5 Things You Need to Know About Peru

This episode covers the top 5 things you need to know about Peru.

Take a deep dive as we discuss Lima including Central, one of the best restaurants in the World, a chocolate factory, and Museo Larco, which holds some very strange art.

Peru is one of the foodie capitals of the world. We cover the AMAZING food in Peru including ceviche, street foods, antichuco, and cuy, also known as guinea pig to you and me.

We also give you a few tips for tackling the Inca Trail and how to survive the elevation, which may or may not involve coca leaves. You’ll want to hire a half porter, or chasque, to save your knees and avoid wooden hiking poles to save the rainforest.

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Below is a transcript which has been modified for your reading pleasure.

If you have questions, shoot us an email below

Transcription

Charlie Thompson: 00:25 David, It’s going to be a great night tonight.

David Kosloski: 00:27 Yeah, well, you know, I did my best radio voice right there. Did that, did that work out?

Charlie Thompson: 00:32 Let me try mine. Welcome to the Peru Travel Podcast. I’m your cohost Charlie Thompson with me is David Kosloski. I flubbed a little bit.

David Kosloski: 00:43 Oh, not everyone’s perfect. Sorry. We’re learning. Just so everyone knows it’s listening. We wanted to start a Peru Travel Podcast. Why? Because we love Peru and currently we’ve been just totally digesting and, and really getting our hands deep into what Peru is and we thought the best way of doing this with sort of was to create a podcast, talk about it, learn with you, and if you have any questions obviously let us know and we’ll do some research, do some digging and hopefully we can, you know, learn as we go about why Peru, so great. Why you should go see Peru and I think it should be on everyone’s bucket list so far based off what I’ve seen.

Charlie Thompson: 01:20 And what’d you guys don’t realize that is I’m learning right alongside with you. I’m just as green as probably most of you guys listening to this show. I’m so. I’m so excited to learn along right alongside you guys. David is a fantastic host and we should learn lots of great, interesting facts also about some Peruvian culture. And just so many interesting things. I jumped on board and I can’t wait to get down to the nuts and bolts.

David Kosloski: 01:51 Right? That was beautiful. Thank you for the compliments. So for our first episode, we’re going to be talking about the top five things you need to know about Peru. So the first one that I want to bring up is Lima. Now Lima is something that I see on everybody’s web page, right? It’s always like, don’t skip Lima and I want to really emphasize this. Or I like, this is one point where when I was going to Peru, I really wanted to just go straight to Cusco. And the reason for that was because that’s where like, that was my adventure, that was what brought me to Peru, right? It was Machu Picchu and the hiking, the Inca Trail and everything was like Indiana Jones, you know, looking for some lost treasure of the Incas. And I wanted to skip through the city and the guy that we were with, one of my good friends, best friend, Kevin, he said to me, we can’t skip Lima.

David Kosloski: 02:43 And I’m so thankful for that and there’s a few reasons why we want to go through them because a lot of people talk about what Lima is, but they really don’t digest and really tell you what Lima is a to its core. And so we want to kind of bring up a couple points and hopefully, we don’t miss things. Obviously, there’s a, it’s a big city. Miraflores is a great area in Lima. But let’s talk about Lima. It’s crazy. Random story, my girlfriend and I, we were walking down through Miraflores and  we stumbled upon a restaurant. Okay, now we’ve walked into this restaurant, sat at the bar, got some drinks, and let me tell you the drinks for as well. We’re the most amazing drinks you could ever imagine. Have guy is pulling on a blow torch. He’s blown flames on this like whipped cream type thing.

David Kosloski: 03:22 It was delicious. It was incredible. And a guy from Sweden sits down next to me at the bar. He looks to his right a to ask. He asks me now, believe this or not, he asks me, do you know where you are? And of course, my response is, is Lima Peru, like, what are you, what do you tell somebody in that situation? And so I tell them that I’m, I’m in Lima, and he laughed and he’s like, you’re at Dell a central or something, something along the lines of that. He got really fancy with his words and I was like central, like, oh, this is that restaurant that we couldn’t get reservations too. So needless to say, we stumbled in randomly to a bar, which mind you supposedly you’re supposed to have reservations ahead of time when it when it comes to going to this bar, even and the reservations to book out at the restaurant like months in advance.

