Today is Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for! Currently, I’m out of Michigan away at some government training. I’ll be here until I graduate in April. After graduation, I’ll be moving to Phoenix where I’ll be working. I’m very thankful for the job opportunity and for Phoenix over some worse locations I could have gotten! The rest of the post will be catching up with what I’ve been up to and what I’m thankful for.
I’m thankful for the beauty of our country and of my home state Michigan. Now that I’m away, I have the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of other parts of the country. However, before I left I made a fall colors trip to the Upper Peninsula. There was this train bridge off in the woods near Negaunee, MI that I’ve always wanted to explore so I hiked out there to see how the colors were. I was a little early, but it is still an awesome spot and I’m glad I got to check it out before I leave Michigan for a while.
I’m also super thankful for my family! It’s a bummer to be away while they gather for Thanksgiving, but I know that they are supportive of what I’m doing and I know I’ll be seeing them soon in the future. They have been so helpful in helping me move all of my stuff and storing it while I’m at training. My dad will deliver my truck to me here at training soon as well. I’m especially thankful that I was able to make it to meet and witness my newest niece, Claire’s, baptism in Virginia before I headed to training.
Since my time in Michigan is over, for now, my military career is up in the air. It will come down to where I think God can use me best. I am blessed to have many opportunities, and for now, I am deciding between staying with my current unit for a potential deployment or transferring to the Reserves or National Guard in Arizona. Lots to contemplate. All I know for now is that it has been an absolute honor to be a platoon leader. I have learned so much about leadership and about myself in the two years I have been leading my platoon. Even if this is just temporary and I will come back to lead them in the future, I am very thankful for all the men I have worked with that have helped me grow and develop into the leader I am today.
I’m so thankful for the sport of jiu-jitsu and the life lessons and friends it has given me. At my last class, I was surprised with a promotion to purple belt. Coach Carl said some nice things about me and then he asked me if I had anything to say. I hadn’t planned anything, but it was one of those moments where everything comes from the heart. I gave a speech with my voice quivering with emotion as I spoke and at the end, Coach was choked up and several people in the class were crying. That’s how much this gym and the people there mean to me. I am looking forward to dropping back in when I’m in town.
Lastly, I’m so thankful especially for two of the guys above (both closest to me). Wyatt and Aaron have been my roommates for the last three years and have dealt with me leaving for 6 months at a time on multiple occasions. They have managed everything at the house without any complaints. We had so many good times camping, watching sports, going to bars, playing cards, and just chilling around talking about life or watching movies. Leaving them feels like it’s the end of an era.
Overall, I am incredibly blessed! God has been so good to me. Covid hasn’t been easy for anyone, but the people that have been there for me during this time have been such a blessing. I’m excited to finally start moving forward into a new chapter and I’m sure I’ll the people from this closing chapter will be reappearing in the next! God bless!
From Cusco, I flew back to Lima and then spent 8 hours on a bus to get to Huaraz, the base for exploring Huascaran National Park. I settled into a hostel and the next day we spent the day on an acclimation hike to Lake Churup which was 14,600 ft high. I started to get slightly lightheaded toward the end of the hike, but I didn’t have a headache or anything like that. Well, it wasn’t until later back in Huaraz that my headache started to surface. It actually turned into a pretty bad headache by the time I was ready to go to bed. I made some coca leave tea and then fell asleep instantly.
I woke up and felt really good. No headache. I continued hydrating to help combat any more elevation sickness. My hiking group came and picked me up in a big passenger van early in the morning and we drove for several hours through rocky bumpy terrain while I had to pee so badly from hydrating. Eventually, we made it to the beginning of our journey. The van dropped us off around lunch and we ate and then started about 5 hours of climbing. I had a lip of chewed coca leaves in for the whole climb because that is apparently what the locals (and Incans) have used for elevation sickness for hundreds of years. The weather was good and the climbing wasn’t too bad, but I learned a lot about elevation sickness during this first leg.
We finally made it to our first base camp. It was right on the edge of the snow line and let me tell you, I had a screaming headache! I really was miserable so much so that I thought I would have to tell the guides I couldn’t go on. But I just sat there all light-headed and stupid with a lip full of coca leaves and did my best to try and control my breathing. Not being active and just being able to focus on my breathing actually helped a decent amount and I was able to calm myself enough to figure out a couple of things. At the elevation level my lungs don’t know how much they should be working so I have to make sure that they are working more by manually breathing deeper. I also learned when eating that it is super hard to stay at a tolerable elevation sickness level when you have to stop breathing to chew. So eating was a miserable slow experience. After every bite, I would take a couple of deep breathes to maintain my sickness level and to ensure it didn’t go any further.
During that first real hike at elevation, I realized that I could feel the elevation sickness creeping on and if I just controlled my exertion level enough I could keep the levels from getting to a life-threatening, need to stop, level. And let me tell you just sitting there with a throbbing headache in both temples and at the base of your neck just beating 100mph it’s a scary thing and I realized early it wasn’t about me being a baby, but about the consequences of long term cerebral damage. I was not optimistic that I would make it much further. We had our tents set up and I eventually got to sleep and that was nice. I slept pretty soundly actually. I said a prayer hoping that the sleep at elevation would help lessen the elevation sickness.
