I vacationed in Peru, South America, leaving 5/29/00 and returning 6/16/00. It was an excellent trip. The area we hiked through, the Carabaya, was outstanding. We had an excellent group of 8 people as well.
My route was to get a lift from Columbus to the Indianapolis airport where I then flew to Dallas to Lima, Peru to Arequipa. After a day in Arequipa we flew to Juliaca and drove to Puno on Lake Titicaca where we spent two nights. We then had a full day drive to the trail head. We spent 10 days on the trail and living in tents. At the end of the trek we drove to Cuzco where we spent two nights. Then it was just a series of flights back home: Cuzco to Lima, to Dallas, to Indianapolis.
Some of the places we visited at the start of the trip were more for acclimatization than for significant places to visit. We were going to be spending a good deal of time above 15,000 feet altitude and we needed time to adjust to that. You can't just head to 15,000 feet and start hiking.
Lima is on the sea coast and is a poor place to start acclimatization. So we flew to Arequipa which is at 7,000 feet, a good altitude to start the process. Arequipa is the 2nd largest city in Peru. We stayed at a very nice hotel and got a very good tour of the city. We also visited a museum dealing with the Incan mummies discovered at the tops of some of the major peaks in the area. The star attraction, Juanita, was in Japan but we did see Serita. While we had a nice time in Arequipa and saw and did some interesting things, it's not a place I would recommend people put on their list of places to visit. Unless, of course, you're already in the area and need to start acclimatizing.
The next two nights in Puno were also good for acclimatizing. It's at 12,000 feet. However Puno is worth visiting in it's own right. On the drive from the Juliaca airport to Puno we visited some ruins of Inca chullpas (burial towers). I'd never seen chullpas in all my previous trips to Peru. The next day we spent on Lake Titicaca. We first visited one of the floating islands in Puno Bay where Aymara Indians still live. We then proceeded from the bay into the main part of the lake. There we visited a large island and did some easy walking/hiking as part of the acclimatization process.
The trail head for the trek was at about 9,000 feet. Our first day of hiking was all uphill and we ended up around 12,500 feet for our first camp site on the trail. Over the next two days we continued to gain altitude. Ultimately we spent about 7 days near or above 15,000 feet. Our highest altitudes were several passes over 17,000 feet.
This trip was a dream trip for our leader, Sergio Fitch. The people at Mountain Travel - Sobek asked him where he would really like to lead a trip. He replied "The Carabaya in Peru." The last time he had been here was about 15 years ago and he really wanted to come back because he thought it was so special.
The first 3 days of the trek were nice. We did some nice hiking. We saw some nice scenery. But that's all it was, nice.
But then we suddenly had 3 straight days of "Oh wow! Look at that." The scenery just opened up and we saw lots of great sights.
The first 3 days had a fair amount of clouds and overcast which may have lead to the rating of only "nice." We still had clouds and overcast those 3 great days. But this time they seemed to add to the effect rather than diminish it.
We were traveling through an area which did not receive very many trekkers at all - perhaps 1 or 2 groups a year. Given how spectacular it is that surprises me. It's not that inaccessible. But the remoteness of the area was one of the attractions of this trip to me.
But, given the remoteness of the area, Narcico, one of our leaders, carried pencils to hand out to school kids. In these remote regions it is hard for the people there to get certain things such as pencils and paper. And of course this makes it hard to teach and learn.
Sometimes pencils were handed out one at a time when Narcico encountered kids along the trail. But other times we stopped at schools in villages along the way. It was quite a sight to see 60 or 80 school kids lined up getting pencils and an inspirational speech from Narcico.
The last time I was in the Cuzco region of Peru was in 1983. I was also in this region in 1981. In that interval some things changed significantly and some things didn't.
The thing which didn't change was the last 1.5 days on the trail. It turns out that in 1981 the last 1.5 days on the trail were almost identical to the last 1.5 days of this trek. Just the first hour or two were different since we started from different campsites. It was amazing how much of the trail I remembered after all that time.
The place that did change significantly was Cuzco. It's grown up a lot in the last 17 years. For example the hotels I stayed at the previous times were gone. They were replaced by a large bank and a national museum. I can remember walking from those hotels to the main square and having to watch my feet the whole time, the sidewalk was in such bad shape. It was now a regular sidewalk you could just walk on. I also remember how dark Cuzco was at night. There were few lights and almost no street lights. Now you can stand in the brightly lit main plaza and see all the lights on the hillsides surrounding the main part of the city.
Before departing on this trip, I was mildly concerned about how I would perform. My training had gone well. But this was the first trip I'd done in 2 years and the first serious altitude I'd done in 4 years. How would I do?
I did fine. One of the people on the trip compared me to the Energizer Bunny - I just kept going and going. Of course the same could be said for everyone else on the trip since everyone did the entire trek without serious problems. But it was nice to find that I still have what it takes to do this kind of thing.