Charlie Thompson: 04:07 And this is not what I would recommend to anybody going to Lima. This was seriously just by chance. But what happened was is this guy tells rat central and I’m like, Oh, this is that restaurant. There was the checkout, let’s go see if we can get a table. So we run up to the host and we get a table and mind you, just to give you some background story. This is by a chef Virgilio Martinez, who’s like one of the best chefs in the world. It’s voted the fifth best restaurant in the world. Okay. We just stumbled into this place like how ironic. Anyways, the host tells us that he’s got one table left and when I tell you one table, it was by the door. You could feel the heat waves coming in and every time somebody walked through waiters were bustling by you and needless to say that we’ve got a table now.

David Kosloski: 04:50 The bill was roughly I think around $300 for the fifth best restaurant in the world and that’s Sweden guy. This Swedish guy walked by us again actually, and he said, so how much was your pill? And I sat, I was like $300. He said, well, you want to know what anywhere else in the world you would have probably paid a thousand dollars. It was worth every penny, wasn’t it? You know, so here’s my thing on that. I think you would have enjoyed this place a little bit more than I would Charlie because I’m not a fan of the small itty bitty meals that you get. Not saying that what this guy does is not amazing because it really was. And the food was great. It was just different. It was an acquired taste and it wasn’t something that I like. I was like super passionate about. In fact, the best meals and we’ll get into that later.

David Kosloski: 05:34 The best meals I got, we’re in, we’re in Cusco. But besides that, this restaurant, if you’re, if you’re a Foodie, this is the place for you. Right? And I know you’re a Foodie, Charlie, and I would recommend if you were going to Lima, this will be the place to definitely make reservations to go.

Charlie Thompson: 05:53 It sounds like it’s going to be my first stop.

David Kosloski: 05:55 So, two other things that are, excuse me, a couple of other things. One is chocolate and Lima is really good and I know it sounds strange, but we stumbled into a chocolate factory and I guess a lot of chocolate comes from Peru. This is something that was new to us. We didn’t really know that. The ceviche in Lima. We went to this small village outside of Miraflores, not small village, small city rather. The ceviche was phenomenal.

David Kosloski: 06:19 It was, it was really good. It’s fresh, obviously. It’s right, it’s right from the ocean right away. That morning, excuse me. And bicycling is pretty crazy, but you can rent bicycles like you can in the states. And we rented a bicycle and we just went pedaling through Lima all the way through Mirflora just had a fun time, sightseeing and stopping at places. There’s like random on the beaches, like random, like outdoor gyms. We met a guy who is a, an American doctor who has a, a disease. It was a really sad story, but he was out there doing handstands on p bars and stuff. If you don’t know people, ours is parallel bars in gymnastics is incredible. Really interesting story of Mira. Needless to say, when you’re, when you’re bicycling or walking through a city, you tend to open your eyes a little bit more, right?

David Kosloski: 07:05 You tend to kind of take in what’s around you. You start meeting people you have to ask questions to. I mean, any person that we saw that didn’t look Hispanic, we were asking questions because we were like, hey, you probably speak English. Like where do we go to find this place? And typically everyone was really helpful. It’s just a great environment for one and two, I think because you’re on the ground walking, instead of taking a cab to the next museum or the next restaurant, you’re forced to really get to know the culture. And that’s personally my favorite part about traveling is, is the culture. Aside from that, the last thing I want to bring up is the, I’m probably gonna Butcher this and get yelled at for this after. But the Museo Larco, maybe I got that right. So this was not something that was on my list that I wanted to see.

