Getting lower, getting warmer

Today's trip would take us from the Colpa Lodge (~9,400 ft) downhill 4 hours or so of hiking, then a van ride of 30 minutes, then another half hour of hiking on an original Inca trail back uphill a bit to the Lucma Lodge (~7,000 ft).  A good chunk of today's route was essentially a "plan B" dirt road hike to bypass a huge landslide that wiped out much of the "plan A" trail a couple of years back.

Here's our fearless leader Antonio at the start of the day, dropping knowledge while floating atop a sea of chicken and horse crap the way only a 125-lb man can.

















We're heading down into some rather warm and humid conditions here.

Always gotta watch out for those traffic signs.

Halfway thru the hike, we came across a fairly substantial landslide blocking the road.  I found out later that it's the joint responsibility of the folks in the 2 communities that bookend any given slide to clear it.  No Bobcats or bulldozers; just shovels and elbow grease.

Quick stop to catch our breath with a glimpse of the "plan A" trail off to the left.

Pitstop at a backpackers' "roadside diner" with a well-earned cerveza.

Our van ride may have only been around 30 minutes, but their were enough hair-raising moments to last us several days.  On a couple of different occasions we had to hop out of the van and walk while our driver passed through a section too dangerous to risk the extra weight of the passengers.  Here's one of those stretches of road.  Not clearly visible are the CRACKS that made it seem like the landslide could give way again at any time.  Our driver had stones of steel, I'll give him that.

This day ended at the Lucma Lodge, adjacent to a small local coffee plantation.  After cleaning up, we headed to a local residence for a demo of the "old school" method of making Peruvian coffee (in a shed that housed, among other things, a herd of guinea pigs destined for the plate at some point).  We got to sample the freshest coffee imaginable, beans cooked right in front of us in a cast-iron pot above a clay oven.  Earthy, aromatic and wonderfully flavorful stuff.  We bought a pound to take home and would have nabbed some more if we had more space in our luggage.