WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Storm's Adventure in Darkest Peru

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week, Storm shares some fascinating stories from his trip to Peru. From walking trees to watching the sun rise on Machu Picchu he talks about it all. 

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. Hey, it's me, Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Seguirot, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. This week, we're talking about my adventure to darkest Peru, just like Paddington. I was going to say, Darkest Peru. I grew up reading Paddington, and I was like,

I got to go. I went to Peru, and I've hinted at that and talked about it a little bit on several prior episodes, such as telling little stories from my adventure. But finally, we're going to get into the whole detail-oriented explanation and guide. And I'm really excited because Storm always talks about this,

but never gives details. Yeah. Like, he'll casually mention, he's like, oh, yeah, when I went to Peru, and it's like, well, tell us the whole story. Well, if you would like to hear that story, stick around for Off the Trails on the Incan Trail Edition. Oh, that's fun.

That's fun. The first, trail markers. Trail markers. I have a really good one, actually. What is it? So it snowed here on Saturday and Sunday in Hillsdale. And it stayed really cold, so it stuck around until Monday. And this was definitely the best first snow of the year I've experienced because there was a lot

of it, number one. Number two, it stuck around for longer than like a day. and it stayed cold and it really felt like winter and so normally before my 12 o'clock class I sit in the library and I do homework and I was sitting in the library and I was looking out the window and I was like screw homework I'm going for a walk so I dropped off my backpack in like next to the classroom and I went for a nice little 30 minute walk got so cold but it was worth it and I froliced around in the snow and it was it was so fun and I felt like because it was sunny too so I the one week of seasonal depression that I had slipping away really quickly.

I pray that the snow would melt and I did. Storm. I will say today it was 60 degrees and that was also, it was so great today. It was so nice. Look, my trail marker is I took a walk during the snow with my friends and we went down to boondocks and they had a giant like 14 foot tall snowman built. Oh, I saw that snowmongous. And then our mutual friend Liam, friend of the show, ran over and knocked it over.

and I thought that was funny and then we all dumped snow on him. Oh my gosh. Okay, quick, quick, one more thing. This will be my indoor trail marker. So I was in the union with Aubriana and I see Liam and this other guy walk in. Wow, crazy story.

I feel so bad because right now I think I'm forgetting his name, but I think his name is Tad. Yeah. Your friend from home. Yes, Tad. He told me that he listens to every single episode. Shout out Tad. Shout out Tad.

because that made my week. Like, that is one of the nicest compliments I've ever received. Next time Tad's here, we'll get him on the show. Yeah, I asked him in the union. He has an outdoor lawn care and lawn maintenance business. Oh, that's private business he owns. Nice. And he would probably love to come on and talk about some of the experiences.

Well, because when I saw him, I was like, oh my gosh, when do you leave? Do you want to come on the show? And he's like, I leave in two hours. Yeah. So that was kind of sad. But he also, as another fellow Georgia boy who was not a huge fan of the snow. But, you know, snow is everywhere. even in the jungle.

Ooh, good transition. So me and my family went to Peru a few years ago, and I don't know why. My dad has a big thing growing up, I may have said this before, but he's always been more focused on experiences than anything else. So he's like, guys, we're going to be frugal

and then we're going to go a cool place. That's the way to do it. Yeah. So we went to Peru, and there's a lot of things that happened, but in the latter half of our stay, our trails took us to Kusco, The city in kind of out on the edge of the jungle, which is a crazy city.

It's kind of built around seven churches that have tall steeples, that it kind of star shapes out from those. And the whole city's like built ramshackle, like every building was one story, and then they built the second story on top of everything after that. And then third stories and so on. So it's really, really cool and neat looking. That's kind of the launching point to which we drove out to Machu Picchu, which I mentioned last week, is one of the wonders of the world I wanted to visit. And Machu Picchu is really awesome. It's just, you know, big old ruins of an ancient lost Incan city in the jungle. And then they build a train there and you can go there, which is kind of lame.