David Kosloski: 07:48 It was kind of weird for me, but Kevin insisted that we did it and I’m glad we did it. Very interesting. Again, back that eclectic taste aspect. This is a museum when literally I guess we’re all adults here, a bunch of penises and a bunch of vaginas on pots. Like it’s a surprise. It’s not your favorite place was, it’s, it’s strange. But the Peruvian culture back in the day was like, for whatever reason, sex and sex things were just a big deal to them. I, I don’t know the history behind all of this. All I know is it ever went there was literally like, you could find a pot with a, with a, with a giant erect penis on the pot. It was, it was not for.

Charlie Thompson: 08:36 I think for some of you out there, this will be the first place you go. For some of you out there, you’ll probably never want to go.

David Kosloski: 08:43 I think it makes a great date night.

Charlie Thompson: 08:45 It probably. Yeah. If you’re taking your girlfriend to Peru, the first place you should stop is the Museo Larco.

David Kosloski: 08:53 Miss, Miss, I think Museo means museum.

Charlie Thompson: 08:57 Museo Larco.

David Kosloski: 08:59 There’s no R you kind of screwed that up, but that’s okay. Number two. So the second reason that you need to go to Peru, we had to talk about Lima. Second reason is the food. Now, this is something that I actually still like. I’m not a Foodie guy, but the food improve was so fantastic. And, and, and I can’t stress how amazing it was. Like, so our travel doctor was like, Hey, have you tried anything funky? Because it’s, you know, it’s like a pretty bad place for food. It wasn’t bad, but he’s like, anytime you try something Funky, make sure you pop two Pepto tablets.

David Kosloski: 09:31 All right, that’s a quick tip for you from our travel doctor. He says to do this great. We’re there on New Year’s eve and one of the things we had to try was street food and it was probably the best-tasting thing we ever had and this is where it’s gonna get Kinda like weird. But we tried cow heart. It was amazing. It was like, it had some truly gravy on it. And there’s a video of me and this is kind of hilarious. There’s a video of me talking to a local and he’s, and I don’t speak Spanish whatsoever and I’m pretty sure he told me that I was eating cat, but I know he was messing with me because he laughed and walked away. I was like, freaking out at first. Like what? It wasn’t, it was cow heart, but it anyways, it was amazing. It was super delicious.

David Kosloski: 10:14 Can’t say enough about the food. Alpaca and Llama is a must. Please eat it. People like we were on the plane, we were so nervous that if we asked if we could eat Llama, that it would be like frowned upon because it’s like their national, you know, animal. No, it’s. Everyone eats it. It’s delicious. A Guinea pig. What they call cuy is literally it is what it is. You eat a Guinea pig. They fried up, eat it. It’s a delicacy in Peru and it’s. Yeah, I mean it was all right. I was like a super dark meat.

Charlie Thompson: 10:48 Well that’s the best of my research. I mean, I know you’ve been there but based on my research, so it’s a delicacy. Almost like, you know, like whale blubber is delicacy like in Greenland and it’s absolutely horrible.

David Kosloski: 11:00 Yes. I know you. Have you tried whale blubber? I know you went to green. I have, have you really?

Charlie Thompson: 11:04 I have, I did.

David Kosloski: 11:05 Where did, where the hell did you try ways? Because I never, I don’t think that whale blubber.

Charlie Thompson: 11:09 No, no, but we both went to Tuly, Greenland and I was actually with the locals, in their dorm. This is like on a base of about 500 people and they were talking about food and one of the local Greenlandic he was actually an Eskimo. Him and another girl that I had met, they were like, have you ever tried whale blubber? And I was like, no, no, I’ve never tried. Let’s let’s give it a shot. Why not? Because to them, it’s, it’s a delicacy. They love it. And I popped the piece in my mouth and I literally wanted to spit it out and they were like, no, you can’t spit it out. This is like frowned upon if you spit this out. And I ended up swollen it, but it was absolutely disgusting. I’m not sure if Guinea Guinea pig probably sounds better than that. It definitely seems better. That’s crazy. I didn’t know that you tried that. I did. That’s nuts. So when I go to Peru, I’m definitely trying Guinea pig. I’ll try anything. I’ll try anything once, but literally, almost I’ll try anything.

