Chopani Valley Trek

I took a solo hike (2 day mini trek) with guide friend Wither through the high mountain valleys above Ollantaytambo to the town and hot springs of Lares which took us through the remote community of Chupani. We left Ollantaytambo by taxi after filling our backpacks with fruit to offer as gifts to people along the way who harvest only potatoes at these high elevations and drove an hour and a half north, just past the village of Patacancha. We stopped along side the road and Wither pointed off to the right at a high pass - our route. For lunch that day we crashed a family watia, potatoes baked in the earth after a single use adobe oven is colapsed and covered, cooking the potaoes in the ground for several hours. This is the standard mid-day meal while working the field, our potatoes were served with a large bowl of salted lettuce that was passed around the group while we ate. After our fill, we shared fruit and coca leaves, shook hardened, rough hands and headed off, up an out of Patacancha valley over a pass just over 14,000 ft and into the valley of Chupani.
For the night we ate and stayed at the home of Virginia with her 2 young boys, her husband is a porter on the Inca Trail and was not at home. A single room rock house with a thatch roof, dark and cool inside, beds and a loft on half and the kitchen on the other. Pork and potatoes were cooked on a poorly ventilated stove fueled by sod brickets and llama dung as there are no trees or bushes to be seen here. We ate in the smoky room, barely lit by the fire and a battery operated lantern while guinea pigs scurried around our feet eating the potato skins and scraps tossed to the floor. We slept in an outbuilding on the ground padded by llama pelts in our sleeping bags with wool blankets on top, I think the temperature fell close to zero that night but I stayed nice and toasty.
For breakfast we gathered around the smoky stove and ate potato soup and roasted cuy with potatoes, reducing the scurrying critters by one. I am just not a cuy fan, the meat is tasty but its mostly greasy skin and it was hard not to keep my thoughts off its live friends at my feet. We packed our bags said our goodbyes and started our climb out of the valley watching the tiny homes, people and llamas shrink to nothing behind us. From the high pass we had great views of snow capped peaks to our north and the backside of the snowy peaks behind Urabamba before descending down into the Lares valley. Along the way, each person we passed (not many at all) received fruit and/or bread, items that would be a day's walk to find, from Wither. We made it to the hot springs where we pitched our tent with plenty of time for a soak before dinner in town, but had no energy afterward to sit in the pools and gaze at the stars.
Day three started in the hot pools watching a condor fly above while the tourists trickled in who start most standardized treks in the opposite direction along with their guides and porters who carry everything for you. We packed up and walked the 1/2 hour again into Lares where we spent the day. Wither did some campaigning for presidential hopeful Ollanta Humala and we hiked a little ways down from town without our packs before it was time to drink homemade corn beer while awaiting our 3pm bus out of the valley. Four big glasses of chicha was not the best idea before boarding and I was feeling very rough about an hour into the ride. Thank goodness for landslide re-construction giving me plenty of time to disembark and return a couple glasses to Pachamama in the ditch with plenty of spectators. It was a long ride home after that but I wouldn't trade any of it.