WE MADE IT! (And another 3.0 Milestone)

Posted by Serina Hardiman |8 comments

Greetings everyone! Or should I say buenas dias! Chris and I have had the absolute time of our lives! The Inka Trail was more than anything our pictures and words could describe but we´ll give it a good try! For now we´ll give the Reader´s Digest version and fill in all the little bits in between. Using a timed internet is a very crazy experience when you have so much to say.

That said, here is our first picture with our group. We´ve made 13 new friends (including our two guides not pictured) we enjoyed sharing the Inka experience with and can`t wait to see their pictures either.

We started off the day early at 4 AM to get ready for our bus pickup at the hotel. It was about 3.5 hours to get from our hotel to km82 which is the beginning of the Inka Trail. Here we took a picture with our group and met each other as we started our journey.

The first day was getting used to the lay of the land and the altitude with a couple of stops. The second day, and they don´t lie, is the hardest (highest pass). The third is the longest (two passes and steep decent) and the fourth is so rewarding as you can see below.

We have plenty of photos we will be sharing as we break down the days. There is so much to tell you! As for now, we´re setting off to Lima to celebrate our birthdays and New Year´s Eve in city style!

Feliz Navidad!

Posted by Serina Hardiman |6 comments

Hi all! Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from Cusco. We figured out our money blip and I´m going to fess up it was actually a mistake on my part. I was putting in the wrong PIN but am happy to say that I still have some photographic memory left (I´m sure it´ll all disappear when I hit 30 in 5 days) and it came in handy the final attempt at the bank. YAY!

Chris and I spent a lot of time roaming around the town into different districts. We stopped in at the Inka Museo which was quite incredible but the only pictures we could take were at the entrance. There is some amazing history here.

From Beautiful Q'osco

We´re in the process of uploading images to our Picasa album right now so we´ll be sure to link them all later.

We did run into a bit of a surprise yesterday, though. After one of our stints around town we came back to the hotel to drop off some stuff and take a breather and all of a sudden our hotel room phone rang. It was a message from our front desk that my Aunt Debra made it to Cusco and is staying up the street from us! We knew she was trying to hop flights on standby and figured with all the holiday travel that she wasn´t going to make it!

So we walked over to her place that has a breathtaking view of the city and surrounding mountains and picked her up to have dinner. We took her through the market on the Plaza de Armas and got to watch a real pro haggle!

Today we intend on taking advantage of the holiday quietness to get more pictures. We found out yesterday that the best way to get street vendors´attention is to start taking pictures. We´ve close to exhausted ourselves with ¨No, Gracias!¨ but on a good note we both got to hold a baby llama! I want to bring one home with us!

We are prepping ourselves to start our Inca Trail hike tomorrow and are both extremely excited! We stopped off at Peru Treks and they were so nice and even gave us complimentary santa hats we´re to take with us on the hike.

We´ll try to stop on once more before the hike as we´ll be pretty silent from the 26th through the 29th but will be sure to bring back more and more photos! We´re thinking of you and wish you all the best for Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve

Posted by Chris Hardiman |3 comments

Serina and I are doing well. We´re both accustomed to the altitude and aren´t getting tired just walking around town. So far almost everything is going smoothly. Our plan for today is to head around town on foot and get pictures of all the cool buildings. It´s a little rainy, but that could actually help us get better shots if we do them right. Most pictures of these places on the internet are on sunny days, so I think it will provide a nice contrast. Our first real problem has come up though. My credit card, which was working fine the first 6-7 times I used it, just got rejected. Our ATM card also gave us an error. This means we´re going to have to call both banks to make sure there´s no fraud warning on either of our accounts. In particular we need the ATM card to get cash, as credit cards are useless on the Inca Trail.
There´s a huge festival going on almost across the street from us, so that could be contributing to the problems getting these things to work as electronic systems really get stressed.
Finally, on my 30th birthday yesterday, one of the kids here told me I look like Santa Claus.

Safe and Sound

Posted by Serina Hardiman |5 comments

We wanted to drop a line to let everyone know we made it safely to Cusco. Traveling through multiple airports via mutliple carriers was definitely an experience. The longest wait, and most unorganised, was Delta of all places. Guess they weren´t quite ready for the rush.

Chris´dad dropped us off at the airport 2 hours before our flight where we stood in line with a whole bunch of international travelers. Most had been bumped due to delays or late check ins on previous days so it was good to see them make it this time.

We made our flight on time and got to Miami to catch our Lan flight to Lima. We arrived about 3 hours before our next flight and had plenty of time to relax and make it to the terminal. I have to say, in all of my experience flying internationally that Lan was possibly the most enjoyable. There was a large group of young ladies from some sport team on our flight coming back from Disneyland we suppose (lots of Mickey Mouse merch) and had a very delicious in flight meal, drinks and Chris and I even caught up on a movie while at it. The seats were comfy and easy to sleep in.

