I know that I have already said this, but the biodiversity of Perú is something i don't think i will ever get over. This can been seen, yet again, in our adventures of the weekend and the past weekend.
Last weekend, we all hopped in a bus and went to Manu, a wildlife reserve about 5 hours east of Cusco. The bus trip took about 6.5 hours. Why do you ask? Well. about 2 or 2.5 hours into the trip, our bus almost skidded off the road. The roads in Perú are notoriously bad, but up until now i didn't really know why. Nooooooow i do. The roads that aren't paved, so the majority of the roads here, are made by workers who look at a mountian say, "Vamos a construir un carretera.... aca!" and then the do it. No math no engineering, just digging. So when buses carrying 30 some people drive onto this "road" and the collapse it or rocks fall off from the top, I'm not so surprised, and the Perúanos just build another road over the first road without really fixing anything at all. So when the bus driver sped through some mud and water that made us go skidding, and did that a few more times after that, i knew that true scare of roads in Perú. Gah. But anyway, past the times where the road cracked underneath us and we drove through waterfalls on the road and saw mudslides and what not, we arrived at Manu.
The area of Manu reserve we were in was a bosque de nubes, or cloud forest. It is at a very interesting spot below the top of the mountain and above the jungle where it is constantly in cloud, very very damp, and home to very interesting types of wild life. There is this one type of tree that grows around a host tree and eats it from the inside out as it grows over it. SO COOL. Our guide was Edward, a Princeton grad who signed up for a fellowship about sustainable agriculture. Yeah that was a lie when he was placed in the cloud forest for a year. But he was very very informative, and it was clear he was happy some american gringos under the age of 50 had come to spend time with him. He took us on two hikes over the course of the weekend and we saw a ton of everything. We walked on a canopy walkway over the tree line, drunk water from a waterfall. It was great. And cold and wet, but that was ok.
This weekend, me Andy Laura Erich Zack Matt Laura and Eliza with some of the gap year kids in Urubamba (good lord...they were something else....) climbed the Chicón glacier. It was a HARD hike. We started at maybe 1,000m above sea level, and at the top it was about 5,100m. It was harder and harder to breath with every step, and quite slippery a well. We walked through maybe 4 or 5 levels of vegetation. We started in almost a jungle, and ended with no vegetation at the top. Andy and I were the slowest people on the hike and we still got there 4 hours before the guide thought we would get there. At the top, it was cold, and we were tired, and we literally sat for 6 hours and looked out at the view. It was pretty spectacular. Andy and I went to bet at 630 in a tent about 10 meters from the rock and straw cabin where most all the other kids slept. They said it was cold and kinda smokey (the fireplace was right next to the window). Laura came to join us at 7 in our tent, and we went to sleep. At abot 1030, Laura woke up because our tent door was not closed all the way and she was getting rained on. We closed it, and realized that the rain/snow/hail mix outside was not gonna let up. At about midnight, water started leaking in from the sides, so Laura and I virtually spent the rest of the night in a puddle while Andy slept on to of a rock in the middle. It was not the most enjoyable night of sleep of my life.
at 545am we ran out of the tent, and Laura and i found some new clothes. I was a little cranky and cold and we hadn't eaten dinner the night before and then we started out to the actually glacier (we were about 2 hours away from it in the cabin). So we walked out into the sunny 630 am day with snow still on the ground, and i saw one of the best sights of my life. In front of us, for as far as the eye could see, were snow capped mountains. The were huge and grand and unexplainable. And so so glorioso. The hike to the glacier was cold and rocky, but seeing something that has been here for thousands of years was incredible. These next stats i stole from Laura so a nice applause to here for looking this up.
Peru is home to 70% of the tropical glaciers, aka the glaciers between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. The rate they are melting is quite alarming, and at this rate they will not exist within 5 to 10 years of today. I sat there looking at the Chicón glacier and thought to myself "When i come back here, this glacier may not be here" and once again was over come with the power of nature and being human and what human do to nature and everything. We had a fantastic class in Desarrollo about the relationship between nature and human yeasterday, but that is for another blog post. There are a far number of glacier lagoons at the bottom of Chicón, and you can see where the spots are that it is melting. There are people who make pilgrimages to Chicón for the hielo of the glacier. It is part of Apus, the mountain god, and it is very very sacred. I brought some for my mom and she was so happy. What happens when this glacier completely melts? People drink form the water that runs off it because it is SO pure and sacred. ¿Qúe va a pasar?
The hike down was VERY slippery, but not nearly as challenging as the way up. It rained for about an hour of the hike down, which is hated, but when we got into the bus and drove away, the sence of pride i had was wonderful.
On Tuesday, we concur el camino Inka as we hike our way to Machu Piccuh. Oh Perú, how i Love thee
PS i have tried to upload picture 5 times and it hasn't worked. Sorry!!
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