After that first morning, I didn’t feel good at all. I had hoped that a night of sleep at elevation would do good to help me adjust, but I almost felt worse after the sleep. The lesson I learned here was that when sleeping I am unable to make sure I am manually breathing deeper than I think I need to. Instead, I breathed at a normal level and that didn’t get my brain enough oxygen. I looked really bad and the guides used an oximeter to test my blood oxygen level. The meter read 80% which I now know means if I was at a hospital they would put me on oxygen. Up there I had no context and the guide said, “I think it’s okay” in a Spanish accent and so I kept going. Before that, I was considering telling them I couldn’t go on, but I just kept forcing myself to take deep breaths.
Surprisingly it actually felt easier to maintain my elevation sickness level and stop it from encroaching into dangerous levels on the second day. It helped that it was only a 4-hour hike of 800 meters so I’m sure that helped. However, I did get very tired using the crampons and ice picks though because I was so inefficient with them. I really didn’t enjoy the technical portions of the hike because it was difficult and foreign. Under intense elevation sickness is not the most conducive environment to learn new skills. Also, it felt like we would hike up a snow crest and I would be excited to get to camp, but every time there was another even bigger crest before our destination. Eventually, we finally go to our camping spot. I was, again, was miserable when we got there. I’m sure the oxygen levels in my brain were the main cause but an intense sunburn couldn’t have helped.
We had dinner and I continued my nightly ritual of starring out at the mountains and manually taking deep breaths until my headache relegated enough for me to focus on other things like eating or unpacking my things. After dinner, I continued starring and breathing. The plan was to wake up at 1 am to begin the push to the summit. The guides would wake up early and check the weather conditions to see if it was feasible. I contemplated staying up all night just breathing intentionally to ensure that my head would be good for the last push and additional elevation.
The guides deemed the weather too bad at first so we reassessed every half hour for about an hour or so until they officially canceled the summit attempt. I have to say I wasn’t that upset. I had my doubts I would have been able to make it with my head regardless. This way I also got to get some sleep as well. In the morning I felt decent and I had the guide take some pictures of me with the mountains in the background. The picture above shows the summit of Huascaran which is the tallest mountain in the tropics in the whole world. It stands at 22,205ft. It is also the mountain in the Paramount Picture’s logo. My journey, however, ended at just a little over 18,000ft. Chopicalqui, the mountain we were attempting to climb, is 20,846ft high.
We started our descent down and we decided to go even deeper into the valley than the original plan just to get out some of the weather that caused us to cancel our summit attempt in the first place. The climb down was actually more technical than the climb up based on the route we chose and we ended up on a patch of really steep ice that required climbing down backward with full use of ice axes and crampons. I actually slipped and ended up falling down the edge of the ice wall until Alex, my climbing mate, dug in with his ice ax and stopped me from falling. I’m glad he was experienced and alert otherwise my fall could have been much worse and I could have dragged others down with me. I ended up with some scrapes on my arms since I was only in a T-shirt at the time. Climbing down like that felt like an eternity and I honestly wondered if I was strong enough to hold on and complete the whole thing. I was exhausted, but when there isn’t a choice you usually are strong enough.
We eventually made it to the rocks where we took our crampons and harness off. We grabbed the gear we left at the first base camp and changed into our hiking boots or basketball shoes if you’re me. It was so nice to not have to worry about slipping on ice, but now I realized how bad going down hurt my knees. Eventually, we were down into the valley where we had dinner and camped the night.
In the morning we had breakfast and packed up the tents. It is incredible how much better I felt after sleeping the night at a lower elevation. It’s funny that lower elevation now meant something still over 14,000 ft. If I were to do something like this again I am definitely going to spend more time acclimating so I can feel that good at 14,000 ft when I start the climb rather than on the backend. Anyways we made it back down to the road and ate some lunch on the last day and the van came by to pick us up. After a couple of hours ride back, with some pit stops for lake views and ice cream, I was back at the rental place returning my gear. A hot shower after that adventure felt so good. For dinner, I bought myself two steaks, and then I went to bed early. The next day I took an easy day and ate some good street food and went to a spa and relaxed in a eucalyptus sauna with a buddy from the hostel.
Now that you have read this whole mess and seen most of the pictures you can watch this video of the mountain climbing experience. Fewer details, but better views in the video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WcNUqWnHaHmws7Rm7
…and that’s a wrap on my Peru trip. It was an incredible experience and it was so nice to get back out in the world enjoying God’s creation. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it! God bless!
So, I went to Peru. It was super last minute and I didn’t really tell that many people, but I have been pretty overdue for a good adventure. I planned it because I was supposed to be starting a new job soon that would have me moving to the the Sothern United States, but unfortunately, that whole timeline has been pushed and it is up in the air at this point. Regardless, I had the trip planned so I went. $240 round trip on Spirit Airlines will get you to Lima, Peru as you can see in the picture above of a hike I went on once I got to Lima.
