Daniel made us French toast, pancakes, and hot chocolate for our final breakfast together... In more ways than one, his sweet goodbye. Overloaded with carbs, we started out on the trek. Half of the 20k (12mi) hike was along the main road and the other half followed a stream through the back woods. It was very different from our other days of hiking that either had steep ascents or a "Peruvian flat", aka- up and down (picture a sine wave) terrain. This day was mostly descending or actual flat walking through the valley to our final destination: the train station in Ollantaytambo.
The highlight of this day, and one of the entire trip highlights so far, came at lunch time. We arrived at the village of Huilla and were greeted by more snotty nosed, brightly dressed, rosy cheeked and dirty faced beautiful children. The children of the Andes all have permanently sun and wind burnt cheeks, which sort of resembles a mix between rosacia, bruising, and makeup. But mostly it just adds to theirnadorableness. We handed out some more candy and then heard a "woohoo!" from across he river and saw Papito. He was waving us over and we followed. We walked through some back "alleys" of this village where the houses were made of mud, stone, and grass roofs. Brilliantly colored clothing was hanging out to dry and dogs, cats, and chickens were scattered about everywhere.
We arrived at a house near the back of the village, which had its own "yard", garden, outdoor kitchen, and animals. Impressed, we knew this must belong to someone very important.
To our surprise, the homeowner came out, complete with full chef outfit and it was Daniel! He invited us over to have our final lunch prepared and enjoyed in his family's house. We were very grateful.
As we waited patiently we met Daniel's 5 year old son, the original snotty nose greeter, and watched him and Papito play around just like boys all over the world do. Climbing, running, sharing a bike (still have no idea where they got that bike!), and stuffing their faces with fresh bananas and cookies. They were quite the troublemaking duo. We also met Daniel's two older daughters (maybe 7 and 10 years old) who were working hard, carrying and hanging laundry, and then taking the 3 cows, 1 sheep, and 1 donkey out from the yard and into the hills to eat. They were beautiful but shy and took their jobs very seriously.
When lunch was ready Daniel invited us in, and we sat at his dining table with hand crafted chairs. He set up a table cloth, flowers, his personal plates and serving bowls. It was very welcoming and incredibly thoughtful. We had spaghetti with a veggie marinara sauce, avocado, homemade spicy salsa, and the most ridiculous garlic bread. It was incredible.
This was also the first time that Daniel and Mario sat with us while we ate, although they were not eating. It was still nice to exchange a few Spanish sentences and stories with them, as this was the last time we would see them. Willie said this was his first time doing a trek with Daniel, so being invited into his home was truly a unique experience for all of us. We fell humbled and speechless by this hospitable gesture.
When the meal was over we knew we had to get back on the trail and say goodbye to our new friends. We got handshakes and big hugs from both Daniel and Mario and fierce high fives from Papito. Willie kindly took a photo of us with our awesome crew as we said our goodbyes.
Please note how much of giants we (but especially heather) are next to these tiny Peruvian men.
The rest of the trek was seemingly long. Lots of walking with tired legs, but we were stoked to be almost done. We really only stopped a few more times to take photos of the incredible views as we approached Ollantaytambo.
Here you can see the outskirts of the Ollantaytambo Incan complex and (I counted) approximately 100 rows of agricultural terraces. I can't image wanting to farm that now with modern machinery, but certainly not in the ancient Incan time, waking up and down in bare feet or sandals at best.
We knew we were getting close to the main town when we saw a familiar face in the mountain side... TUMI!
We finally reached our destination and shared high fives and pounds all around. Three out of four days of hiking- done!
We decided to treat ourselves with some chorizo pizza and some two-for-one happy hour pisco sours. Our views from our table were pretty incredible and really brought everything full circle.
Next, we caught a train to Machu Picchu town, which was about 1.5 hours away. We would have one very short night there before a very early (345am) wake up call to start on or journey out to Machu Picchu! We retired exhausted and excited for a solid 4 hours of sleep.
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