We landed in Lima around 5am to meet up for our flight to Cusco on Star Peru which was scheduled at 2pm. Once we went through check in we found that our flight had been changed to 9:45 am. What luck! This was the first time we´ve even boarded a plane outside (sans gate). Not only ours apparently as plenty of folks we taking pictures of themselves boarding.

Chris managed to snap off a couple of pictures in flight as we flew over the Andes. Really, no picture can really capture how breathtaking they really are.

From Beautiful Q'osco

As for the acclimatization, Chris is holding up rather well aside from a little light-headedness. It must be his distinguished age as he (and his fierce Adventure Beard™) turn 30 today! Below is a picture of him in our room at Royal Inka I.

From Beautiful Q'osco

I, on the other hand, have had a couple bouts of upset stomach so we hit up the pharmacy around the corner to settle it. We took a brisk walk around the Plaza de Armas and had dinner but it was hard for me to even feel up to eating even though I got some coca tea and vegetable soup (for the broth). I´m feeling better today and we´ll be taking in the sites and stopping in on the tour group who will be taking us to Machu Picchu on Friday.

We´ll keep in touch as there are computers in the lobby but with slow upload so we may not get as many photos up as we wanted.

Heading out!

Posted by Serina Hardiman |1 comments

We're hoisting the main sail, batoning down the hatches and rolling out of Dodge! We wish everyone a Happy Christmas and the Merriest of New Years!

Itinerary

Posted by Serina Hardiman |0 comments

We decided to do all of our booking based on a lot of the info we've gotten from the web and our Peruvian travel book. A lot of the all in one tour groups, while very efficient in planning out every detail of your trip, also run a huge price and sometimes don't have the flexibility in when you want to start particular activities. So we've done a culmination of booking our main flights through Orbitz (and keeping an eye on their status'), the Peruvian domestic flights through Star Peru and taking some advise from various reviews from our books, sites and my favorite Trip Advisor and booked our hotel and Inca Trail trek directly through the respective companies.

Flights There
Flight One:
Sunday, December 21, 2008 7:00pm Eastern
Delta Air Lines 1001
Arrive: Miami, FL 8:53pm Eastern

Flight Two:
Sunday, December 21, 2008 11:55pm Eastern
LAN Airlines LA 2511
Arrive: Lima, Peru 5:25am Central

Flight Three:
Monday, December 22, 2008 2:00pm Central
Star Peru 1211
Arrive: Cuzco, Peru 3:05pm Central

Hotel
Royal Inka I - Cuzco, Peru
Check In: December 22, 2008
Check Out: December 26, 2008

Trek
Peru Treks: Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
Start: December 26, 2008
End: December 29, 2008

Hotel
Royal Inka I - Cuzco, Peru
Check In: December 29, 2008
Check out: December 30, 2008

Flight
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 11:05am Central
STAR Peru 1118
Arrive: Lima, Peru 12:10pm Central

Hotel
Loki Hostel - Lima, Peru
Check In: December 30, 2008
Check Out: January 1, 2009

Flights Back
Flight One:
Thursday, January 1, 2009 10:40am Central
LAN Airlines LA 2510
Arrive: Miami, FL 4:25pm Eastern

Flight Two:
Thursday, January 1, 2009 6:50pm Eastern
American Airlines 1076
Arrive: Atlanta, GA 8:50pm Eastern

Gear Check! (Part Two)

Posted by Serina Hardiman |0 comments

Continuing on our list of gear, Chris and I invested and broke in over the past several months our hiking boots. Chris went with the Montrail Torre GTX and I nabbed a pair of the Asolo Stynger GTX. We opted for boots for the ankle support but know some folks prefer to go with sneakers and low top hiking shoes. Chris opted to toss some arch support in his to keep from any toe bump and as we found the downhill can be as strenuous as the uphill in this hike this should definitely help him.

As for clothing, we both went the convertible route so we can zip off the legs to shorts if need be. The weather can be really warm during the day with the sun beating down and drop drastically at night. We figure the more versitile our clothing, the better. We've stocked up on silk sock liners and wool top socks to help keep clear of blistering but have our handy 2nd Skin just in case. You think with all the gear plugs we'd get some kind of discount!

We have our odds and ends we've been getting together and above is a picture of the largest stuff we'll be packing in our backpacks. What you see are our sleeping bags, sleeping pads and our Sea to Summit stuff sacks (blue and red in the center) all rolled up. To give you some scale, the stuff sacks are just about the size of a football.