First stop on the Peruvian journey was enjoying some local cuisine. The first meal I had was a local favorite, Pan con Chicharron, pictured on the left. For lunch, I enjoyed some seafood since I was near the Pacific while in Lima. I had my first experience with the famous Ceviche (upper right corner of the plate on the right-most image above). Ceviche is a raw fish dish that is soaked in a delicious lime and milky sauce. The excess sauce is often put into a shot glass and drank as “Leche de Tigre” or milk of the tiger, which is an interesting experience drinking chunks of fish. However, it was surprisingly delicious. Inca Kola is the local favorite for pops and it has an interesting cream soda-like taste.
The first photo is from Lima and from there I went to Cusco, which is shown in the second photo. I spent the night there before waking up at 3:30 am to get to my bus for Machu Picchu. A little foreshadowing for the next blog post, but Cusco is at 11,000 ft and that first night I experienced some mild elevation sickness while trying to sleep. From the bus, I got to the train station and had an absolutely beautiful ride through a mountain valley into the heart of where Machu Picchu is located.
When the train dropped me off I made my way to the middle of Agua Caliente (the town right outside of Machu Picchu) and got in line at the tourist center for a ticket. Had I been coming during a busier tourist time, outside of Covid, I would have booked ahead. Instead, I enjoyed the flexibility of the times. I did observe many tourists from other South American countries like Columbia and Chile, as well as many from other parts of Peru coming to Machu Picchi rather than the typical European and American crowd.
From the town, you have the option of taking a bus to the park’s entrance or you could save some money and hike the way up. I decided to enjoy the journey on a hike to the top. The middle picture above shows the stairs I was climbing and then the picture on the right shows the bus path up which the stairs intersect on their way to the park entrance.
After wandering through the park and seeing some other ruins you get the choice of going to the upper or lower platform. If you pick one you can’t do the other. I happened to hear an English-speaking guide ahead of me say that he thought the upper platform was better so that’s what I picked. The view was incredible, but the only bummer was that on the lower platform there were a bunch of Alpacas roaming around which would have been pretty cool to play with. I still think I got the better end of the deal for the views though. After the upper platform, you descend into the actual city and there you can get a really good look at all the different architecture and the buildings to really appreciate how big this scared city actually was.
As I wandered behind different English-speaking guides I learned a lot about the significance of this place and the intricate planning of the Incans to build it in that location. The location is actually in a perfect location to maximize time in the sunlight and the terraced walls and layers they built have a lot of unseen underground support to keep the city stable and impervious to slipping off the edge of the cliffs. It’s interesting to be somewhere that the Incans believed was sacred hundreds of years ago. I’ve been to a couple of places that Native Americans have held sacred and every time it’s as if I can feel that energy. There is just something special about certain places and I think it’s a very raw feeling to stand there overlooking Machu Picchu seeing it very similarly as they would have seen it hundreds of years ago. I like to think that I am appreciating it in the same way that they did. It makes me think of how similar we all are as humans whether past or present. Certain things, like the beauty of Machu Picchu, transcend time and cultures and that’s just super cool.
Traveling and adventure has been pretty important to who I am and with COVID it has felt like a part of who I was had been silenced in a way. This is an excerpt from my journal on the day I went to Machu Picchu:
But really, I’ve been thinking this trip has just been so good for me. This morning I had the thought that I’m rediscovering who I am. I love who I have become, but I know the person I’ve been the last year wasn’t the true me I had come to know. I’ve felt robbed of opportunities and I had lost a sense of gratitude. This trip has shifted my perspective so much back to perspectives I’ve already known, but I guess I needed a reminder. Relationally, spiritually, and emotionally, yesterday and today have changed me. There is no doubt about it. I’m so grateful to God for this opportunity at a time where it is becoming self evident that I needed it. Blessed beyond measure is all I can say!
Being back home now and reading this entry and comparing the feelings I had at Machu Picchu to the feelings I have back in my normal routine I can say that the gratitude is still there. Even here when I am waiting on job offers and a little disappointed in how my life hasn’t progressed as far or fast as I wanted it to I still have more blessings and opportunities to go out and do certain things than some of the Peruvians I witnessed will ever have. We live good lives here in America and I’m a little ashamed how much I had lost sight of that. Yes, I gained a lot of cool experiences on this trip, but most importantly I regained my sense of gratitude. God is good!
While waiting for my entry into Machu Picchu I tried some grilled Alpaca as you can see in the left photo. It had a pretty good flavor, but it was a lot chewier than I expected. Then after Machu Picchu, I took the train back to Cusco. In Cusco is where I tried an Incan delicacy that is probably horrifying to some; Guinea Pig. It was actually way more tender than I expected with a delicious flavor. If I see it on the menu anywhere in America I would definitely order it again.
Up next is my adventure in the North of Peru, Huaraz. Huaraz is known for being an international climber mecca and it is home to Huascaran National Park. Huascaran is the tallest mountain in a tropical region in the whole world. Check back for Part 2 soon.
