Adventure on Putucusi Mountain

Aeroparque Buenos Aires

As I wait for the LAN flight to Iguazu, I thought that I would write about one of my favorite times in Peru.

Climbing Putucusi

Machu Picchu the day before had been amazing and magnificent, but this, because it was only my dad and me, was one of my favorite times that I had in Peru. People said that the most amazing view was at the top, looking back at Machu Picchu. So, I said “I want to do this hike,” and the next day we were on the train tracks going to the head of the trail and I was excited.

“Phew, this hike is already hard,” I said to my dad. Then our first ladder came. Our first ladder was pretty small, but then we came to some more ladders. We had known from somebody that a lot of the hike was on ladders and ladders and ladders. We didn’t bring my mom or anyone else because we woke up early for Machu Picchu the day before and nobody else wanted to wake up again for Putucusi, except me. So, on the second ladder my dad said that this didn’t seem to be the 110-rung ladder that somebody had told us about. (But, on the way back down we counted the number of rungs and it did end up being 110 rungs.) After the ladders, we came to this thing that we called the “saddle.” We had not been on Putucusi this whole time, but were on another mountain (I don’t know the name) and now we were going on a connector that was the way to Putucusi. The sides of the saddle were really steep. To the top of Putucusi from there was about one half of what we had already hiked, but it was harder because we went up switchbacks (or zig zags) on the mountain. So, we were coming to the top and I couldn’t wait to see the vvvvvviiiiieeeewwww!!!!! The view was spectacular. It kind of looked like this.

Then, when we were having our snack (wafer cookies and chips) and all of our water, this guy, sweating like crazy and breathing really hard, finished his hike up the mountain and sat down and was happy to be resting. Then we found out he was from Brazil and was discovering his continent. He was in Machu Picchu and wanted to do this hike, so he did it. He introduced himself, we introduced ourselves and we had a talk because he knew a little English and we spoke a little Spanish and we were able to communicate. He gave me a Brazilian 10 Reis bill and instead of saying “de” on the bill (which means of in English), it said “do” because they speak Portuguese, not Spanish in Brazil.

It was an easy hike down the mountain and I can’t wait until another adventure worth writing about.