David Kosloski: 12:08 I don’t think there is, has been anything that I’ve like flat out turned down, but it’s possible, you know, there was a, there is something in Africa that I think I turned out, but it was probably because it didn’t get it. I can’t remember exactly what it was. But the next thing that I want to throw it as obviously some ceviche, we talked about that briefly, but ceviche delicious in Peru. Lima, it’s fresh. Go ahead.

Charlie Thompson: 12:27 For those that don’t know what is ceviche.

David Kosloski: 12:30 Yeah. So my understanding is to ceviche is like, now this is my understanding, my interpretation is a fish that is raw, so it’s like almost like Sushi, but it’s got like lime and a bunch of other things all over it. Teah. I don’t know, it’s just delicious. It’s like sour. It’s like a sour process, a product. It’s, I don’t know how to explain it. I mean this, that’s all I got.

Charlie Thompson: 12:56 Well, for those of you that want to look it up on Google, it’s saying that it’s a marinated raw fish typically as an appetizer and it’s, garnished with lime.

David Kosloski: 13:06 There you go. That’s where the sour comes from. Mainly, look at what we do without google.

Charlie Thompson: 13:10 Welcome to 2017. It’s beautiful.

David Kosloski: 13:13Do you know all those old DJs back in the day or like podcasts is probably had, well before podcasts they had to like write all this stuff down and we just were just popping up the cell phone and googling it. So outside of that, the other ones I want to mention, our fusion restaurants. This was, this is probably a common thing and I just don’t know about it and I’m not educated in restaurants like I said, but fusion restaurants, in Peru were phenomenal. Like they would find a way to make like Asian food with Peruvian food or whatever and it was delicious. So if you see a place says fusion restaurant, especially in Cusco, off to the next to the square, check it out, eat it. It was the best meal. I had an all of Peru is a, was this random fusion restaurant? I don’t want to name it, but it was, it was amazing. It was in Cusco off the square. A coca tea. Coca tea is delicious. I drank it a lot, a lot, a lot. And a coca plant is actually illegal there. So they mixed like they make breads with a day and it’s really, well I guess the bread, the coca tea bread tasted like a, I would be eating pot because it smelled like marijuana.

Charlie Thompson: 14:22 Hmm.

David Kosloski: 14:23 Yeah. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t smoke pot, but I mean it just, it like smelled like marijuana. I was like, oh, I feel like I’m eating weed right now.

Charlie Thompson: 14:31 Hmm.

David Kosloski: 14:32 Yeah. Just, that’s all. Yeah, for me a cool. Yeah. So. Oh yeah. And the street food for anybody who wanted to know it’s pronounced. It’s beef heart shishkabobs, but it’s like anti, Antichuco as our, our buddy Kevin actually went in and wrote that down for me because he could obviously hear. I didn’t know what I was talking about and the actual terminology. But onto the next.

Charlie Thompson: 14:55 For you. Go to the next. I’m throwing one in there on you. Okay. What is? Because I love history. I love history. One of the reasons I love Peru is the history of it and we’ll get to that maybe in another show, but it’s on the food side. What’s very interesting to me, and I did not know this at all because when you think about potatoes, you think, Ireland. Oh, for those in America you think Idaho, the land of potatoes, but potatoes actually came from Peru and I looked this up because I couldn’t believe it when I read it. But Peru originated when the Spanish conquistadors. Where’s the Peru originally the potatoes, but Spanish conquistadors came to Peru. They planted the potato there. It ended up flourishing and they stay, ended up being one of the biggest trades back to Europe was the potato and they realize they realize potato patato. They realized that this potato was so easy to grow in such a great source of food that it just exploded from there. But yes, not Idaho, not Ireland. I know Ireland had the great famine, but it was actually Peru

David Kosloski: 16:06 Does. This is like maybe a random. Coca-Cola has nothing to do with McDonald’s, does it?