But, you know, some people are not trailworthy. Or you can do what literally the Incan king did. Because the Incan King did not live in Machu Picchu. He lived in, like probably in Kusco or somewhere around that area. But he would go out to Machu Picchu for like important religious events. And they would carry him on like a chair. that they would carry him on the Incan Trail. Did your family carry you?

No. But they would carry him on the Incan Trail, which is like a four-day journey from Kusko or from like an hour outside of Kusko to the spot. So we go and find the Incan Trailhead, which they have. And the trail winds all the way to Machu Picchu. And there's some parts of it that are still like you can find like cobblestones still. And there's some parts that still have like the stairs built. Wow. So they built a whole road.

for it. But there's a lot of parts that that has crumbled away or been lost or buried. So it's just a, you know, dirt. So when I was younger, I used to be obsessed. And I still really want to go to Machu Picchu, but I'm not quite as obsessed as I once was. And I remember watching this documentary about, like, their irrigation system. Yes. And how high tech it is. Oh, it's insane. They have layers and layers of stuff so that the water will trickle down from one layer of crops into the next layer, so nothing gets wasted. Yep. Yeah. So that was, that was really amazing. And I don't know if you know anything about this, but when I was younger, my parents told me that they're looking to put up glass. So you can only look through the glass at Machu Picchu and you can't actually go interact walk around.

So it's already pretty much almost that way. There's not glass there, but everything's blocked off. Like you go there and they're like, no, do not touch anything. And there's like, like, well, ropes that separate you from all the cool stuff. So you can't climb on any of the ruins. So really, I think Machu Picchu itself is very, very cool. but wasn't even close to being the best thing that we witnessed in those five days of traveling

because on the Incan Trail, well, I'm going to have myself, but on the Incan Trail, there are dozens of other ruins that you can out in the jungle that you can find that there's just no one around and you can climb on them. You can like run around through them.

It's super difficult. But those become more apparent and pop up more in the later days. And the earlier days, you're kind of, like you go through so many biomes, that's the crazy part. Like in four days of just straight hiking all day every day.

we went from like large open pastures where we'd see like natives tending to like giant herds of sheep and mountain goats and stuff and like little villages they still have out there and passing through those areas to like literally hiking up like the side of a cliff to oh there's snow now and we're like at the top of the mountains moving through snow oh now we're in like the deep dense rainforest and we're like and we're moving through stuff um the couple coolest events that pop out were moving through the cloud layer in the span of a day. So we climbed up through, like, through this pass out of a village, which was like the second day, and you pass up to the point where it's the cloud layer,

and you can tell because it gets really heavy and wet. It's not like you go into a giant fog, but you can tell it gets like dense. There's moisture in the air everywhere because it's like, the air has been thinning and then it re-thickens. And there's an area where all the plant life is vibrant and explosive in color on the side of the mountain. And then you get it past that and it's back to being like dry. and that was wild so about how many miles a day were you guys doing i don't know okay

this was a couple years ago enough that we woke up ate breakfast and then we didn't stop till dinner okay um another question you may not know the answer about what elevation do you think like the highest you got to was okay everyone Nicole's the detail oriented person i just think oh cloud and cool colors and things are awesome well you know unless you mentioned it's been a while so I didn't expect you to know the answers, but I was curious. I guess I can look that up. Yeah, pretty high up.

Just do yourself a quick Google and be like, what's the highest elevation of the In-Contrail? I don't know if it's crazy high. It was just cool to be like, oh, look, now we're on Mountain. We're off Mountain. Now we're on Mountain, same day. Did you run into a lot of other people up there

walking the In-Contrail? Only, like, natives and villagers. We didn't run into, like, hardly anyone else, like, walk in the trail. Do you need a permit for the trail, or can anyone go access it? I don't think so. I think anyone can, I think so. Well, there's also like the starting trail

head it is a like peruvian national park kind of yeah so they have so i think you have to like there's an entrance to that area which you have to like go in and they have to be like okay who are you are you not are you just like bringing in trash like yeah yeah so yeah they'll stop you at the front um and i guess i think i already know the answers but if the trail aren't aren't the trails old roads basically okay so they're old roads and where you camped are there like specific places to camp or just camp anywhere you want they're a different spots yeah don't camp right next to a stream but there are different spots. We camped on crazy different places.

