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Home / TRIP IDEAS / A-List Travel Advisors / What I Learned After Starting My Own business and Hiking in Peru's Sacred Valley

What I Learned After Starting My Own business and Hiking in Peru's Sacred Valley

2022-11-15  Tatiana Travis
Hiking on the trail above Cinco Lagunas

 

Toward the end of 2018, I looked back at my own social media posts, and this is what I found: a smiling photo of myself in a flowing caftan, flanked by Chippendales dancers; a far too-tanned version of me with hair extensions on a red carpet with Gabrielle Union; a shaky photo of me in seven-inch heels with Jennifer Lopez; a picture of me batting fake eyelashes with Cher; and a photo of me in No, I have no idea what I was contemplating.

Fun, huh? However, those images don't show me flinging an outfit over my head in a casino parking lot after a 10-hour editing day because I had to be somewhere else. Or I was covertly sitting in a corner responding to publisher emails and hobbling into the kids' area of the casino at closing time to pick up my kid because, as a single mother, I had no choice but to leave the house and was unable to find a babysitter. (By the way, in that Cher photo? A stray eyelash I accidentally stuck on myself in a rearview mirror nearly blinded me.)

What brought me here? Sincerely, I'm not sure. Being an introvert, I was worn out after a night in a crowded club. My desire to write, which had initially drawn me into the magazine industry, had utterly vanished. Reading, my other passion, had turned into a chore. As group editor-in-chief, my work had shifted significantly from journalism to politics. (I am limited to discussing my experience in particular circumstances. I know much content, productive, and imaginative magazine editors.) I was lost as to who I was.
So I gave up.

I didn't quit my job in one of those dramatic scenes from movies like Office Space, when Jennifer Aniston yells at the waiter, "There's my flair!" I subtly left the magazine business, received an academic fellowship for a writing program, and started planning a nonfiction book I'd wanted to write in my earlier days. I could remove my makeup both literally and figuratively. However, that significant relocation did not make me better. I had trained myself to anxiously wake up at 4 a.m. to check my email for missed deadlines, print emergencies, and issues with translators who worked with a 15-hour time difference. If I wasn't on my laptop, I was probably waiting for the next crisis on my phone. Finally, a small voice asked, "Mama?" when I took my third-grader to dinner to celebrate her last day of school. Please put your phone down. Is it audible to you?

I was aware of my problem. After working so hard to reclaim my creativity, here I was, and my mind wouldn't slow down for the situation. I was dreadfully dependent on technology, busyness, and stress. I was aware of my problem. After working so hard to reclaim my creativity, here I was, and my mind wouldn't slow down for the situation. I was dreadfully dependent on technology, busyness, and stress.

Inca Steps

 


My intervention took the form of an invitation to join a group of women on a week-long hiking trip in Peru's Sacred Valley, some of whom I had previously worked and traveled with and others I did not. The Chilean company Explora constructed the lodge known as Explora Valle Sagrado in 2016. Although our contemporary, low-slung lodge would be a designer's paradise, like all Explora properties throughout South America, we were urged to consider it a base of exploration. In the invitation, our host warned, "Get ready to unplug." This wasn't a leisurely hike through the hills, followed by a night of watching television in the room. Our days would start early with hours-long hikes at sometimes strenuous elevations, a planning session for the next day's walk after dinner, and a tumble into bed in a screen-free room at night. However, the lodge would have WiFi if we needed it. Nothing could heal me if locking myself on top of a mountain without access to cellular service.

I wasn't entirely expecting the lodge to be so peacefully lovely. I arrived in Urquillos after a long day of travel and a 90-minute drive from the airport in Cusco north into the Sacred Valley. The lodge rises naturally from a corn plantation from the fifteenth century, sitting low to the ground. It is a beautiful example of responsive design, built with Andean native woods and reinforced adobe and created by renowned Chilean architect José Crus Ovalle. Explora's philosophy centers on blending in naturally with the extremely remote locations where it operates. Daily hikes in Peru's Sacred Valley ascend into the Andes, where you won't encounter any other hikers thanks to agreements with the people who inhabit and work these altiplano regions. If you become fixated on Explora's lodge's abundant amenities, you risk not devoting yourself entirely to comprehending the setting.

We took a brief walk close to the lodge to start acclimatising to the elevation after I met up with our group, which was just a little higher than 9,000 feet above sea level. We got caught up in hikers' routines, catching up with old friends and joining in on new conversations. I was ecstatic because it was my first day without a cell phone. One of my fellow travelers told me, "I'll be honest with you." "I feared that you might be too demanding for this trip. I've viewed your Instagram page.

Cinco Lagunas

 

The Sacred Valley hike
The Sacred Valley is Peru's breadbasket, where up to 3,000 varieties of potatoes and more than 55 different types of corn are grown. It is dotted with native Quechua villages, surrounded by Incan agricultural terraces, and guarded by us. The Urubamba River, which runs through it all, was considered by the Incas to be the Milky Way's terrestrial reflection.

Since the Explora property is built on some of the same buttressed walls that the Incas constructed in the 15th century, its history is fascinating. These walls direct visitors to Explora's new bathhouse as they pass through one of the farm's fields. Mateo Pumacahua, the Peruvian revolutionary who led the Cusco Rebellion of 1814 in the War of Independence, once resided in the colonial house built in the 18th century with Inca walls as its foundation.

We traveled nearly 50 miles from our base at Explora over the following five days. We took a hike around Cinco Lagunas, which rises to a height of almost 15,000 feet and offers views of lagoons that mirror Sawasiray's snow-capped peak. We traveled past remote potato farms in the mountains, where locals shared underground-cooked potatoes for lunch. Along our hikes, we left coca leaves as offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth) or gathered stones to stack in ceremonial heaps. We treated sore bodies and, for those who were experiencing altitude sickness, sore heads.

We passed the 15,000-foot mark, and my lip split on its own. Although I hadn't experienced the typical signs of altitude sickness, angioedema, an allergic response to high altitudes that can cause deep tissue swelling, is common. Every morning, I put on my hiking clothing and leave.

Snow-capped Mount Veronica

 

We conversed face-to-face, without a screen in sight, when we had nothing better to do than reach the next peak on our increasingly difficult and high-altitude hikes. We took photos of one another, triumphantly undressed and unglamorous, with our hair stuck to our heads under multiple layers of equipment. After our planning sessions, I took a long bath in my quiet room and read a book while gazing out at the starry night sky. A physical book whose pages I had to turn. When it was time to leave, I dug my phone out of a bag and marveled at how the world had kept turning while I had been unplugged. My stress level had decreased, I had made new, meaningful friendships, and I had rediscovered previously dormant creative thinking areas. A man approached me to start a conversation in the Cusco airport, but he slowly backed away when he saw the enormous, festering lesion on my face. Old me would have been in shock. The brand-new me smiled and returned to my book.

Even though my trip to the Sacred Valley only lasted a week, it helped me start a new way of living. I now spend most of my weekends without using any technology. I turn off my email when I need to concentrate on the book I'm currently writing and only think about the plot. When my daughter and I go for walks, I listen to her. And on occasion, I recall who I am when I think back to those starry, silent nights in the middle of a cornfield with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

 


2022-11-15  Tatiana Travis