Charlie Thompson: 16:12 No, not at all. Nothing, right. Well, I mean they’re not the same company but they work together.

David Kosloski: 16:18 So the, so they work together. So ironically, two things from Peru come out of McDonald’s because hear me out, hear me out. There’s a connection. Your potato, potato, and Coca-Cola is the only company in the United States as far as I know, who still imports coca leaves because they got grandfathered in back in the day because it’s one of the main elements that they use in Coca-Cola now than they used to use cocaine and Coca-Cola. That’s not legal obviously, but they do use the coca leaf if I’m not mistaken. I looked it up after I got back from Peru because it’s the only company that’s allowed to import coca leaf.

Charlie Thompson: 16:55 Now there’s. And there’s no like, illegal substance part of it.

David Kosloski: 16:58 No, I think. I think making cocaine.

Charlie Thompson: 17:00 I’m not, you’re not, you’re not an expert on that.

David Kosloski: 17:05 Welcome to our show. We’re going to teach you how to make cocaine today. Now I don’t know how it works,

Charlie Thompson: 17:09 whether you’re joking, FBI, it’s a joke.

David Kosloski: 17:11 I think it’s like ground up maybe potentially like lay it out and dry, put chemicals in it. I don’t really know,

Charlie Thompson: 17:17  Okay. So like the cocoa tea or the coca tea?

David Kosloski: 17:21 Yeah, it does. It didn’t really it. There’s caffeine in and I think too, and it does make you more alert, but I didn’t experience any. I’ve never tried cocaine, but I’ve never experienced any cocaine-related symptoms. I don’t think. I wasn’t trying to clean the apartment. How about that? Or the hotel? I think that’s, I just correlate like somebody, that cocaine, they want to clean. There you go. Alright. Moving on. Number three, and that is as we all know, we know about Machu Picchu, but number three is the Inca Trail. Now age. So this is, this is something that there’s like a misconception. Okay. Everyone just assumes that to do the Inca Trail you have to be 20 some years old to 40 something that’s false. So the age actually people, families can take their babies on the Inca Trail. Now granted, I personally wouldn’t. That’d be a lot of work, but you can hike backpack the baby. I don’t know, what do they call those things really,

Charlie Thompson: 18:16 You know, I just had a kid and I don’t know,

David Kosloski: 18:21 Like a bonjour baby? I don’t know.

Charlie Thompson: 18:22 Yes, that actually, that sounds very familiar. But I, you know, I carry my baby in my arm.

David Kosloski: 18:29 You’re carrying them through all the whole Inca Trail.

Charlie Thompson: 18:31 No, I would never do that. Okay. All right. But yes. But Bond Jordan or something like that. Sure. I think that’s, that. That looks right in my head.

David Kosloski: 18:38 Yeah. So a good trail you can bring your babies. Teens can go, minors can go. We always on the trailer. It’s like a 12-year-old. I think that was hiking with his parents. Super cool to see, him and his sister as well. In fact, that kid beat us every single day and if there’s an Inca Trail is not an easy track. All right then it’s definitely something that takes them a little bit of training, but it’s worth it. And I’m going to give you some tips as to, as to what to do to make it worth it. To make it easier for you, but I’m telling you right now that this kid whooped our butts.

Charlie Thompson: 19:11 Well, think about this David, right? Everybody talks about renewable energy or clean energy if they if we could harness the energy that the children have

David Kosloski: 19:21 Where is this going, man?

Charlie Thompson: 19:22 I’m just saying if it’s unbelievable, the amount of energy that, you know, let’s say five years old to 12-year-olds have. I mean they can. It’s like the energizer bunny. They just keep going and going and going. I’m just saying if we could take just a little bit of that store to the battery, we could power the whole world probably.

