My First Trip

"The first trip to Marcahuasi for any visitor never turns out how they told us. It isn't how we imagined it; its legends, its shadows, and its enchantments are a question of returns ..."



All of the countryside forms part of the route from Lima to San Pedro de Casta, this adventure is full of suspense, of fears, and of extreme adrenalin ... for those that go for the first time.

There were many aspects that influenced me in going to Marcahuasi. Perhaps that book with the stunning title -Marcahuasi- that I saw in a central bookshop, many articles that I read, stories from friends that fed my desire to know that place. All until one day when a family member who worked in "Huinco" (town on the route to San Pedro de Casta) told me that he had been sent to Marcahuasi, because some tourists were attacked there. He described part of the journey and the place, becoming the burning enchanted call of the plateau.

It is three in the morning when in Chosica (a province to the east of Lima) I felt my bones snap. The avenue was full of backpackers and pickpockets, a cold quiet mist froze the desires and surprises of this adventure that had just started ... Echenique Park (Chosica), an obligatory day trip por every traveller that goes to Marcahuasi, was full of people drinking liquor, bottles passing from hand to hand, emptying gradually ... piled up dirty rucksacks on the urine soaked dusty footpath. All of this nocturnal countryside of uncontrolled crowds, kept company by the cold and the mist, was the start of a trip that left me annoyed, for the lack of organisation of the transport ... madness ...

To arrive at San Pedro de Casta (the town where you find Marcahuasi) was to live moments of fear on a windy road, with deep chasms at either side, with corrupt police and soldiers. From opportunistic drivers, and a dust that it was impossible to clean off, and like this we arrived leaving behind the sea, whims, offers, and all of the illnesses that God can't cure, not even hunger!



We knew that the system of transport was of a form of 20 years earlier. We accepted the challenge and its risks; everything to get to know Marcahuasi.


The square was full of backpackers, of guides, and mules. The tourist office was full of tourists with its staff doing everything so that all goes well, and the sun burning at 26 degrees, it received us and bid us farewell to Marcahuasi ...



In the square in San Pedro de Casta we awaited the hour appropriate for the ascent to Marcahuasi, we asked information, and bought what we would need on the plateau, and in this way freed ourselves of the comforts of the city.

Nobody will forget the first trip to this place, because of what happens to them, and how they feel, to go by the short or the long route the tiredness is the same, the weight of the rucksack is the same, and perhaps worse for others. When I made that trip, many times I regretted having come, with every slow step feeling like my legs were giving out on me, the air that my lungs wouldn't take in, and my voice silenced ... The obligatory rests that we took, only to ask other travellers "how much further?", and their responses that motivated me, in turn motivating others that were perhaps in the same state or even worse.

After four hours or more of gratuitive suffering, and when the sun bid us goodbye just before I found myself arrive at the Amphitheatre, I decided to camp ... since I couldn't manage any more. I paid tribute to my time as a novice adventurer, Marcahuasi treated me brutally on my first trip. But, despite everything, I arrived ... I arrived at a place that I had wanted to know for some time.



Here I camped for the first time in Marcahuasi, far from the Amphitheatre and the Hut; here I graduated as chef, guide and lover of Marcahuasi.

The trip was only for four days, but the provisions that we brought were enough for a month, meaning that we spent more time eating than getting to know the plateau. In this first trip I only went to the Hut where Daniel Ruzo lived, and to the Monument to Humanity. From the first instant that I saw it, it blocked my senses ... people confused me with their faces, and even more when they said "you have to see this thing, or that animal ..." "where ? ... where ?" I asked. "Over there", "That way". I remained in the same place amazed by the people, their exclamations, the countryside, and the majestic petrified monument.

Afterwards I spent a lot of time contemplating the town of San Pedro de Casta from the Cross (near the Hut), and all of the route that I had travelled to arrive, and from this altitude it has an impressive panoramic view of the union of the town and the plateau that made me forget the problems and sufferings. Just as the North American tourists do, wanting to record forever this moment, a photo here, another there, and time flies.

This is how I made my first trip ... and I started spending days of my life in Marcahuasi. To pick up the rucksack and prepare myself to go up to and down from the plateau, was for me to be an eternal witness - an accomplice, to say nothing or everything ... It is time to leave the plateau, I go down thinking of being soon at home, and I bring the smell of the rocks and the altitude, but the most curious is that I am also thinking of when to return. Everything that happened to me in this first trip, will always remain an unforgettable experience, and to write this post, it was very difficult to detail everything ... and I mean everything. There were other factors ... now the transport has improved a lot, but what Marcahuasi gives you en the ascent .... I swear that hasn't changed one bit!

"I don't know if in reality all of the hardships that I lived through to arrive at this place gave me suffering of happiness .... I only know that my thoughts and feelings are on a different frequency since that day"

[Read the original blog post (in Spanish)]

Next part : Enigmatic Shadows

Photos : John Ysrael Guevara