In one of the weekends during my volunteering stay at Julio’s house, Julio took us (Chani, Peter and me) to Marcahuasi. Have you ever heard of Marcahuasi? Well I had not and my personal travel bible – the Lonely Planet doesn’t cover it either – it is so to say a “touristic secret“! Marcahuasi is a Quechua name and means something like the “Guardian’s home“ – but what is it??? Well no one knows exactly but local people say that pre-Incan people formed rock formations – known as Marcahuasi – on top of the hill close to the pueblo called San Pedro.
As I mentioned before Marcahuasi is not really a tourist attraction (I mean it is, but no one knows about it) and therefore the whole trip was a real ADVENTURE. We took the taxi to Coaushi and from there a local bus to San Pedro which was supposed to take us like 3 hours to get to the pueblo. But you never know what’s going to happen when traveling in Peru – and we happened to be on the street (or to be more correct: on the dirt road) while construction work was being done. That meant that instead of three hours it took us like 7 hours to get there – the adventure had begun.
During the bus ride we met two limeños who were also visiting Marcahuasi; one of them had been there already like 100 times so he knew what the whole thing was about! He promised us to send us a picture of an alien that someone is supposed to have taken last year. The place is famous for its alien sightings… Two months have passed since and we haven’t received the picture yet – I guess we will never find out if there are aliens in Marcahuasi or not..jaja Chani and I were able to persuade Lucho – one of the bus companions – to come with us. I and Chani were relieved – since Julio got lost the last time he tried to hike Marcahuasi… And Lucho was the best thing that could have happened to us – he knows SOOOOO much about that place, unbelievable. He showed us all the different rock formations – turtles, frogs, faces, a kissing couple – ruins, and chullpas (pre-Incan tumbs). I probably would not have seen one of these formations without him; you do need some kind of imagination to be able to see them.
We were supposed to leave on a Friday afternoon; but we had not realized that it was the day of some local “fiesta“ whose theme was the Spanish invasion. I guess it was a good experience – the local people were acting out a whole theater play (which seemed to be pretty improvised but oh well; people were dancing with fresh cut off cow’s heads getting the cows’ blood all over themselves; BUT me and Chani we were mostly worried that we could not get back to Lima that night because there were no buses leaving during the play. At 6pm the first bus was leaving and we were heading off already during sunset. It was a quite scary ride – in the darkness on the curvy (one lane) dirt road; Chani and me weren’t too sure that we were gonna make it back alive to Lima, but we did – thank God… And Lucho – being such a nice guy – gave me his copy about the history of Marcahuasi; that was such a nice gesture – some people just have an amazing big heart!!!
So I’m happy to say now: Marcahuasi: been there, survived that 
!
same lake - different view
Chani and Lucho
One of the lakes of Marcahuasi
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- Marcahuasi Part I: Just getting there! + Orientation Marcahuasi Fact sheet: * Marcahuasi is the site of an ancient civilization that eclipses Machu Picchu in both altitude (4008...
- DIY Arequpia and Colca Cañon After doing the Jungle Trek to Machu Picchu, me and Chani were “toured out“. No way that we were gonna...
- Marcahuasi Part II: Hiking, Football, Dead Rat Hats and Fiesta Previously at Marcahuasi…(recap) • “Our path to Chosica (the connecting point to SPDC) was blocked by a 10 ton truck...