David Kosloski: 19:38 Yeah. I’m just saying, man, I’m just gonna come up with something crazy, but I can’t. I’m just saying about tacos every weekend and we could just turn it into a million dollars. The next one is saying that’s why you got beat is a guide. So this is something that I think is a misconception too, is everybody seems to think that you can do the Inca Trail by yourselves. Now, something that I wanted to do, I told Kevin, I was like, I really want to do the Inca Trail, just us just, you know, that’s, you can guide us. You’re an outdoorsy man, you got a beard and you’re bald. No first thing he said to me was a, yeah bro, so I’m pretty good without doors, but I’m not going to go explore the Andes mountains by myself. And thankfully the government has actually made it where you can’t do the Inca Trail without a licensed guide.

David Kosloski: 20:23 I think there’s been a lot of issues. One is honestly is, so these are like ancient footstep or ancient stones that you’re walking on. And so it’s really hard to just like let random people go walking on them. I mean, they could damage them, they could use their metal poles, which we’ll talk about poles and a second and they just want to preserve it and make sure everybody’s kind of doing the right things and it’s a lot safer anyways to go with a guide because everyone cooks and they bring tents and they bring everything else, which is great.

Charlie Thompson: 20:51 And that’s. Yeah, I mean whether that’s right or wrong, whatever, where this is not a political podcast, but you can. I think what I’m, what you’re alluding to David, is that there is a lot of rules and regulations when it comes to the Inca Trail. You can’t just hop on a jet, fly down to Peru and just hop on the Inca Trail. Right, right. I mean even I know we’re probably gonna get to do this, but you need for them, for the altitude, especially for most Americans that don’t live in the mountains, obviously, most Americans don’t or are Europeans. We don’t live high up in the mountains and this is, it’s a very elevated trail that gets up to 14,000 feet. So

David Kosloski: 21:33 Yeah, I mean with the elevation to like you’re actually supposed to suggested, especially if you travel through a lot of the companies, is you’re supposed to be able to show up two days before you travel on the Inca Trail and your doctor can prescribe you a Diamox it’s called, which is a drug and you start taking it two weeks prior

Charlie Thompson: 21:52 Because altitude sickness is real.

David Kosloski: 21:55 It is so real. I got some slight headache so it wasn’t that bad, but coca tea is also something that can help you. According to the locals. I drank. I did have a headache the first day. Yeah. So a medical. So another thing is there are, there is medical staff that’s on the trail. Typically they’ve got like a first aid kit for you. Bathrooms. There are bathrooms along the way.  I mean there, I didn’t use a bathroom that well.

David Kosloski: 22:23 Okay. I did a. How do you, how do you do this? The, it’s camping. We’ll just say that the bathrooms that are used, you got to imagine that there’s 500 people a day that can go in the Inca Trail. I think three to 500 people. That’s what many people using the bathroom and it’s in the middle of nowhere. So cleaning probably isn’t the top priority. So basically I’m trying to say is they’re filthy. Bring TP, putting your bag, be discreet, go somewhere, hide it. Come back. So yeah, it’s like camping, what to leave at home. You know what? We’re going to go ahead and put that in the tips and tricks. Well actually no. So what to leave at home? So a lot. I don’t know about most companies. Charlie and I and Kevin, he’s not here today. We operate a company called Cachi.

David Kosloski: 23:09 We help locals. We met at a local when we were on the trail, the Inca Trail. Loved them. His name is David. Heard his story, heard about some competition issues he’s run into in Peru. We decided, hey, you know what, we want to help this guy want to help the community that he works in and we want to start a company that basically gets tourists from America, Canada, Europe or whatever. Bring them to Peru and sort of help this community and we can’t help all approve and want to help in small doses and then hopefully expand and get bigger. But here nor there, we do two, three tours, three trips. We do the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu, and Sacred Valley for us. When you travel with us on the Inca Trail, I can speak for us and only us leave your tent at home. Leave your sleeping bag at home, leave your sleeping pad at home.

David Kosloski: 23:49 Cooking equipment and food. Now the food one, I’m going to put a slight note on there because my girlfriend brought food and it was all gone by the second day. So if you like to eat a lot of food, bring food.

Charlie Thompson: 24:03 I think it’s more like those that are snacky people. Right?

