Salkantay

If appreciation of a landscape increases with the effort required to arrive there, our five-day trek over the 15,000 foot Salkantay pass must have ended with absolute worship at Machu Picchu. Those days encompassed such a wide range of experiences. Starting in a tiny arid mountain village swarming with a particularly vicious species of biting fly, we followed a deep valley as it twisted up through the snowy giants of the Andes up, up, and over the barren, cairn-covered pass. Then, over the next few days we descended into the jungle, the "eyebrow" of the Amazon. We clambered into trees to pick wild bananas and avocados. We watched leaf-cutter ants meander and transparent-winged butterflies flap lazily. We slept surrounded by ancient ruins with Machu Picchu just a green saddle in the distance. To approach from so far, reliant on only our feet for transportation instead of the technology-based norm, gave us an insight into to the land and the lives of the Peruvians that we otherwise would have missed.