We camped like halfway up a mountain overlooking a village on like the first night, which is really cool because you can see the little lights look around down there and the little gas going around their business. And then we camped in between two mountains, which was I think the story I've already told where we woke up and our tents were crusted over with ice. Oh, yeah, you mentioned that. We were in between two mountains and we had just gone down one. And so like there's no sun down there.

So like it got like super duper, duper cold because like the sun will hit the point where it's like about to be there. And it's like only at noon. It really does shine down there. So that was crazy. And what time of year were you guys there? This was in the summer. I think this was in summer. So their summer or our summer?

Wait, good point. Our summer. Our summer. So it was their winter or like late spring? I don't know how that works. Hemispheres are swapped, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for example, when it's December in California, my family in Peru.

It's November in now. Well, no, but my family in Peru will come visit us. And so obviously it's still December there, but that's their summer. That's when it's warm. Yeah. So if... We definitely went over during our summer. During your summer.

So like, there... It wasn't that cold, though. It was kind of warm there. Okay. It may have been the end of their fall or like... Something like that. End of their spring. Or sorry, start their fall end of their spring.

Yeah. You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So we continue moving. and the cloud layer, if the cloud layer wasn't cool enough, you can see, like, distant snow-capped, like, way bigger peaks at certain points. And, like, the trail will go to certain areas where you're just like, oh, I'm just on the side of a cliff, you know, those, like, drop down. But then it's like, you're kind of on still a built road.

So there's, like, little brick pieces beneath you. So it's like, how do they even, I like, how they even build this stuff? It was thousands of years ago, and they were just like, you know what, we're going to throw those together. So in regards to food, I know that the food there is really good because my parents have gone and they've raved about it. never had an alpaca burger. You're doing yourself a disservice. I haven't lived until you've tasted the sweet meat about alpaca. So, but my question is, did you buy local produce there and then

carry it with you on the trail? Or did you bring food from home? What was the food situation? No, so we had, uh, we had one guide with us, um, who was like, wait, actually, now that I think about it, I think you have to have a guide. Yeah, they make you have a guide. Um, and then like, the village people, like, they need employment. And so the guide will like hire them. So you hire the guy and he hires them to like bring you food okay yeah there's like a whole program they have set up it's it's like it's like super easy like it's like you don't have to like this is like not nearly as difficult it's like crazy backpacking is yeah um like it's actually awesome everyone should try to get out there at some point um but the food was great you like you like you sit there

and you eat you little you eat your little alpaca burger and you had that on the trail or in kusko that was in kusko yeah i don't know if they grilled us delicacies on the trail i was and say that sounds like a lot of work um but yeah seriously Try out back if you were get the chance. My mouth's watering just thinking about it. I have to get back to Peru. But yeah. But yeah, it was just incredible sights to behold.

I'd never been through so many biomes. It's such a short time because I expected it to kind of all be jungle. And it was just not. The jungle part was really cool, though. We saw some flowers instead that we had like never, ever seen before. Because we had been near to the Amazon River and like the beginnings of it pretty much prior to going to Kuska. That's where we spent like the first bit of the trip. and there's some crazy Peruvian plants

like we there's there's one that attracts insects and creatures by I think it's called like the corpse flower it smells like a decaying body of some sort of dead animal and the picture a flower that's a few feet across and it looks the petals look like tongues like meat flesh tongues

oh I know what you're talking about I've seen a picture of this and they will attract the things that eat them and then they will poison the person that eats them and then they will eat the thing. So they'll, like, eat whole animals. The plants will eat. The plant will eat, like, animals that come to try to, like, that's crazy.

