Day 10: Coffee beans and spider screams

Day 5 official itinerary:
Today we head down the Santa Teresa river valley through more populated rural areas.  We pass through coffee plantations as well as banana, granadilla and avocado orchards, stopping along hte river to enjoy a hot picnic lunch.  In the small town Playa, a private vehicle takes us to the beginning of the "Llactapata Inca trail" (30min drive).  From there, Lucma Lodge is only a 30min walk away.  Dinner and overnight at Lucma Lodge.  Optional zipline tour

Today was another relatively easy, albeit long, day as we spent most of the day's hike following the path of the river along the Santa Teresa valley.  We were ready for the off at 8am, so we thanked the staff and waved them goodbye as we headed towards the cloud forest for the initial descent towards the river floor.  The first part of the hike was HORRIBLE as it was incredibly steep and on switchback trails cut out of the forest, so it was muddy, rocky and very slippy.  It reminded me a bit of the hike Lisa and I did in Nicaragua when the path was slippy underfoot, so you had to make sure to concentrate really REALLY hard cos if you fell, it would be game over (especially as Emergency Horse was not with us (for obvious reasons!)).   It was very hard on the knees too, and I think it was at this point, I decided that maybe I didn't like going downhill quite as much as I thought i did.

Fortunately this part of hike only lasted for 20 mins or so, and the rest of the trail was much easier going, with some uphill and downhill bits, but fairly level otherwise (or as flat as Peru ever gets - which isn't very!).  We criss-crossed the river a couple of times on bridges of various degrees of rickety-ness, which added to the overall Indiana Jones feeling of the day!  There were a few mildly hair-raising bits where the path got very narrow, with sheer drops down to the valley floor a few inches away, and where we had to navigate a path through a recent landslide.  Needless to say, we navigated that one very, very quietly....  We also passed a place where there were natural hot springs and some enterprising individual had built a little pool complex around it.  Shame it wasn't closer to our lodge from the night before!

The vegetation continued to grow lusher and lusher as we descended and the humidity started to climb.  We passed trees with passion fruit vines entwined in them, lots of avocado trees, plantains, squashes and, as we neared our  pick-up destination, lots of coffee bushes.  As the distance we needed to travel today was too long to hike all the way, were hiking for 7 miles first along the river, then getting picked up by private van for a half hour drive to the drop off point where we'd actually walk for about a half hour on the original Inca trail before arriving at our lodge for the evening.

En route, we made a stop at a coffee farm where the owners took us through the process for harvesting the coffee beans, removing the outer shells, then pan roasting them for 20mins until they are roasted black, before grinding them by hand and making us all a very tasty cup of drip-filtered coffee.  After that, we took another short walk for about 15mins further up the mountain (bypassing a spider who was engaged in a life/death struggle with a massive fire ant - and losing) until we reached the Lucma lodge.  As with all the lodges, the surrounding scenery was absolutely stunning, so we sat outside for a bit, as we sipped our cool fruit juices, and enjoyed watching the hummingbirds flitting around the hibiscus plants.  A very relaxed ending to what has been a very enjoyable day.

In the evening, we had a marathon card session (after first wiping clean the 3D cat cards after a sachet of chocolate protein powder exploded in my holdall, covering everything with a thin chocolately film) which - after a closely fought match - Lisa won.  Again.  So its 2:1 to Lisa. Dammit.

We actually stayed up a bit later than usual tonight because we'd opted not to do the hike tomorrow.  According to Liz, it is extremely hard on the knees as its a steep ascent up, and then basically like the first 20 mins we did this morning - but for two and a half hours!!  What we'll miss is a distant view of Machu Picchu, but I think I can live without that.  The risk of buggering up my knees and then not being able to run my charity half-marathon in 4 weeks time is just too great - I don't want to risk it.  Lisa is keeping me company too (I dont think she was too keen on the prospect of the downward hike either) so tomorrow we can just spend a bit of time at the lodge chilling out, before walking down to meet our private transfer at the road that we came up from earlier today.  It'll actually be nice to have a bit of a break - and we still have Machu Picchu (and my birthday - yey!) to come!  This holiday really has turned out to be one of the best I've ever had - and its still not over yet!!

Morning view as we left the Colpa lodge

Saying thank you to the staff as we left

Getting our Indy on...

It doesnt look like it, but it was a very very long
way down to the Saint Teresa river...

Natural hot springs

Jurassic Park style horsehair ferns

Snack Break time too for Foal of Emergency Horse

Lisa braves a trail across the rickety, rockety bridge.

A bit difficult to read but this rest area sign was weirdly specific
in terms of the refreshments it was encouraging you to buy!

It makes a break from me getting mugged by chickens.  The puppies
of assorted sizes rapidly figured out who was the patsy at this Snack
Break stop....

We've seen a surprising number of beautiful roses
popping up in all sorts of random places.  Very lovely.

A weirdly disturbing sight.  Felt we'd inadvertently stepped into the
set of the latest Stephen King novel...

Brilliantly inventive toy horses for the kids. 

And then, it was time to bid a fond farewell to Emergency Horse
and Water Horse.  Thank you, fine steeds, you have served us well.

True to form, even in the middle of the Peruvian
cloud forest, I can still find shopping opportunities...

The little bit of the Inca trail we hiked on today

Rather festive looking coffee bushes

Rather drunken looking wild grass

Man building a roof

Mumsie - unfortunately, they were all out of coffee
mugs for you - sorry about that.  

Site of our coffee tasting stop - nice to know we were in the
right place!

The coffee grind-y machine that strips the outer
skin from the coffee bean.  They are then fermented in water
for three days to get rid of the sticky residue that's left behind
after the shelling.

After the three days, then they are laid out to dry in the Andean sun

Coffee beans ripening, ready for picking.  When you pick a coffee
bean, you have to be very careful not to pick that little green stem
that attaches the bean to the main stalk - otherwise you won't get
a coffee bean there next year.  

We were inspired by the three tiny stools we were all sitting on.
Or high on caffeine.  

Freshly hand-roasted coffee beans, ready for the grinder!

Coffee in action!!  Put the kettle on!

The Spider:Ant death match.  Game was all over by this
stage as the ant had already injected the spider with a paralytic
so it was still alive but couldn't move as the ant dragged
it off to its nest.  It will then lay eggs in it and...
well, you can fill in the rest.  

Yet another beautiful lodge, the Lucma lodge, nestled in amongst
the coffee plantations

Fabulous hibiscus plants that proved very popular
with the hummingbirds

Close up shot - such vibrant colors.

Today's scores on the doors (stats are a bit buggered up again today as my watch ran out of juice about an hour before the end of the hike):
Start time: 8.24am
Duration: 8hr 5mins (also buggered, as i forgot to stop the clock when we reached the lodge)
Distance: 6.53miles (the total was 9 miles)
Training benefit: basic training, long
Avg. HR: 90 (51%)
Max HR: 128 (72%)
Calories: 1565
Fat burn % of calories: 66%
Average speed: 1.4mph
Maximum speed: 7.1mph (hmm...not sure about this - i don't recall moving that quickly!)
Max. altitude: 9765 ft
Ascent: 1880 ft
Descent: 3720 ft