus with a less than excellent guide, but the ruins at Pisaq, Ollantaytambo, and the cloth makers at Chinchero were pretty cool, have a look:

Overlooking the Sacred Valley

Our boring tour guide at Pisaq

Pisaq ruins

A monster!

An even worse monster

A stick bug

The Pisco Sour in the drink of course in these parts

Ollantaytambo, Savannah favorite name for a city

The ruins at Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo

Coca tea

Dying wool in Chinchero

The church at sunset in Chinchero