Yeah, so they're pretty cool. I think it's corpse flour. It could be something else. But, yeah, they're absolutely wild. The other craziest thing, and probably one of the craziest things I'll ever see in my life is the walking trees in Peru. So there are trees that picture,

just your regular old tree, but where the roots start and kind of begin to move away from the main trunk is about four feet or five feet off of the ground. So the tree, the trunk only comes down, like, and then the roots are what go down. So it's like a tree with, like, you know, a dozen spider legs, but then go into the ground. What the tree will do is, to go to areas of sunlight, it will actively decay the roots behind it and grow new roots in front of it. So it will walk, spider walk around the forest.

The roots are also all covered in large thorns that shape upwards. So it's kind of like a terrifying, mulching bulldozer that moves forward. Of course, you can't actively see this with the naked eye, but if you sit, like, if you sit and watch one for a week, you can watch it, like, for a week? I don't know if it's actually that fast. I think it's like they move, like, I don't know, like 30 feet in a month or something. That's insane, though, 30 feet in a month. It's something like that. It's also another Google bull statistic that Storm forgot.

But walking trees exist and they're crazy cool and, like, they kind of look scary. I've never heard of those. When you started describing it, I was thinking of those trees in Florida that I'm forgetting the name of. I don't know. Anyway, they have them in Florida. Yeah. Or those trees and Lord of the Rings called ants. They're not quite as cool as ants.

Have you seen Lord of the Rings? No, I still have to read it. But anyway, yeah, the walking trees with thorns are freaking awesome. And it's just like there's things out in the jungle that are like, what? Everything here wants to kill me. This is awesome. So, okay, in regards to animals, were there any that you had to watch out for? Not particularly.

Like, there's a bunch of jaguars out there, but they stay really, really far away from you. Like, you'll never ever see them. Because they will stay miles away from because they have just such better senses that they will avoid us. Okay. So we didn't see any. We saw tons of alpaca and like llamas and stuff. They're just the most common. Domesticated animal or domesticated.

They'll spit at you and it hurts really bad. It hurts? Oh, they can launch projectile spit like fast enough for it to be feeling you getting hit by like a baseball bat. Oh, I did not know that. And you're like, ah! It's like, it really hurts. Wow. And also like stings because they like chew on this like disgusting grass stuff.

stuff. Yeah. So if it gets in your eyes or you're like, you know, it's or anything, you're going to be in a world of hurt. Were you spit on? No, but I know someone who was. Okay. Yeah.

So, alpaco. The best thing, the best thing therefore is being ground up into ground meat. Oh my gosh. Sure, some people aren't going to like that. Yeah.

They look really funny, though. And they'll, and like the Peruvian women will like knit these like bright colored sweaters for them and like put them all my alpacas and like dress them up like in the traditional Peruvian garb, which is really fun. The culture is really great. I think that I've been. to a good bunch of places in South America, and Peruvian culture, I think, is top, too.

They just, they're like, they love color. They love, like, I don't know, decorating their cities for no reason other than to, like, make it look awesome. Well, my dad and I have these fun multicolored Peruvian hats, like, from Peru, and they're crazy colorful, and they have tassels on the sides, and they look kind of goofy, but they're great for winter. When the Peruvians have been theatrical since the Inkins, because, like, I knew this when I got to the end of the Incan Trail after the hike, and you come up, and you come

up on the on the other side of Machu Picchu than the train does so like if you go if you take the train there there's like a little tiny town you can't even call it a town and then a bus that takes you up like this zigzagging cliff back and forth if you're seen and these bus drivers are they're so skilled they're like they're doing these like you know 30 foot long buses and maneuvering them around literal U-turns every single way and you're like I would I would not be able to drive this no but we came up the within the trail from the from the backside and you go up and You don't see Machu Picchu at all upon approach. You just, like, get there.

And you get there through and look down upon it instead of coming up, which is way better than taking a train and, like, hiking. Oh, there's something up there. But you get to look down across the whole ancient city. And you go through what's called the sun gate. I don't know if you've heard of those. I have heard of it. It's one of the most incredible experiences of my life. So the guide was awesome.

