Welcome to my hour-by-hour play-by-play of my first adventure day experience, in which we daringly took on Machu Picchu.
8:30-10:30AM: This whole crazy 48- hour adventure day starts on a normal Sunday (Jan. 24th) morning. I arrived at Grace Life Church wearing my Sunday best (AKA a dress and some Chacos, because ain’t nobody got room in their packs for full Sunday best outfit). Grace Life is the middle of a church plant, so their location is not completely solidified yet and it is held at an adorable pizzeria. Personally, I think they should seriously consider digging some roots down into that pizzeria, because they serve FREE PIZZA after service. Pizza shows up any donut/ coffee cart that I’m accustomed to. We arrived early to “church” to help transform this quaint little pizzeria into a church service that could hold 50 people. The lady that was in charge, or owned the shop, or something was muttering off words to me at such a high velocity and in such thick Spanish I just stared at her doe-eyed. She had a plan and I just followed her lead, placing chairs in an incredibly specific order, just nodding and smiling because that was all I could communicate at that point. If I knew the Spanish equivalent to “Yes, Ma’am” I would have used it probably 100 times. Somehow this pizzeria completely transformed into a church service; complete with a projector, mics, a keyboard, and guitar.
10:30-12:00PM: Church proceeded as a bilingual service, and it was incredible. Spanish is just more romantic than plain old English. The worship was lead by a team from the United States that came over to help with the church plant. We knew every song played, just not the Spanish lyrics. It was nice to sing along to a familiar tune. It’s a breathe of fresh air when you find a fellow English speaker or a song that you recognize.
12:00-1:15PM: Church ended, and then came the FREE PIZZA. My team, Undertow, and a fellow team, Hope Ignited, were in charge of handing out pizza paired with your choice of Coca-Cola or Inca Kola. My Black Angus Steakhouse serving days were coming in clutch, busting out the tray work like I’d never put it down. So thanks Black Angus?! Everything had to be promptly torn down and put back in its place by 1:30PM, in which we helped make it happen. The end of hour #6 consisted of a wardrobe change in a tiny pizzeria bathroom, from my “trend-setter church getup” to my “I’m about to travel hours upon hours and hike a huge mountain outfit”.
1:15-3:20PM: Myself and 4 other brave souls (shout-outs to Brittany, Kayla, Esther, and Pamela) hopped on a public bus with our fingers crossed that it would actually take us to the Aeropuerto (I’m basically fluent now). We wearily watched out the window and saw that we were actually heading the right direction. When we saw the Airport out the window we yelled “Aqui! Aqui! Gracias”. We basically walked straight through their lax security in Lima, and sat rather impatiently for our plane to board.
3:20-5:00PM: We finally boarded our flight and took off towards Cusco! This was probably the most beautiful flight that I have ever been on. Esther and I had our faces practically glued to the window, while making quips about how “There’s a colonial woman on the wing!” (Ahhh Bridesmaids jokes will never get old).
The colors were just so vibrant and the mountains, don’t even get me started on the mountains, were magnificent. These beasts just went straight up and then straight back down, completely covered in the deepest jungle-green. If they weren’t green, they were blissfully white snow-capped mountains that pierced through the clouds. (Fun fact: Peruvian airlines hands out the best muffins.)
We land and walk a total of 2 minutes to get through this teeny-tiny airport. We sat down with a kind of “well, now what?” outside the airport, because we kind of had a plan we just didn’t know it.
We called the number that our kind host/travel agent gave us and the sweetest Peruvian/Inca man answered. He said he would be there in 5 minutes and to our surprise he was actually there in 5 minutes! Peruvians usually do this thing where they show up whenever they want. Quoted times are just there so you get there maybe within the hour (that was a rough culture thing for me). Any-who, we climb into this passenger van and head towards the hostel where we would be meeting some other squad mates and be staying the following evening.
5:00-6:00PM: We found the other brave ladies that were going to join us on this women’s hike (MacKenzie, Jodi, Sally, and Becca). We check out the hostel we would be staying in the following night, meet the owner, and confirm with her that we would be coming in late the next night. We then take a quick tour through beautiful Cusco, get a brief history lesson from our guide, and then it’s right back in the van!
12 seats for 9 gringo ladies, 9 jam-packed day packs, 1 tour guide, 1 tour guide’s son, and 1 professional passenger van driver. We climbed in, snuggled up, and started to weave our way through the mountains.
6:00-12:00AM: We slowly, very slowly started to make our way towards our hostel which was about a 2 hour drive from the “trail head” of Machu Picchu. We made a quick stop off at some little tourist town in the middle of nowhere nestled between the towering mountains. Our guide showed us the ancient water system that is still flowing through the cobblestone roads, filled up my LifeStraw water bottle (to any future world racer: this is a must have product), and enjoyed some fresh Andes Mountain water. Our guide, being a native to the land, decided to take us to local’s spot to grab some dinner. And by that I mean some Inca women fried some chicken and cow heart on the side of the road. So, we sat down and dug in. I paid a whopping 4 soles (just over $1USD) to fill my stomach to max capacity. We climbed back into our trusty steed and crawled over broken roads for the next 5 hours. Jungle rain stopped us only occasionally.
*To continue reading click on over to my next blog: “48-Hour Adventure Day Review: Machu Picchu: Part#2″*
