Matt from the South American Explorer`s Club set up another wonderful day hike last Sunday, 28-Feb-2016, to follow the Sr. de Huanca pilgrimage route. The story behind this pilgrimage goes a little something like this:

A humble worker, Diego Quispe, was forced to work for the Spanish around 1675. Diego saw one of the Spanish men punishing a local woman with a whip and he stepped in to defend her. As a result he was also sentenced to be punished, but he escaped instead. Diego ran, crossing the Huanca Mountains where he hid in a cave. Diego was scared and began to pray. Jesus eventually appeared to Diego and told him to return to his hometown on Chinchero and to return to the cave with his family and a priest. Diego did as he was instructed and Jesus appeared to them again.

While there is more to the story, that is the jist of it. On the 14^th of September thousands of people, mostly from Peru and Bolivia, come to the Sanctuary of Sr. de Huanca located in the town on San Salvador to celebrate these appearances of Jesus. Some people take a bus or a taxi to get to there, but others prefer to make a pilgrimage to more deeply experience the hike of Diego Quispe… and this is the hike we did last Saturday.

Accompanied by my friend and SAE guide, Matt, we took off from the center of Cusco by combi to a small town called San Jeronimo. In the main plaza we saw the local firefighters putting on a demonstration for the young children in the community and it was quite well done.

We took off past the church (to the right of it) and started making our way uphill. We walked past a few houses before finding a road and kept following it up. After maybe 30 minutes (I think) we got off the road and started walking on dirt. There were big yellow arrows painted on rocks highlighting the route to us, so it was not an especially difficult hike to get lost on.

As we walked higher and higher we had consistently more beautiful views of Cusco city, the airport with planes landing and taking off, and all of the valley. But the best part is that eventually the city disappeared and we were gifted with peace, quiet, and stunning views of the Peruvian mountainside and altiplano.

After about 2.5 hours we reached a road which brought us to the town of Huaccoto at about 4,082 meters above sea level. We walked through the town, climbed up a little more and eventually found ourselves in front of a cross and some of the prettiest views of Peru you might hope to find. Parts of it looked like Scotland, other times you might have felt like you were in the Lord of the Rings, but one thing was for sure… we were not in the city anymore.

We stopped for a quick lunch and them kept walking towards some ruin sites. At our peak we probably hit about 4,284 meters above sea level… this is about 14,055 feet above sea level so some pretty nice altitude. We climbed about 1,000m during the hike.

The ruins themselves were simple and nice, but wow… the view of the San Salvadore Valley from the ruins was spectacular. The way that the light was coming through the clouds would almost make a person without faith believe that this was indeed a spiritual place where Jesus might want to visit. While we did not go into the caves, we did take in the view for a while before making the decent down to the Sanctuary of Sr. de Huanca.

The Sanctuary was a lovely place, scenic and peaceful with lovely views of the valley and the Vilcanota River. There were a number of people there collecting healing water from a spring, praying, and spending a lovely Sunday with their families. There was some construction/remodeling being done on the sanctuary at the time and I can only imagine it being even lovelier without all the rope and scaffolding.

From there we decided to make our way to Saylla and grab some chicharrones before returning home. For those of you who do not know, chicharrones in Saylla are pretty much the most delicious thing in the world… fried pork meat with potatoes, corn and a mint/onion salad. Yum, yum, yum.

The hiking time was about 5.5 hours, but we were a small group of 4 and hiked well. I would grade it at about a 1-2 difficultly and my lower body definitely felt it the next few days, but it was absolutely worth it… what a great hike with great people.

Looking forward to the next hike…

Bibliography:

• “Señor De Huanca.”– Wikipedia, La Enciclopedia Libre. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2016.