And he timed it so that we camped. Like, he was like, we're going to camp. And then we're going to, like, hike up to the sungate and get there at sunrise. So what that does for you is you walk in and the sungate, they have it set up. I don't know how they figure this out. and whatever BC but they have it set up so that on the sunrise the sun will shine through the gate which is carved out of the mountain and it will hit the whole city and glow it will all glow gold so we got up there went through the sun gate as that happened and macheteu lights up as like

the city of gold it is and and that's just incredible it's very very cool our modern architects could never manage anything like that yeah like that it's just so wild and I did see that in the documentary and isn't it only certain times of the year though I think so. I think we were there. It's not like we happen to be there on the day of. Yeah, I don't think it's one day. I think it's like a season. But obviously like the difference between summer and winter where the sun is, I don't think it would quite work. It was like opposite times of the year. Yeah. But that was super neat. And then you go out into Machu Picchu and you're like, and they're like, don't touch anything. And I hate you. If you touch your thing, smack you with little switches. But, um. Seriously? No. I was going to say. They just, they will just pro lightly ask you to leave. Yeah. But in Spanish.

See. See, see. But the ruins, like, along the trail were nuts. So me and my brothers are all absolute goobers. And we would, like, run and play tag and, like, run through the ruins. And, like, they're constructed so, like, maze-like. Yeah. It's, like, it's so interesting because they really had to build everything out of stone.

And it's almost like each ruin is, like, a whole little town. But it's all one structure that could house, you know, 50 to 70 people. And so there's like little rooms and little things, but it's not like a ton of little buildings. Like you'd expect like a village to be back then. Yeah. They were like, we're going to build this giant stone foundation for everything. And then you can like build your own stuff in each little room. So for that reason, we still have like the skeleton of a lot of those old villages that they're unearthing.

And then like they can figure out exactly like how these people lived, what they're kind of like day-d-day life would look like. Because it was kind of like this little commune. You know, it's so incredible because as you mentioned, like this was such a long time ago. And look at what they were building. I know. And not everyone at that time They had farming figured out They had like trade figured out

Because each of these places Had like little tiny like footpaths From between them and everything They were structured and settled On the king's highway, Lincoln Trail So that they could like watch the king go past Twice a year or whenever he would go to Machu Picchu It was the Mayans who completely disappeared right

Like the Inkins we kind of know what happened to them But the Mayans just like poof were gone Well the Mayans are up in Mexico So they're farther in north I know they're different But I it just popped into my mind that like the Inkins, we do know what happened to them, but the Mayans just kind of went poof. Well, Lincoln people are like still, I mean, they're not Inkins, but their ancestors are still

like the guys that are there. Yeah. Yeah. The Mayans, I don't know. I don't know as much about their history, but I do know that the other wonder of the world that I've been to is the Mayan one, which is, I can tell that story a different time, but Chichenitsa, which was their giant step pyramid that is a literal calendar of a building. It keeps, it has tons of different aspects and all of its sides. But, you know, that's one building. Contra Picchu is a whole giant golden, glowing city. And a trail.

And a trail that you should go. So if you want to do one of the world's greatest hikes, the Incan Trail is unbelievable. And you can hike your way through snow, rainforest, climb mountains, see exotic plants and animals, and then get yourself a nice alpaca bird, patch yourself in the back when all said and done. I'm sold. I'll go right now. I don't need to finish school off. It's their summer right now.

We're approaching their summer right now. So I'm just going to skedaddle over Thanksgiving break and live there. Thanksgiving in Peru. Run away from your problems. Carve the alpaca. That's right. Anyway, thank you so much for showing that story. I'm so glad I've got to hear more of it and that you got to share it.

I'll think of other little details that I'll share other times. Yeah, I'm sure there's more to it. But, no, that was incredible. And now I actually really, really want to go to Peru. It's awesome. Everyone be like, I'm going to go to Europe. No. Go to Peru.

Thank you for listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. We'll see you out there. Happy trails. Olai! Bye guys.