Sleeping in the sky: the glass pods in Peru’s Sacred Valley
Sleeping in the sky: the glass pods in Peru’s Sacred Valley
Climbing a via ferrata up the Sacred Valley in the Peruvian Andes is only half the fun on this trip. Spending the night suspended 400m above it is the real adventure
Mark Johanson
Tuesday 5 January 2016 01.30 EST
It’s when my “indestructible” stainless steel water bottle launches out of my daypack like a rocket, and smashes on the riverbed below that I realise just how perilous my situation has become.
I’m halfway up a cliff in the Sacred Valley of Peru, about an hour and a half north-west of Cusco, and the only thing stopping me from joining my smashed bottle below is a harness and a clip. I know it’s enough to keep me safely tethered to the wall, but the sight of my water bottle gives me a sudden swirl of vertigo.
In front of me is a sheer rock face decked out with 400 iron rungs, part of a two-hour-long via ferrata climbing route that begins at an unmarked turn-off on Avenida Ferrocarril nine miles west of Urubamba. Via ferrata, Italian for “iron road,” is a climbing style that originated in the Alps that allows everyday climbers to navigate tough routes with the aid of rungs and a steel cable that’s fixed to the rock at strategic intervals.
This particular via ferrata includes what’s known as a “hanging bridge”. It looms up ahead as the latest challenge in what the Indian newlyweds who are climbing just ahead of me have described as an “adult obstacle course”. The hanging bridge is nothing more than two parallel chords – one for feet, the other for hands – and it requires a leap of faith into a vertical position before shimmying over an abyss.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jan/05/skylodge-sacred-valley-peru-andes
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