David Kosloski: 24:06 Right. Sure. I mean I was glad we brought extra food because there is a lot of calories, but you’re working all day. I mean, we don’t hike this every day at home. So.

Charlie Thompson: 24:15 Yeah. So the total trek is over 20 miles, right?

David Kosloski: 24:20 Man, you’re pulling. I’m not, I don’t.

Charlie Thompson: 24:23 Yeah, sure. We might have to do another google search.

David Kosloski: 24:26 Alright. Do it up. So the next one on the list is Machu Picchu. Now, this one’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m going to kind of just let you just use your brain for a minute. It’s a, it’s a, it’s Machu Picchu.

David Kosloski: 24:38 It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s cool to look at and with that too, we’re going to do a little slash because, the guy who is helping us write these notes decided to throw in a six-note and we’re going to go ahead and just say four and five or four and four, excuse me, the fifth one we’re going to bump up is the Nazca lines, which it’s basically images of art on the ground. This was kind of confusing to me. I had, I didn’t see it, but I know it exists. And if you can look up photos online on the Internet, basically it, it’s these images that are of, I don’t know, art, it’s hard to explain. And people are like, oh, aliens did it. I mean these Peruvians did it and yeah, it’s old. It’s ancient. And so that’s something to definitely take a look at. And the last one, the fifth one, we’re going to go over some Peru tips and tricks.

David Kosloski: 25:31 So tip number one. All right. Actually, we’re not gonna break down like that. We’re just gonna. Go ahead and throw them out there. So one is a food we eat that one I’m on the Inca Trail. Poles, so one thing that, I think a lot of people make is they’re like, oh, I’m going to buy, I’m going to buy hiking poles when I get to Peru. That’s a big problem and here’s why. It’s a problem. They get those poles from the rainforest. All right? So just bite your lip. Go buy a pole on Amazon, right? A hiking pole, mind you, you’re going to want hiking poles. So just go buy one. And some people are like, well, I mean there they offer a great deal. I’m helping the local economy. Sure you are, but they’re also killing the rainforest and if you’re wanting to help the local economy and you believe in that mentality, why would you want to kill the rain forest to do it?

David Kosloski: 26:14 I could be wrong. Maybe some people have that, that vision, but I feel like most people who are interested in helping local economies also don’t want to kill the rainforest. So A. Yeah. And the poles aren’t that great anyway. What are you gonna do? Put them in your bag? You can’t do it. They’re made out of wood. The ones in the United States, they go down into a, you know, bag size, you can put them on your bag, in your bag, whatever. Aside from that, the next tip that I want to throw out there is the crime. So people claimed, I read all over people. The cabs you can get your window’s busted in, they’ll steal your stuff. I never run into an issue once. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t crime anywhere, but be vigilant. It’s not bad. It’s probably like New York City and in retrospect, it wasn’t horrible.

David Kosloski: 26:55 I took a cab at like midnight and we got to. Our hotel just fine. Didn’t have any issues, so I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s in a lot of people were seasoned. Travelers are going to be like, why would I ever worry about that? But there’s a lot of people who are new who are wanting to go to Peru there. It’s a new. It’s a foreign country. They don’t speak the language. They’re going to diversify themselves. They’re going to get submerged into an area of the world that they’re not comfortable with. Be Comfortable. These people love you, they want you there. They’re usually. Everyone that we met was super nice, very happy that we were there. And yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about the crime.

Charlie Thompson: 27:28 It’s probably like anywhere else. I mean, you, you protect your valuables, you. I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t take, you know, five grand on the Inca Trail. I mean, there’s no reason for it. Right. So it’s, it’s like anywhere else, you know, protect your stuff and, and don’t worry and you wouldn’t and you don’t really have to worry about it.

