camino inka - day one

4 months ago i bought my permit to hike el camino inka ("the inca trail"), and it was hard to believe that it was finally happening for real. on monday july 23 i began my journey along this famous trail to the lost inca city of Machu Picchu. at the "orientation" the night before, i was under the impression that i would be picked up at my hostel at 5:20 am in the bus that would take us to the beginning of the trail. well, what really happened was 2 peruvian men ended up walking me across downtown Cusco to find the bus near the Plaza de Armas. and so my hike had already begun.

once on the bus i somehow was wide awake and trying to remember everyone´s names - Megan, Jessie, Mark, Xavier, Andrew, and Teresa from American University in Washington DC who had all also been studying in Santiago de Chile; LeAnn who just graduated from UC San Diego; and Ramin, the 47 year old gay dentist from Chicago

the travel agency with which i booked my trek is called SAS Travel. i have no idea what SAS actually stands for, but overall they are a very reputable company. they were one of the most expensive companies to choose from and it was definitely worth every dollar. we all had personal "chasquis" (meaning "trail runner", and a much more respectable word than "porter" which most companies use), who carried all of our things - clothes, tents, food, etc. and always made it to camp way before everybody else. this was extremely impressive because i was struggling only carrying my daypack. our chef also cooked gigantic meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. they were all delicious but i had to limit my food intake so i wouldn´t hike too slow

we had two guides that hiked with us, Saul (the main guide) and Reynaldo

my first impression of Saul was that he was pretty funny, sorta cute, spoke good english, and very badass considering he did an inca trail MARATHON which he completed in 5 HOURS. this same path our group would take 4 entire days to complete.

my first impression of Reynaldo was that he was shy and quiet.

both of my first impressions drastically changed throughout the course of the trek, stay tuned for the juicy details.

highlights of day one:
- hiking through the Andes and passing through rural peruvian villages
- llamas and cows and donkeys and mules and horses
- little girl on a pink tricycle flying down the trail and yelling "weeeeeeeeeeee!", and then climbing back up the hill again while we all preceded to curse her if she beat us up the hill. she was like 3 years old.
- learning about some of the inca kings
- learning the various meanings of the valle sagrado ("sacred valley") -- very suitable for agriculture, located in the "Cuzco" region which means "center of the world" because it was the first city closest to the equator, and the glacier water sustains life
- beautiful stars, the milky way, and some amazing new constalations including the LLAMA!

m.i.a.

so i hardcore failed at blogging my last month in santiago, and i´ve actually been in Perú for the past 8 days! while i´m chillin in this hostel i figure i might as well start documenting my latest adventures, no pictures involved though because i can´t upload them to this computer so those will have to wait until i´m back in california on TUESDAY!

movilización

took me a while to get the motivation to write a post about the student protests in Chile because this issue is pretty complicated and trying to explain it is overwhelming. so, i successfully avoided explaining it all together, whoever is interested can just check out these articles:

here's an article about the reasons behind the protests and the extreme economic inequality in Chile

and

here's an article about the leader of the chilean student movement . granted, i'm not a fan of how this article focuses so much on camilla vallejo's appearance (although she is damn sexy), but the description of the marches towards the end of the article is very accurate as to what i have seen/experienced.

the number of people that show up to these marches is beyond impressive. the first march of the semester had about 70,000 people, the second march had easily 100,000. and last year by the end of the school year there were 200,000 people showing up

now for some pictures that i took throughout the semester:

student protestors heading to plaza italia before the first authorized march of the school year

"estudiar de noche, marchar de día. escuela de ingeniería USACH"
"study by night, march by day. school of engineering. University of Santiago, Chile"

thousands and thousands of students at Plaza Italia

selling communist propaganda

facultad de derecho - universidad de chile
(Law/Human Rights Department  - University of Chile)

"comienza igualdad y educación de calidad""the beginning of equality and quality education"

"el poder cuesta caro vuelve estúpido al hombre""power is expensive and makes man stupid"

marching past Casa Central (de la Universidad Católica)

black flags signifying that they won't surrender. and some drummers.

"Facultad Economía y Negocios PRESENTE!"
"Department of Economics and Business PRESENT!"

"Imagine a day when Sebastian Piñera was President of Chile,
and your children there....riding a bike?" 

Mapuche flag

"for a free education. student-worker union. revolutionary youth trend"

revolutionary propaganda concerning the student movement and also the hidroaísen backlash in chilean patagonia

outside the national library

the protest heading down my street Enrique Mac Iver

i guess santa and darth vader are long time friends

students on top of the bus stop canopy

you can't tell in this picture, but tons of people were throwing confetti out their apartment windows and onto the massive crowd of people

Salvador Allende (deceased Chilean socialist president) impersonator

guy who climbed outside his window to take pictures of the protestors marching below.
he was about 6 stories high

from my experiences, the marches are peaceful and very inspiring. however, at the end there is inevitably a significant amount of violence. in my opinion, this is absolutely necessary in order to get the government and public to really pay attention to the student's demands

the following pictures (taken from my apartment window) are from another protest where i happened to see a lot of intense shit going down right outside.

water cannon trucks spraying high powered jets at the crowd. when these things drive by, it's pretty much a huge panic, everyone starts running. every man for themselves?

tons of carabineros on horseback

lots of armored trucks with water cannons. as well as dozens of carabineros suited up with their helmets and weapons (it's hard to see them because the tree is blocking)

something on fire in the middle of the bus circle

a group of students drumming at the street corner

i had my head out the window for awhile taking photos and then my nose started to burn from the tear gas fumes i was breathing in

and for my favorite picture yet:

4 dogs tag-teaming a car. special shout out to the one on the right wearing a sweater.