White Jesus

Okay ... it's been a while since we posted and a lot has gone down: our friend Lauren flew down to hike Machu Picchu with us, we explored Cusco, the royal Inca city, and I finally figured out that "machu" only has one c ...

Lauren flew in to Cusco after a grueling 19-hour trip from Nashville at 7am last Wednesday morning. We explored a little and took some long power naps, but our first big adventure was on Thursday--our last Inca Trail warm-up hike, the hike to White Jesus.

The night before, we'd seen a giant statue of Jesus illuminated on one of the hills outside Cusco and we all thought the same thing--"we need to hike to Jesus."

The next morning, we started walking in what we thought was the right direction. Along the way, we saw some school children goose-stepping in eerie resemblance to a certain fascist army and a soda delivery truck half-way tipped over on a cobblestone street and only propped up by some wooden poles.

Eventually, after getting directions and drinking some hot chocolate on a patio overlooking the city, we found the staircase that said "Cristo Blanco"--white Jesus. We started climbing and about 12 steps later we stopped for our first break--climbing steps at 11,000 feet is no joke.

During one of our breaks, we stopped to watch a man carving tiny statues out of serpentine stone--with a bent fork because he didn't have any machines! Needless to say, we picked up some incredible souvenirs and photos.

Soon after our encounter with the statue carver (okay, maybe they were idols), the stairs ended and a maze of narrow dirt paths emerged. We started hiking alongside two engineering students from Finland, who knew as little of the trail as we did, and we were all soon in the middle of the bushes on the mountainside. We chatted for a while and found out they were visiting Cusco just for a few days on their way to Chile to visit a factory for a project.

Eventually, we all decided it was best to keep going up, with or without a trail. We helped each other scramble up 3-foot ledges and avoid pricker bushes until we were almost at the top--when we found a trail parallel to the one we'd just made ... oh well

We spent some time taking pictures with the giant white statue of Jesus and found a much better path on the way down that let us get home before the afternoon rain started. We were ready for the Inca Trail