Jungle Trek Day 2: Hiking and Hot springs

Jungle Trek Day 2: Hiking and Hot springs

Santa Teresa, Peru, South America

I had a great day of trekking today! We started out with a really good breakfast at the hostel that included crepes with bananas and fresh juice. It turns out that fresh papaya juice smells like vomit though, so it’s not the best drink. We got our energy and headed off for our day of hiking. We got a ride in the back of a truck for about 15 minutes to the start of the trail, which was near the village of Santa Rosa.

We started out with a hike straight up the mountain until we got to the first local family’s house. This house was cool because they have a capuchin monkey as a pet. It can be a bit aggressive, especially toward females, so they keep it tied up while there are tourists around. He was still really cool and put on a little acrobatic show for us while he was on his leash/harness.

We continued further up the hill to another house/hostel that also had a monkey, but this one had a little beard. This one was much friendlier and was happy to climb on your shoulder and just chill. At the same place they also brought out this massive rodent that looked a lot like a wombat but it had white stripes down its back. It was pretty happy to just stand on the table and eat a potato-like vegetable. The guy who owned the hostel also painted some traditional drawings on our faces with a plant that the natives used to use as paint. I got a massive insect painted on the right side of my face. It was pretty cool looking.

We continued hiking for a while and we even hit part of the original Inca trail. This is the trail that the Chaskis used to use about 700 years ago when they would run messages from Machu Picchu to the coast. It’s amazing to think that guys used to run on this path, it was hard enough to walk on it. We walked down hill until we got to the river and then we stopped for lunch. It was a little place that would be nearly impossible to find or to stumble upon, but luckily Lorenzo is great at finding these places because the lunch was excellent. We have had some excellent meals already on this tour and they have far exceeded my expectations. We had a really nice soup, some bread and guacamole and spaghetti for lunch. It was delicious.

After lunch we chilled for a bit in the hammocks and played with some of the dogs that lived at the property. I was particularly fond of the big dog (it looked like it was part Shepard) named Ping. We found out he also had a brother Pong, but he had become quite adventurous and started following travellers down the trail to Santa Teresa and even eventually got to Machu Picchu. Wilbert told us he is currently living at the hot springs near Santa Teresa. That’s a pretty adventurous dog.

After lunch we had a much easier hike down by the river and followed it for about three hours. We had to cross over one bridge and then cross the river again by cable car. It’s a manual cable car that had to be pulled from one side by Wilbert and a young girl would pull the empty car back to her side. It was pretty cool, and funny to think about Pong crossing over on the cable car when he wanted to go upriver.

We got to the hot springs at about 4pm and sat down to enjoy a nice cold beer before even going in the water. It was a series of three hot pools, and a cold natural shower at the end. We had to start off with the cold shower, which was freezing, and then we could go into any of the pools. They were all the same temperature so we picked the middle one which didn’t seem to be as packed with locals. Since it is Saturday, this place was pretty busy.

We hung out there until about 5:30pm and then met Wilbert to get a van into Santa Teresa. I was out of the water in my shorts for only about five minutes and managed to get about 15 bug bites on my legs and feet. They weren’t mosquitos, but some sort of sand flies that chewed me up pretty good and now I’m itching like you read about. I was one of the lucky ones though because the girls were both getting eaten alive all day. I managed to avoid it until after the hot springs. But it’s still pretty annoying.

We got to our hostel, which is pretty nice yet again. Considering the Lorenzo Expedition said that we would be put in “basic hostels”, I have been very impressed. Yet again I got my own room, and this one even had a TV with some English channels. There wasn’t a great choice of shows to watch, but it was better than nothing. The only bad thing was that my shower only had cold water, so I wasn’t able to get a hot shower like I was hoping.

We met up for dinner at 7pm and went to a place next door called Mama Coca. It was a good thing we didn’t have to walk far because it was pissing it down with rain. You could tell it is low season too because we were the only people on the restaurant for the whole dinner. We had another great four course meal and then we all retired to our rooms. Santa Teresa is another small village with not much to do, so I’ve just been chilling in my room trying to find some English channels on TV. That’s not an easy task here, but I found a couple.

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