Cuzco was very fun – Sam and I gathered our things and began to make some moves from Ollantay. Actually I didn’t gather anything, I pretty much got rid of everything. I headed to the city with simply the clothes on my back (white t and my vital mtb hoody) and a knife, and dumped everything out of my wallet except my drivers license. I did bring some pretty high expectations as I heard from everyone its very fun. We jumped in collectivo cab with a couple other ladies which took us to Urubamba, a main town about 20 minutes away. From there we were dropped at the terminal where it is easy to get pretty much anywhere. As white dudes we were immediately recruited by 4 different cab drivers yelling “Cuzco.” We jumped in a station wagon but not before grabbing 2 - 680ml beers each for the ride. Awesome that you can drink in cars down here, really comes in handy for loosening me up and easing my nerves for what is an extremely scary hour drive into downtown Cuzco. With another random guy in the front we decided to fork up the extra dollar each to have optimal leg and beer drinking room in the backseat. Got to Cuzco about 8:30 and met our friends Adam and Jade in the Plaza de Arms at the main fountain. Cuzco was bustling, tons of people everywhere, marching bands, pretty cool shows for people to see. We cruised to a cool place Sam had been before called the Indigo lounge. Awesome Hookah bar with very cheap 2 for 1 happy hour (9pm – 12am) mixed drinks and amazing curry. Shared a mango hookah, ordered all kinds of interesting drinks we shared and got some really, really good curries. After that we hit the Piscoria which was a fancy high class place which made tons of their own pisco, their own ginger ale to mix with it etc. Interesting little berries in all the drinks, waiters walking around handing out awesome munchies and appetizers. By this time it was about 1 am so we decided to hit one of the club/bars. As white people you are recruited to go in and spend money and we had no problem walking right past the huge line of Peruvians not being allowed in because of capacity. Packed inside, a ton of fun. I don’t really need to go into much detail here except we danced the night away – and oh yea Sam lost his shirt so spent most of the night dancing around without it. This was hilarious; everyone there got a huge kick out of it as he is one tall (6’5”) German looking red bearded white dude. Much like a casino with no doors or windows you have no idea what time it is. We eventually exited into a lovely sunny morning. Some Peruvian had managed to find and steal my hoody, which I had rolled up and jammed under a couch and my white t shirt was absolutely covered with rum+coke. (I do specifically remember ordering 4 for everyone at one point and trying to carry them through the very packed dance floor.) I had to wear it with pride for the rest of the day as Sam and I chose to spend the rest of our combined money on breakfast. This was not until we all went back to the hostel we had booked for a quick 3 hours of sleep, grabbed brunch and said our goodbyes to our now very good friends Adam and Jade. Hopefully we will meet again on the east coast or Toronto soon. The rest of the Sunday was a pretty lazy day, did some napping and eating.
After this, I will no longer talk to you guys about the weather when it is good because since I did this it has turned for the worse – and now I am sick from being stuck at high elevations in storms with inappropriate clothing. Monday morning is rain blahh. Hanging out in the bike room doing some fixing, just after lunch the sun breaks out, looks good, time to go ride. KB and I jump in a taxi headed for Abra Maliga pass. Of course 10 mins into our taxi ride it starts to rain. ¾ to the top we stop and KB says we are going to hike up a canyon a little way. 3 hours and roughly 2000 verticle feet later I am at the top (roughly 15,000 feet) with my bike. We were followed by a group of curious wild horses for a decent portion of the hike, primarily the male who circled us observing from slightly above us. I think that was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I think I blacked out like 3 times, my heart is practically breaking my ribs, I have drank all my water, its pissing with rain and I cannot feel my fingers. Two positive things, I am one of three people to ever ride here and its 4:30 standing on a pinnacle of rock, we literally can’t go any further - time to head down. Great ride down, took about 30 mins to get to the road. I would have enjoyed it a lot better had the weather being good, my fingers were so cold I could hardly pull the brakes or push my shifter, and all I was wearing was a t shirt and a jersey. We hit the road, thank god, and linked up with the bottom ¾ of the mega avalanche course. It is thick fog and pissing with rain the whole way down, at least getting warmer as we descend. The course is blown out and eroded from all the rain, we make it to the bottom. Freezing and drenched -- no way are we riding over 3 miles back to the hostal. We ditch out bikes at a store belonging to someone KB knows and try to snag a ride back to Ollantay. A big truck comes by which we wave down and jump in. A bunch of other locals jump in the back. Once we are in the guy is cracking up and talking