it was a crazy adventure

First off, I need to apologize: this will not be my most interesting post. Last week, I went on a 3-day trek with Clint Barnes (one of my closest friend’s older brothers) and two new friends. Due to a set of complicated circumstances, we needed to do the “Salkantay trek” a commonly done route…in the opposite direction. Usually most paths are walked in two directions, but this hike is not one of those.

Why? The normal direction consists of a difficult Day 1 with 700m of elevation gain to the pass, followed by 3 days of going downhill. Our route consisted of 1 day of relatively flat hiking, followed by 1.5 days of 2600m of elevation gain (over 8500 ft), finished with a few hours of downhill.

-In total we went uphill about 4x more than most people do when they do the Salkantay trek.

-We also carried our own packs, something we did not see a single group do (the tour companies use 10-12 donkeys to carry all the gear/supplies)

-We also did our hike in 3 days, instead of the allotted four days to go the easier direction

In spite of being the single hardest physical activity of my life…it was an amazing trip!

The group dynamics were great from the start, and I truly feel like I made 3 new friends. Clint and Aaron had been in Lima the week prior to our trip, as they work for two different NGOs that do development work in Peru. Clint works with starting savings accounts for people in areas that usually don’t use banks and Aaron works for an organization that gives out loans/grants to private Christian schools in developing countries. Beyond the work they each do, they are just really genuine guys that I grew to look up to as the trip went on. If I could summarize why I found these guys so unique; it would be their openness and their ability to reflect and analyze themselves. I have heard many times that ‘knowing thyself’ is a very important thing. At times I have had bold friends and a patient wife who have had the courage to help me see the things in my life that I couldn’t see, and I know this has been helpful in avoiding sin and maturing. Anyways, being with Clint and Aaron was a refresher on how attractive it is to be around self-aware people.

I didn’t bring our nice camera on the trip, so I am hoping that some cooler/more impressive ones show up on facebook soon…but here are a few I took with my point/shoot

a millipede...gross/awesome

first day was flat and along the railroad track

clint barnes...crossing a sketchy bridge

travis, cool guy from austin, tx

brutal sun, big packs...

aaron roth, balancing across another sketchy bridge

JIMMY!!! the hero of our trip, jimmy was our guide on the inca trail 3 weeks ago, and he was the first peruvian in 2 days that gave us reliable advice! 

SALKANTAY!!!

the top...with my life in the fast lane t-shirt