Nov 33 min read

Hiking Las Apechetas

October 19, 2024 - From the itinerary: Las Apechetas

We leave the mountain lodge to San Juan del Rosario. Then we move to the valley of the Jawincha, hiking along an ancient trail used by the inhabitants of the area until we reach Ikala, a hidden village. Here we will have lunch and then go to the Necropolis for a tour of the museum and tombs. Finally we return to the mountain lodge.

The left shot is our car journey today and the right is our second hike

Stats: 3.7 miles - 538 feet down/180 feet up elevation around 12,500

Weather: warm and sunny with high winds in the afternoon

Breakfast included yummy croissants which were made from scratch

There is a ritual called Alacitas where believers buy a model of what they aspire to and have it blessed by wizards. The wizards travel around Bolivia starting in January, their sole purpose to bless these objects. The wizards usually finish up by August. After the blessing, the believer places the object at a high point near where they work, or can see it daily.

In the morning I saw a giant humming bird outside the lodge

Our first hike took us up the hill behind our lodge and around. At the high point of the hike, Elsa took out some highlighter pens and a presentation to give us a history of the area. It was a 1 viscacha hike.

On the way down we went by the burial area that produced the earlier ghostly presence.

On the way to the car we walked through a field of prairie dog holes - we were lucky no one sprained an ankle.

We drove by the two fellows filming the documentary - we probably ruined their filming for awhile and scared the vicuñas....

The roads continue to be guidelines. We lost the road this mornings went overland to the trailhead.

Driving over we saw a place where an ancient child (baby) was sacrificed. The mummy, and gold funerary extras, was found by some shepherds. They hid it from the authorities to avoid it being sold or exploited.

We walked through a valley with a lot of coral.

Lake Titicaca and the Uyuni salt flats used to be one body of salt water which is why there are so many coral deposits around the hills. All of the super volcanos are found in potosi and, when the volcanos erupted, the acid from the lava petrified the coral.

Some of the cacti were blooming and some were growing Elsa's arms

and down

to the village of Ikala that was deserted after the threat of the Pacific War was over and where we had lunch:

which was pulled Llama jerkey, Salad with pesto sauce, Potato (papalisa) soup

Buni had his own seat

near lunch was a bush with a ladybird beetle doing its thing and buni was helping

We ran into an extra check point where we were approached by 10 soldiers with automatic weapons, face coverings, and cameras. The car was searched and they made notes of all our data. Thankfully, the return trip was easier to get through the stop.

On the way back we stopped at San Juan village. We stopped in the foothills at a deserted part of the town. This was the historical part of the town where quinoa was farmed and learned there are 3000 types of the this plant. The town was abandoned after the Chileans overtook it during the Pacific War. Once the Chileans left, no local wanted to live there and the town was re-built lower down.

We drove on to the "new town" to see the cemetery and the church which was several hundred years old. There were faces in the walls which included examples of many different types of people.