all kinds of slurry Spanish, KB turns to me and says Jesus this guy is wasted. Apparently it is pretty custom for Peruvians to just get hammered on real rainy days because there simply is not much else to do. We are all over the road, KB is in the middle ready to grab the wheel if anything comes. The guy is laughing and says to KB in Spanish “its ok I am a professional hahaha.” HAHAHA that’s so funny except we are in a flat faced truck and we hit anything my legs are the first things to go, I need my legs. I am so cold and wet I don’t even care I just grasped the oh shit handle and hoped we got back. We did, you get 20 centimos (8 cents), no seriously dude your wasted that’s all you get. Took a long hot shower and went to bed. Oh yea one thing that I forgot to mention that happened at the end of last week; Sam and I are all geared up taking the wheels off our bikes before loading them into cabs in the main square of town, generally looking pretty awesome, when a cab roars up next to us and two white ladies jump out. “You speak English right? You guys are downhillers right?” I reply yes and yes and we begin to chat about riding around here. Apparently their son is an avid downhiller and has just recently done some racing down in Columbia where he did very well. A little further into the conversation the older lady lets it slip that her son is sponsored by Yeti. “Who is you son?” I say. She replies, “Joey Schussler.” No shit I laughed, that’s awesome. They seemed kinda surprised and said “you know him?” I replied of course, I am an American who races downhill mountain bikes, of course I know him. I let her know that my team was at the Windham World Cup Finals being extremely loud waving an American flag and walking around blasting a boombox specifically cheering for Gwin and Joey. Yup, you guessed it they were there and saw us all haha. Joey’s sister was also pretty cute. Anyway they said they would see us at Windham this summer as they were sure to be there and I said the same.
Tuesday morning rolls around I wake up with a really bad sore throat, this should have been my first sign to chill today. However once I am up and have cooked breakfast I am feeling pretty good. I don’t have my bike and do not really feel like riding so we decide to change it up and hike one of the mountains covered in ruins which edges the town. My sticky rubber 5.10 riding shoes are soaked so I wear my nikes (bad idea) and actually did grab a waterproof wind breaker (good idea). We hiked up the path for an hour or so checked out a bunch of cool ruins, took some pics. KB needs to head back down but tells us there is a flagpole at the peak we should try and make it there. There is kinda a trail but on the other side and we don’t feel like going all the way over to it so we decide to freeclimb/bushwack. Besides you can’t get lost climbing a mountain, you simply go up. I immediately learnt why people hike with gloves as I lost my balance and plated my hand in a cactus. 30 minutes into it we are climbing some serious shit. Not climbing up cliffs but pretty close - very, very steep rocky chutes and ridgelines. I was seriously scared as this is the most extreme hiking I have done. Plus it is now raining pretty hard so all the rock is wet. For some reason “I will survive” popped into my head and I had this looping while I told myself to never look down, only focus on what is exactly in front of you and be very sure that every step is a good one. It also came to me how ridiculously trivial a song about not changing your apartment key and showing up to an x lover is when I am thousands of feet upon a mountain ridge with a simple slip and I would be pretty much gone; there are no trees to grab onto, nothing. I then changed my tune to Xavier Rudd as this has a nice calming effect on me. Well we climbed extremely high but fell short of our goal. As we could not go much higher we found ourselves on an adjacent peak to the flagpole peak, about 100 feet lower and separated by a sheer drop to another ridgeline connecting the two – impossible for us to cross. Pretty cold and wet we decide to head back down. Let me tell you going down is far, far harder than going up. But we made it, hit up out local spot for a 5 soles menu lunch (at 4:30pm) and headed back to the hostel.
That night KB, Sam and I decided to have a little cooking sesh – who knows why. We baked a huge chocolate cake with all kinds of frosting on it. It came out pretty bad but tastes awesome, I just finished the last of it about 10 seconds ago. I was in charge of a double cookie batch, however the ingredients seemed kinda weird.. I had to translate them and the measurements all from Spanish and double everything. At the end I ended up with a huge bucket of slop – definitely not cookie dough. Turns out that it is a recipe for pancakes so we have at least a couple weeks worth of pancake/waffle mix.. too bad there is no maple syrup down here.. Feeling pretty crappy I head to bed, Wednesday morning I have a mean cold. Very unfortunate as Sam does a huge ride all day to 2 of our favorite spots with a pretty experienced tourist. God damn my timing. Slept most of the day, still pretty sick today, although it’s been raining all day so I am not missing out on much. Hopefully I will be good by tomorrow.
