SkyLodge

I follow a lot of travel sites on Instagram. It is always fun to see incredible, unique, stunning places around the world. Typically, I look at them with wonder, then move on. A couple of months ago, Jess found one and sent it to me. I had the same reaction and then looked closer. Wait, where is that one? When you realize that one of those out-of-this-world opportunities is actually in the realm of possibilities of your travels, you jump at it. Well, when it involves heights, first, you give your trustworthy travel partner who loves adventure and cool opportunities but has a fear of heights the opportunity to think about it. Then when she says yes, you jump at it!

We were picked up by minibus on the afternoon of July 4th and driven back into the Sacred Valley. The scenery is truly awe-inspiring with mountain peaks surrounding valleys of patchwork quilt farm land with sheep, cows and llamas. The valley itself, with the river running through it is quite green, but the surrounding countryside, during this dry season is more tones of yellow and brown.

We stopped on the side of the road at a small office next to the sheer side of a mountain. If you craned your neck back far enough, you could get a sneak peak of our accommodations for the night. 

Yep, look closely. See those capsules? That’s where we climbed to and where we slept for the night. They hang 1,000 feet from the valley floor as a true feat of engineering and ingenuity.

How does one get to the pod? Well, there are a couple of different options. You can hike up or you can climb up. Are we mountain climbers? Absolutely not. Did we choose that option? Absolutely!

After a brief safety talk and harness and helmet fitting, we were off! Most of the climb was sort of like climbing a ladder that was built into the face of the mountain side. The C-shaped metal rods were drilled and secured into the mountain face and provided places for your hands and feet to climb upward. You were clipped into an accompanying metal cable so if you missed a step (which thankfully neither of us did!), you didn’t fall too far. Every six feet or so, you would change your clips to a new section so that you never had too far to fall.

Some parts were incredibly tricky, because of course a rock face isn’t perfectly flat. So, sometimes, it felt more like straddling a boulder looking for rungs on either side. Or there were the times that the rock hung outward a bit and so you were climbing at a bit of an upside down angle and well, that was quite a struggle. Our knees are currently black and blue from hitting the rungs as we ascended, but it was a small price to pay!

At one point, halfway up, there was a “bridge” to cross. I confess that I felt at an advantage here. Growing up in the country with lots of space to play, I was very fortunate that my parents took time to build me a playground. There were two swings, bars, a balance beam, seesaw and a treehouse. Do you know what gets played with the most, even to this day? It is the two ropes tied to trees across a ditch. On this “river over death” you put your feet on the bottom rope and hold on to the higher rope. This bridge halfway up our journey was incredibly similar! Although, it was five hundred feet up a rock cliff, and I was strapped in for safety. But, it was a lovely feeling of home all the same. 

A bus load of people stopped on the road below us and cheered us on from afar. I asked our guides if they paid people to do that. They just grinned. 

Our climb continued upward for a total of about an hour and a half. As we neared our destination, the clouds at the end of the valley began to brighten into pinks and oranges. We arrived into the dining pod just as the sky lit up and the sun bid us farewell behind the distant peaks.

Our two guides doubled as chefs and prepared us a beautiful, four course meal of pumpkin soup, salad, chicken with mashed potatoes and vegetables, and an apple dessert with melted chocolate and cookie crumble. The more amazing part to me was exactly how they got all of this up there. It was either carried in backpacks earlier in the day or in their backpacks as they hiked with us. Incredible! We toasted to our Independence Day with our five fellow companions, also Americans and decided this was the perfect way to celebrate our freedom.

After dark, it was pitch black outside and we needed to make it to our pod. With headlamps on and guidance, we bid our climbing companions goodnight and each headed to our own capsules for the night. It was a bit of a struggle to get there without the sun’s help, but it wasn’t terribly far. Our pod actually had four beds in it and even came with a thermos for tea, wine glasses to finish our bottle from dinner, dominos and a deck of cards. All parts of the pod had curtains which we quickly opened to the sky and out into the valley.

I know what you all want to know about, so I’ll share. What about the bathroom? There is a bathroom! And after some of the questionable places we’ve relieved ourselves along this journey, I must say, this was one was quite nice! A small sink was adjacent to a jug of filtered water, so for the first time on this trip, I was able to brush my teeth with the “sink water”. The toilet had a pot in it. We girls sat on the pot and then dumped it into the sort of urinal in the bathroom, then sprayed everything with disinfectant. For more solid bathroom issues, there were plastic bags that you lined the toilet with, then tied them up and dropped them down the hole in the toilet. Where did these two things go? I don’t really know. It certainly was not all the way down the mountain. There must be some sort of reciprocal just under each pod.

After settling in, we went the the platform just above our pod to watch God’s fireworks. The stars were stunning. While I can’t say the sky was huge like I’ve seen in Utah, because we were inside a valley between two peaks, but the few lights from civilization were far below us and did not deter from our viewing of the stars. We looked for familiar constellations and found none. Research has told us that the northern and southern hemispheres have different stars, but also some overlapping and so depending on seasons, we should be able to spot some of the same constellations, but it may also have to do with the season. Perhaps it was the mountains or the seasons that kept us from finding Orion’s bright belt.

Though we watched carefully through the chilly winds for quite sometime, we never spotted a satellite. (If you have an answer for this, I’d love to hear it!) But we did see a few shooting stars. What is it about shooting stars? Are they just reminiscent of the magic they bring spotting them as a child? Is it a mystical connection with the universe beyond? For me, I am always reminded of the classic story, A Wrinkle in Time, where we learn that in fact, these were stars that were giving up their life fighting evil. In the world we live in, I like imagining those bigger, greater things also fighting our battles alongside us, helping us to make the world better. I do love fireworks, but I must say, this 4th of July light show was one I won’t soon forget.

Our beds were comfortable and warm despite the chilly temperatures. We both slept a bit restlessly, most likely due to our odd location, but thankfully there were no nightmares of falling to our deaths.

We awoke to the light slowly creeping into the valley, with varying colors of sky. We (with some difficulty) made our way back to the dining pod where we were greeted with tea, coffee, orange juice, fruit, eggs, toast, granola and yogurt. Once again, so very impressive, especially in this setting.

We had a little bit of free time before our descent. Jess and I paid the extra money to have their photographer video and photograph us. We haven’t seen the evidence yet, but I believe it was well worth the extra cash! That meant we didn’t have to try to take pictures while climbing and during this free time we had a photo shoot in our pod. Cheesy? Sure. But this opportunity was a once in a lifetime kind of thing so might as well get photographic evidence of it.

The way down was equally as exhilarating as the way up, but so much easier and a lot more fun! After a short climb and a short hike, we made our way to the first of six zip lines that took us down the hill in sort of a switchback set up. The longest was about 600 meters long along the side of the mountain, dangling high above the valley below. The guides were great! They were helpful and encouraging, making it easy and fun. The last zip line ended on a platform on the roof of the small office we had started our journey on.

The SkyLodge was everything I had imagined and more. It was memorable, challenging and truly remarkable. I’m incredibly thankful we came upon this opportunity and that we jumped at it when we could! So, will these two mountain climbers start a new hobby? That’s a major NO. But I’d do the SkyLodge again in a heartbeat!