Hiking the Inca Trail Part 1 + Recipe (for new favorite hiking, or anytime, snack)
Some thoughts, some adventures, some trekking snacks, a fascinating new study on dehydrated ferments
In the wee hours, I had one of those dreams that keeps going, even when it has been interrupted by wakefulness. (Maybe it was just that super moon playing with me.) As most of my dreams, it wasn’t exciting, but it did make me laugh that I couldn’t get out of it. I was teaching, and it was a workshop that was an amalgamation of many of the workshops I have taught. It was somehow the most recent one in Peru and somehow not. For one, we were fermenting on a barge in choppy water—where did my brain come up with that? What I remember most is that people kept asking questions, but they were also chatting with each other the entire time. I guess if I think about it, I was mostly frustrated in the dream, which is also rarely how I feel in a class. Fermentation students are super engaged, curious, and interested. They are often motivated by the act of creating in collaboration with the microbes as part of the process.
I am still motivated by working with beautifully colored vegetables and how they present in a jar. For me, this is as much a part of the process, or artistry, or enjoyment, as the final product. I have had a few conversations lately where creating and creativity have come up, and each time it seems to be someone is telling me that people, right now, are struggling with the capacity to create because of all the fear and uncertainty of these times. I hope not. Isn’t this when we need our creativity more than ever? Maybe these conversations entered my dream in the form of restless people unable to ferment?
I hope you are finding the joy and simple creative satisfaction in fermenting something.
Our big adventure
Last time I wrote, we were in Urubamba, Peru, about to embark on a trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Those of you who read our last post on metabolites and made it to the bottom of the post, know we made it, not only no worse for the wear but renewed!
That first morning, everything was starting to happen, yet it still lurked in the unknown space of my mind, predicting what it would be like. Gotta love our brains, just making it all up regardless of the fact, I had no experience with the elevations or quantity of stairs to draw on. My brain played made up movies to scare me and I kept thinking, ‘I guess we are doing this.’
Of our group, we were picked up first. As the van wound its way through the Sacred Valley, we talked with Orlando, our guide. We were in good hands; he’d made the trek around 800 times in the last 25 years. We then met Emma and Pete, who were hiking for their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and later Heidi and James, mother and son. Heidi had dreamed of this trek for 40 years! And just a few weeks earlier, she had made the plans to do it with her son.
Then, just like that, the van deposited us at the trailhead at Piskakucho. This is when things began to feel real. It was all a bit chaotic as we and the porters were all dealing with shoving things in packs and last-minute adjustments, finding our passports for entry, and getting rubber tips on trekking poles. A local woman with disposable rain ponchos in a basket came by selling them. Emma looked at the sky and bought a couple. The week leading up to the trek was forecast to have fair amounts of rain every day. Later, Emma would say those had been the insurance policy. We never walked in the rain, which at the front edge of the rainy season was amazing. Good thing someone got insurance. We thanked her.
After a small visitor center, we took the obligatory photo and were off. We crossed a footbridge over the Urubamba River, one of the headwaters of the Amazon, and to the Inca, a sacred river. It was believed to mirror the Milky Way, connecting heaven and earth. At this bridge, Orlando stopped us in the middle for our first small ceremony, of which there would be many. He told us to look downstream and have the river take away all that is negative, cleanse us of what we are bringing to the hike. Then we looked upstream and allowed the energy of the river to flow into us—filling the space with positive forces and strength.
On day one, we walked in the valley along the river. In this part of the park there are still active communities. Some whose homes are along the trail who had small chicha (fermented corn beer) stands and bathrooms to use. We learned about the trail and the Incas. Each time we stopped, the order of our line would reshuffle, and we would begin the delicate process of getting to know each other, like slow speed dating with trekking poles.
From Orlando we learned about the vast road system we were on, the Qhapaq Ñan. He told us about chaskis, fleet-footed distance runners who delivered messages throughout the empire. They often worked in relay style passing messages from one to another. The Inca had no written language so the messages had to be memorized and and exchanged at each stop. They often carried a khipu, a series of strings with knots that were part of the messages. Some messengers brought fresh fish to the royalty in Cusco daily. We learned that small chaskiwasi were stations for the message exchanges placeed at short intervals and tambos that were rest stops or inns, and offices, along the Incan road systems for travelers, merchants and the messengers. These were placed around a days walk apart. We would pass a number of these tambo ruins along the way.
The first site we set foot in was an administrative center, Llactapata, at the junction of three valleys. It made me laugh to myself—no getting out of admin. Spread out below Llactapata, with its amazing vantage point, was Patallacta. A small agricultural village that is thought to have been also in support of Machu Picchu. There was a collective wow as we peered over the cliff and looked down on what was a small village with many terraces. It was the first time seeing and then walking also the paths and roadways of this once bustling community.
In this video, you can walk through the alleys of Patallacta with me. We then spent the first night in the valley below, under the shadow of this place. I spent my pre-teen angsty years in Arizona, in a valley that may have been more populated in the past by ancient people than it was then. I was forever imagining stories of young girls, my age, of course, and their lives, building mental bridges to them as I sat in the remains of homes. Falling asleep below this place, their center, their home, took my mind back to that time. I found myself in that familiar, yet distant, liminal space, drifting to sleep, compressing time, and trying to feel what was there.
We woke to a beautiful morning (and braying donkeys.) Coffee or coca tea brought to the tent, a tasty breakfast, and an introduction to the team that was supporting our journey, our trail family.
It was day two, and we were off. Our first two stops came quickly, good for morale. The first was a bonus trail up an outcropping with a teeny-tiny trail to the top. There we spotted two condors soaring above. Auspicious. A short distance later, we entered Tarayoc, a village that also functions as a rest stop for camping or a lunch break for some hikers. We took a small detour above the village to the archeological site, which had also been a rest stop along the road. This tambo had a cave in the hillside above it, which Orlando said contained petroglyphs. It also had a spring which flowed from above and was routed through the site by channels.