We picked up a couple of LED headlamps courtesy of Petzl and their Tikka series. Those suckers are bright. I really wish we had these bad boys a couple months back when the daylight started escaping us from the summer time. We had been so used to hiking up and down Kennesaw Mountain with daylight to spare but with the change in time and helping out some out of towners by taking family photos of them with the changing colors we got to the top of Little Kennesaw as it was starting to dusk. On our descent it got steadily darker and Chris pulled out his cheapy stocking stuffer headlamp I got him in '07. It put out such a pitiful little glow that we vowed to kick it up a notch. Now I feel like I'm emitting 1.21 gigawatts!

It's been fun gathering and testing out everything as we've gone along. It's been a blast getting out on the trails and breaking it all in. I'm sure nothing can truly prepare us for the altitude but Chris and I are pretty determined and stubborn Capricorns!

We have had our personal trainer below working with us. We can't let her down!

Gear Check! (Part One)

Posted by Serina Hardiman |0 comments

First off, I'd like to thank the heavens for giving me a hubby who researches EVERYTHING! He's made it quite enjoyable to stock up on all the gear we need to ease this trip where we can. After a lot of consideration (read: months and months of hmm's) and countless trips to what we now consider our second home (read: REI) we are outfitted and have tested all of our gear.

We booked our hike through Peru Treks and those very thoughtful folks tossed up a helper list of everything we would need to nab in preparation. Using it as a template we procured the following:

Backpacks:

We both started out with daypacks a while ago when we started getting into hiking. Chris has smaller Osprey pack with hydration bladder and since he's been thoroughly impressed with their brand and quality he upgraded to the Osprey Atmos 50 Liter. He moved his hydration pack from his day pack to this one. I started off with a Camelbak and actually ran through a couple of "fittings" for my next pack for comfort. I eventually came across my pack, the Deuter Futura Zero 40 Liter. I, too, moved over my hydration pack from the Camelbak and found it fits nicely in the Deuter.

Sleeping Bags:

Next up we have the essential sleeping bags. We knew we'd need something to accommodate cooler weather so we decided to go with 15°F down bags. Chris had his eye on the Marmot Helium EQ (Tall) pretty much from the beginning and so sticking true to his conviction, picked one up. I wound up getting a Big Agnes Roxy Anne (Petite) and have got to say it's one of the most comfortable sleeping bags I've ever owned (it just barely beats out the Care Bears one I had as a kid)! The coolest feature, I think, is the integrated pad sleeve that allows me to slide my sleeping pad in the bottom of the bag so there's no rolling off. We hadn't gotten to go camping but we laid out on the porch in the 25°F weather and stayed nice and toasty.

Sleeping Pads:

We were sold on the Therm-A-Rest ProLite series of self inflating mattresses. They've proven to not only be very comfortable but compact and light weight. We've used them a good bit and they even weathered a trip to Ohio with our rambunctious nephews rolling all over them.

Rain Jackets:

Chris has been pretty impressed with the Marmot brand so he was pretty excited to find the Marmot PreCip rain jacket. It's been his jacket of choice since he bought it except for on extremely cold days. I'll admit at this point I was hunting on the clearance racks and chanced to find The North Face W Venture jacket for a steal! This is when I also found out that Chris thinks the pit-zips double as tickle-zips and proceeded to assault me with "gootchie gootchies!"

Please Look After These Bears, Thank You.

Posted by Serina Hardiman |0 comments

Chris and I got the wild hair to travel to the land of the Incas, the suggested origin of the potato, where llama's roam free and the "birthplace" of my favorite stowaway Paddington Bear: Darkest Peru. Well, I don't think where we will be is particularly dark aside from nighttime at nighttime times and maybe some really thick parts of the Amazon that we'll save for another trip. The areas we are traversing will be Lima to Cusco to Machu Picchu and back through the lineup - making stops at the various ruins throughout the areas. We've geared up, which I'll toss up our gear list later, to head up the Inca Trail for a four day trek to visit the lost city of the Inca's.

"Why Peru?" That's the common question we get asked and I say, "Why not?!" It's been a culmination of fascination with other cultures, a desire to see as many of the existing wonders of the world, the history of the architecture and the education that you can only get by casting away your comfort zone and immersing yourself in adventure.

We'll be heading out on the 21st, flying from Atlanta to Lima and then hopping a flight into Cusco where we'll acclimatize and try to stave off altitude sickness. We're both pretty excited!

We're going to try our best to capture our trip (without forsaking valuable time to experience this specific piece of Peru) through the blog. We're told internet cafe's are abounds so we'll work on hitting them up as we can. Of course, there will be a bit of "radio silence" from the 26th through the 29th as we schlep ourselves up the Andes.