It seemed like everywhere I turned tourism agencies had overtaken the Sacred Valley. Chinchero was one of my favorite stops because it’s skipped by most yet offers the same activities as other villages. This means it’s more budget friendly, but more importantly, Chinchero had a superior market and less crowded ruins.

I had stayed up all night attending yoga class and completing physics homework a week in advance, and then submitted an application to the College of Medicine. I packed in under half an hour. Rolling out of bed after a brief nap, I left my apartment just past noon.

 

I had kicked off my sophomore spring break by throwing myself into my typical state of delirium.

 

Sleep was just as evasive the following night. My group caught a series of red-eye flights. There’s no doubt this abuse induced a fever that lasted throughout my first night in Peru, at 3,700 meters above sea level, detailed as part of the following journal that is actually focused on the charms of Chinchero.

 

Day One

Within the Lima airport, we located our next gate 2-hour flight to Cusco via LCPeru, 114USD. We had originally booked it for 5am but the Peruvian airline appears to push you back if not enough people are on the flight, so now it was a 9am flight. With views that took my breath away, and snacks.

Just outside and to the right of the Cusco airport fence is a stop for combi minivans. Traffic was horrendous with a local festival as we wove through the impoverished neighborhoods of the city outskirts, where the working class had been pushed to from all the tourism.

Will and I were so fed up we got off and asked our way to the collectivo station with transport bound for Chinchero, finding delicious watermelon along the way, $.30 for a fat wedge. The other three from our group a reservation in Cusco.

We alighted and again asked our way to Hospedaje Mi Piuray. $7 per person got us a wonderful double room, hot showers, and mate de coca, the herbal tea made by soaking leaves from the coca plant (the same plant that cocaine happens to be derived from) in hot water. However, this traditional drink is a mild, harmless, and legal  Andean remedy for altitude sickness, while cocaine is man-made and quite far from being mild, harmless, or legal.

All good things in third world villages are uphill. After buying a bag of peculiar beans for one sole (30 cents and the beans turned out to be fava beans, known locally as “habas”), we ran into a girl insisting we purchase the package tourist ticket if we wanted to go past the yellow line that had suddenly appeared on the ground. With intentions just to explore what we could, we left and cut two blocks laterally, crossed a deserted marketplace, got soft serve ice cream for another sole, and climbed some stone steps until we arrived at a gorgeous lookout of etched mountains and Incan ruins.

We spent the next couple hours enjoying and exploring what turned out to be the same site they had tried to make us pay for, once a royal estate of Topa Inca Yupanqui. A temple and it’s altar adorned with gold are worth taking a look at. Being there made it just a little bit harder to fathom that a room full of gold and two rooms of silver weren’t enough for Pizarro to spare the Incan emperor (different VIP named Atahualpa) 500 years ago.

The altitude got to us when we tackled Will’s 10 minute ab workout. We stumbled into a woman selling choclo con queso, Incan boiled corn of obese kernels still in their husks, served with a generous slab of cheese. It warmed our insides. Best sole ever spent.

The cutest kids came by holding a precious bunny. The locals here looked surprisingly Asian.

Feeling a bit better, we showered and hurried to the main road for dinner. Seeing plenty of locals inside Palacio de Inka, we entered the cafeteria and sat down, not blending in at all. It was here that we learned asking for the menu in Peru means you just ordered the pre-set meal items. Like asking for tipico in Central America. For $1.40 the nicest man brought out chicken broth soup with soft pasta shells, followed by deep-fried chicken and veggies with twice the rice I could eat, and mugs of sweetened mate.

As Will put it, we were satiated. I forced myself to read about lecture slides on enzymes before sleeping with a full-on fever. I found I had forgotten to replace my ibuprofen after cleaning out my pack back home.

 

 

Day Two

I woke up with a throbbing headache and temperature that had persisted all night. We bee-lined to a convenience store. Lip balm looks like a tab of butter and comes wrapped in foil and dirt cheap, which was great because my lips were cracked and slightly bleeding.

I was thankful to be 20 because an hour later I was magically normal again.

On Sundays Chinchero holds a major market brimming with textiles. The patterns are enough to stress out even the most level-headed shopper. Not wanting to go home and regret not paying such unbeatable prices, I stocked up, namely on beautiful knit cardigans and sweaters. I also threw in alpaca socks, beanies, winter hats, and even placemats.

We joined the locals to hydrate on chicha, a pleasant, fermented drink made from maize. One large cup was one sole. We also bought puffed Peruvian corn which is sweetened and resembles kettle corn, as well as frozen yogurt popsicles for just cents. The most expensive food item was a small plate of ceviche, rice, and corn, $1.

We bade our hosts Moses and Rosanne goodbye after trying our best to convey the fact that their website’s domain had expired. With how broken my Spanish was, I doubt I could’ve successfully made a reservation anyway.

 

Title image photo credit- Will

Each Peru post includes this map that I intensively labored to create from how I saw the trip in my mind.