EXPLORA EXPLORE
Reach for the altiplano in Peru’s Sacred Valley – explora Valle Sagrado will take you there
As we wend our UR QUILL OS, PERU way from Cusco high in the Andes Mountains to the verdant, fertile Sacred Valley of the Incas, bisected by the waters of the Urubamba River and dotted with time-stands-still indigenous Quechua villages, I wonder why, to the Incas, it was sacred.
Just 80 scenic minutes later, we are pulling into explora Valle Sagrado, situated on a 15th-century corn hacienda just beyond the tiny agrarian village of Urquillos. This new adventure lodge is the first allinclusive in the valley, catering to active travellers with guided hiking and biking, as well as visits to cultural and historical sites by van.
My “sacred” question is front-ofmind as we make our way up the wooden entrance walkway bridging four Inca terraces and stone walls more than 500 years old, unearthed during construction and restored by archaeologists. But as we near the clipboard-toting man awaiting us, I forget as my mind is suddenly occupied with why he looks familiar.
He also looks perplexed. His tan, bearded face and knee-length dreadlocks are so distinct. I scramble to place him.
“Beno?” I hesitantly ask.
“Yes!” he cries, embracing me in a hug.
We had met the year before on Easter Island, Beno Atan’s homeland, where he headed the guides at explora Rapa Nui.
When I inquire how he likes it here, his passion for exploring the Andes’ landscape and the many Inca ruins that pepper the valley is palpable.
“An emotional connection with yourself happens in the puna,” he enthuses, explaining that’s the arid, windswept altiplano over 4,000 metres high.
He has thrown down the gauntlet. To the puna we shall go. But first we have to work our way up — literally — acclimatizing slowly to prevent altitude sickness, the nauseating and headachy bane that afflicts some from less lofty locales.
We’ve already spent a few days in Cusco, which is 600 metres higher than the Sacred Valley, so we have a head start on those guests just arriving in the Andes (many fly into Cusco and immediately descend to the more oxygenated valley or to Machu Picchu, which is at a lower altitude yet).
We decided to start in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, to learn more about this extinct culture before visiting Machu Picchu. With Apumayo Expeditions, a local sustainable tourism company, we explored the Inca ruins of Tambomachay, Puca Pucara, Qenqo, Sacsayhuaman and Koricancha, which houses the Temple of the Sun, the Incas’ most sacred site. In Cusco’s Almudena Cemetery, I was fascinated by the Day of the Dead rituals — also part of the Inca culture — that had transformed the quiet resting place.
Upon learning we have not suffered an iota of sickness, Atan suggests a higher-than-Cusco first hike to test our mettle.
Accompanied by Quechua guide Abel Santander, we set out on a sixkilometre trek alongside farmers’ fields, where yoked oxen plow the red earth for planting potatoes and women and men work sideby-side, using the same tools their forebears did.
Reaching 3,733 metres, we are framed by jagged snowy peaks, including the cordillera’s highest, Mount Veronica, or Waqaywillca in Quechua, which means “woman who cries a lot,” explains Santander, perhaps for the streams running like tears from her melting glacier.
Like the long-ago Incas (who were a Quechua tribe), modern Quechua have a deep reverence for mountains — powerful deities whom they believe give protection — and even more so for Pachamama, a.k.a. Mother Earth, the fertility goddess who presides over crops and sustains life. We make offerings to her, explains Santander, like coca leaves and chicha, the beloved local beverage of fermented corn.
Not wanting to invoke her wrath — especially earthquakes, which it is also said she causes — in the time we will be exploring the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, we pay homage to Pachamama by tinkling our beverages onto the ground in a timehonoured challah.
On Day 4, explora’s guides deem us ready for the puna. Praying the altitude doesn’t afflict us, we set off on a hike starting above the tree line and rising to 4,320 metres.
Though we meet many a grazing llama and alpaca in this vast landscape of moss-covered rocks and tiny violas, we encounter but a sole human, a shepherdess attired in a traditional Andean thick woven skirt, black with a bright embroidered band, and atop her head, a montera hat. Beneath its muslin fringe, her leathery face wears many years and a lifetime of toil.
As we descend, I ponder Atan’s comment. Has the puna triggered an emotional connection with myself? Rather, I’d say, a connection with Pachamama.
The world at this dizzying height is sparse and silent and serene, barely tampered with by human hands. That makes it sacred indeed.
To read more about Storm’s journey through southern Peru, visit the blog on The Calgary Herald website at ( http:// wp. me/ p4Uliw-3XIO).