end of peru, start of chile

so, finally getting back to the blog to update about the end of our journey in peru and the start of another one in chile.
Macchu Pichu/inka trail: the inka trail is a 4 day, 3 night journey through the andes mountains of peru that ultimatelye ends up at macchu pichu. The journey is broken up into 4 pretty gruelling, at times, days of hiking. the first day is a relatively flat, nice walk to get you adjusted to the altitude and the terrain. In total it is about 14 km, broken up by visits to ancient archaeological sites and a nice lunch. The second day, 12 km, is deadly! The day begins by going sdtraight uphill for about 3 hours on the biggest steps youve ever seen. Sometimes about 2 feet high. after your summit the first pass (4,600 m above sea level), Dead Womans Pass (nobody, not even a woman has died here. It is named this bceause from half way up, the mountrain you´re summitting looks like a boob), you head down for a couple hours to the lunch spot. Then you finish with anoether, less severe summit, ending at the camp for the night. Relief. The third day is more relaxing. It is about 7 km and is meant to be a resting day so that you can wake up nice and early the next day to catch the nicest scene of macchu pichu. There´s even a restaurant at the camp site, which sells beer, and is very busy with all of the campers. Finally, the 4th day, you wake up at 3:30am and begin the 8km hike to the finish. After all the hiking you kind of forget why youre there and coming over the top of the last massive set of stairs, aptly names ¨the gringo killers¨, you get to the peak and can see macchu pichu. It was amazing, beyond words. Hopefully pictures can do it justice.Then we actually hiked up the mountain at the site, called Wainapichu. Hard, but so worth it because you can see macchu pichu from a distinace.
The trail was awesome. We were with a group of 18 other people, 2 aussie guys, doctors who were very cool, an aussie father/son duo, the son was a vegan, making it hard on the porters and chef, an irish couple, one british girl, also a doctor (it was reassuring to have 3 doctors with us), and 2 americans, plus our 2 guides, Javier and Danny. Along with us was our 20 porters (the porters carry all the stuff up the mountain, like food, tents, cooking equipment, etc. and make the journey doable). In all, there was close to 40 people. The group got very close throughout the days, and this made the trip. In fact, when we finished and headed for the 4 hour train back, all of us packed into a train and proceeded to drink it out of beer in celebration of our trip. It was awesome.
Chile:
Now we are in Chile. A lot more expensive, but with that comes some of the creature comforts we get at home (ie. hot water, toilets with seats on them, stuff like that). We started in a costal town called Arica, known for its surfing. We surfed for a few days and relaxed, which was nice. Then we actually rented a car and drove north to this national park called ¨Lauca¨. This place is absoluetely peppered with llamas, alpacas and vicuña (these are a relative of the llama but look like deer and have the most valuable wool in ethe world. ffor a vicuña scarf it is about $600.00 american). We drove back, handed the car back in, unscathed, thankfully, and headed further south, in hopes of getting closer to Santiago. we´re now in Iquique, another coastal town and are chilling again. It feels like vacation, which also makes it feel like we´re just galavanting around the world. I think we need some more volunteer work to keep us humble. Anyways, looking forward to seeing parents and family in the near future. Loving life, as always! Adios.