David Kosloski: 27:46 Yeah. The other thing that I wanted to bring up in our tip is to hire a porter, half porter. I think they’re called. We have them at Cachi. So here’s why you’re on vacation. And I also have them. David kept preaching to us. He was always like, you’re on vacation be on vacation. Here I am with like a 38-pound pack with film gear, climbing the Inca Trail, miserable. If there’s anything that I would do differently, I hire someone to carry my stuff. It’s employing someone else, which is great. And here’s the thing, to swallow your pride. I get it, you’re strong, you’re buff, your manly man. You want to carry your own equipment, you do CrossFit, you do whatever you do, go do it. You’re going to hate yourself if it’s a heavy bag. Here’s why this is important. Okay? So what happens is you end up hiring a porter midway through the first day you go through, you’re like, oh, I don’t need one second day hits crap, now I need one.

David Kosloski: 28:43 And then when you hire that second and that second day, you’re potentially putting these porters overweight, which, which I mean, they have like a weight limit that’s regulated essentially, like, so they don’t kill himself or hurt themselves and they’re going to kill themselves, but they could fall, they could hurt themselves. I mean this is steep declines and if they have a ton of weight on them, they’re top heavy. They could fall right over and it could really hurt them. And by you purchasing that half porter a day or two later, you could potentially put somebody else in danger. I just stomach my pride, pay for it ahead of time and be done with it. It really makes a big difference even if they’re carrying your sleeping bag, sleeping pad. It’s, it’s a, it’s a big difference.  I think those are all the tips and tricks

Charlie Thompson: 29:23 I’ve got. But real quick though, the proper name for a porter is and explain why.

David Kosloski: 29:29 So there’s a debate right now. It’s a big debate. This is frustrating actually because I call them at chasque and Kevin calls him a chasque, right? I call them the chasque. I don’t know. I’m not, I don’t speak Quechua I don’t speak the local language of Peruvians or was previously, but here were there, I want to call out a chasque. He calls it a chasque. I don’t know what the difference is, but basically, if you google up a chasque or chasque, it is essentially a, a messenger back in the Inca times. There are well respected people. What’s great about this is David will not let you call the people carrying your bags, Aka porters. He won’t let you call him porters. And the reason is, is that these are farmers from the local villages that are working with Cachi to be able to spend time, their vacation, if you will to see the Andes to appreciate Pachamama.

David Kosloski: 30:25 That’s new. And for you, isn’t it?

Charlie Thompson: 30:26 It is.

David Kosloski: 30:26 Yeah. So Pachamama, man, let me tell you that. That is a. That was like the big thing they talked about. Anytime they drank alcohol, Coca Cola, you name it, they dump a little bit down on the ground from Pachamama, who I believe is sorta just like Mother Earth. It’s like it’s super spiritual, it’s beautiful. But this guy is so proud of his community. He will not let you call them porters because he feels as if porters are not respected. And the word chasque is a very. Chasque is a very well respected name for someone carrying your equipment. I think it’s, I think it’s amazing just the respect of this guy’s got for these people and it made me appreciate them a lot more, made me appreciate what we’re doing. And Teah, that’s a lot more tips and tricks like that to come as we progress and we kind of think about things. I always probably mentioned this, but I think that sums up our very first podcast episode coming up on 32 minutes when we’re done. Right. So I guess we finished you, Charlie.

Charlie Thompson: 31:30 Man. It’s been just a great time that I, I’ve learned a lot. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m from Tennessee by the way. So y’all was going to come out a lot.

David Kosloski: 31:39 Super, super redneck.

Charlie Thompson: 31:41 I’ve definitely learned a lot and hit us up an email us at [email protected] ask us some questions, what you want to know. The podcast is going to be available at cachilife.com. We’re going also have out on several mediums, so you’ll be able to find. It’s pretty easy just search Peru Travel Podcast, right David?

David Kosloski: 32:05 Darn Tootin.

David Kosloski: 32:05 My redneck for you, my Tennessean. Alright guys, thanks so much for catching up with us here at the Peru Travel Podcast. Again, I’m David Kosloski.

Charlie Thompson: 32:15 I’m Charlie Thompson

David Kosloski: 32:16 And, we’ll see you soon.