The rest of the day was up. We ascended through the Rio Llullucha valley, we left the drier Quechua zone, which smelled of agricultural and desert dust. Early in the day we often stepped aside for donkey and horse trains carrying sacks, this made me smile every time. As we saw the corn plots become distant we walked into a forested area described as a Meso-Andean forest, the dominate trees being the Andean cedrela, or siwi (Cedrela angustifolia), and the Andean Pisonay, or Birdcatcher tree, (Erythrina falcata), both of which are threatened due to timber use. As we rose into thinner air, we also left any of the stray bits of modern civilization behind, like a phone signal. The next three days, all that was required of us was to put one foot in front of the other.
There were stairs, there were cobbles, there were more stairs, and more stairs. On this day there was only up. Some stairs required a zig-zag approach, steeper ones, there was nothing but hoisting yourself however you could. This day, more than any other, I found myself calculating every step by looking ahead and seeing where my foot falls would expend the least amount of energy. I found that when I was following Orlando, I wouldn’t have to make the decisions myself. I would watch his boots and follow the pattern. It was easier not to think. Plus, I figured with 800 or so times on this trail, he must know every stone.
Orlando seemed to know how often we needed to stop. It seemed every time I felt on the edge of needing the break, as in my heart rate was feeling like pounding on snare drum, was when he would stop. While our little group was much quieter while we walked (that bit about breathing), we had a great time chatting it up when on break. I felt recovered moments after stopping but after the first 8 steps it was like we never stopped.
The views behind us were increasingly spectacular. The valley seemed impossibly distant as the steep walls of the mountains seemed to grow both taller and deeper. When we first left camp Apu Veronica, her pre-Columbian name is Wakay Willca, Sacred Tears in Quechua, would showed herself for a moment when the clouds shifted. Apu in Quechua has a meaning that, to my understanding, translates into something like deity or lord. Apus are mountains, but are more than that; they are deities of magnificent presence that guide and protect. I would agree.
This was also the day I tried chewing coca leaf for the first time. These leaves have been used in this region to combat altitude sickness and fatigue. The leaves contain a bunch of vitamins and minerals, along with many alkaloids, the famous one of which is cocaine. We learned that it takes somewhere around 50 kilos of leaves to produce 1 gram of cocaine, so while coca leaves can be stimulating, it is no more than a cup of coffee might be. My first try felt like a fibrous leafy mess in my mouth. I was managing the leaves in my cheek while trying to navigate the stairs and breathe. (I can’t chew gum and pat my head at the same time either.) I know you aren’t supposed to swallow the actual leaves, but the liquid that comes from mixing with your saliva. When most of the wad was in my belly, I wondered if that was a problem. I asked Orlando, as if I were asking for a friend. 🙃 Turns out no. Coca leaf flour, for example, is used in baked goods—it can be eaten. (If only I could put that in our Natto Bite recipe.)
We reached the camp Llulluchapampa 3,850 meters (12,630 feet) and talk about a tent with a view. We arrived and were given little foot tubs with hot water. Oh, the bliss. It was then “Happy Hour” snacks with coffee or tea. I barely was able to stay up for dinner, and then I fell into a deep sleep. I woke early to the sounds of the birds. The sound of waking to early bird song in spring is one of my delights. This felt like a bonus, and I recognized none in the chorus.
It was day three, and we were off to Warmiwañusqa (Dead Woman’s Pass), the much-anticipated highest pass on the trail at a cool 4215 meters (13,828 feet). During Incan times, it was a place of ceremony and offerings to the Andean deities.
The k’intu is three carefully selected coca leaves made as an offering to Pachamama and the Apus. It is a gesture of gratitude, respect, and reciprocity. The theme of reciprocity came up over and over again in the Andean way of viewing the world. There is duality and reciprocity and these two themes wove their way through everything. This small act is a way of slowing down, and, with the three coca leaves, standing in balance with all of life, communicating with nature and the spiritual world. The three leaves represent the three worlds of the Andean cosmology. The Hanan Pacha (the upper world), which is the realm of sun and stars, and the future. The Kay Pacha (the present world), our earthly realm, the here and now. The Uku Pacha (the inner or underworld) is the realm of the past and ancestors, but also the seed of new beginnings.
In our right hands we held a k’intu for Pachamama. In our left a k’intu for Apus. We each placed our Pachamama k’intu under a pile of rocks we assembled together. We each stood alone with our thoughts and blew our Apu k’intu leaves out of our hand blowing our intentions and hope as our breath sent them off toward the Apus. The moment was powerful. With all the recent changes in our life it was truly a chance to stand at the top of the world and look forward, not back.
Natto Bites with fermented fairy dust
First, let’s talk about fermented fairy dust, or simply dehydrated fermented vegetables. Dehydrating and powdering fermented vegetables is something I have done since the early days as a way to move on imperfect ferments, as in the ones that, for whatever reason, we don’t eat. Too soft, too sour, or simply not just right.
I have thought if we dehydrate these fermented vegetables at a low temperature then there is no reason that they shouldn’t hold onto some of their properties. At the time, I was thinking the live probiotic microbes, but let over a decade pass and science has more to say on the matter. Now we know, it’s likely more about the products of that transformation, the metabolites, the changes in nutritional value, and so on.
And, my friend Jo Webster, recently did a study finding that freeze-dried kimchi retains many of the bioactive compounds found in fresh. I am sharing the research, but there is more, and we will be writing about it soon on our new Ferment Nerds section.
