Warning: very longwinded tail of our Inca Trail hike ahead…feel free to skim.
Morning of March 19, we were off! And by we were off, I mean it was incredibly early in the morning(5?), and we had to wait a bit since our guide/ride was late. And then we were off! We picked up the other person joining the nine of us from the truck, then went and picked up some gas tanks and other supplies from HQ, and drove about an hour until we stopped for breakfast, and to buy ponchos.
About another 30 minutes drive, and we met our porters. And by met our porters, I mean for the 10 of us, we saw the 20+ people packing all of of gear not in our day bags, and making us feel instantly bad about ourselves for not carrying very much. Well, to be honest, I probably would have felt worse, but was feeling a little bit nauseous on whether or not I could actually do it. Or rather, whether or not I could actually get out of my head enough to just power through. Technically, I know it’s not the most difficult hike, but you add in altitude, and the fact that really the most consecutive walking I had done was the breast cancer 3 day(60 miles total, 20 miles a day for 3 days), and the third day of that took me a bit to get going. Anyway, I can logic myself into thinking of a million horrors, I was just a wee bit nervous on what was to come.
After the first checkpoint(and first stamp in my passport!), we were off. It was shockingly easy…though that is largely because there was very little incline to start. In fact, Claire and I(who can only really walk together at the same pace during flat bits–she’s excellent at uphill;I’m good at downhill), were asked to slow down around hour 2 so we would expend all of our energy on the first day. Fair enough point, but slightly disappointing. We’d stop periodically for everyone to catchup, and after a couple of hours walked into our first lunch campsite. AMAZING. It was just starting to rain, and we see all these tents up. We had our very own dining tent complete with cloth, full silverware, etc. Way more luxurious than anything we had on Bob(sorry Bob/Danny/Dave). We started the meal with garlic bread, and moved on a couple of course. AMAZING. We had to hang around the campsite for a couple of hours to give them a chance to pack up,and get a head start to setup for dinner(since it was just a short day).
That afternoon, we did see a set of ruins along our walk, and had some absolutely gorgeous views! Little did we know, we wouldn’t see a lot of sunlight again until our last day walking around. 🙂 When we arrived at the campsite in a massive clump, our porter team was there to greet us with a loud round of applause(slightly embarrassing given the short distance and how much they carried), and fresh water to wash ourselves. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing card games, and getting ready for another excellent multi-course meal at dinner. Seriously never ate so good when we did the camping/cooking ourselves before this. Sleeping was fine, they were different tents than what we were used to, but aside from a different sleeping pad and tent, everything went relatively the same as other camping experiences.
Day 2 was Rachael’s birthday. We surprised her in the morning with a few trinkets at the breakfast table before setting out for what’s supposed to be the most difficult hike portion. Mostly because the majority of the day is focused on gaining 1,400 meters to a whopping height of 4215 meters above sea level. Let me tell you, the air gets thin….the first portion of the day lulls you into a false sense of security, as it was still possible for us to carry a conversation walking. The original plan was to meet up at varying stops with the whole group and our guides, which we did for the first two spots(some of the breaks longer than others depending on walking speeds). However, by the time our guides caught up with the group at the second stop, it had started to rain quite a bit. He called it quit on the group meet-ups, told us our campsite number and we were off.
And by we were off, I mean Wiz and Claire zoomed ahead. Ryan, Emily, Lotte, and Sarah weren’t far behind, and I took my sweet time ascending to the top. And by sweet time, I mean I probably made it to the top 10 minutes after the second group. Really, I had been doing a lot better than I thought or dreamed I would with the up-hills. Using some mind of matter tricks/tips Claire had given me in a pep talk. Along with the good ole’ “just until that tree” trick, where if I could keep going at that tree, I’d set a new target. I know I know, for the more experienced hikers/walkers reading this, it wouldn’t be a big deal, and my little mind tricks are probably laughable. But here’s the thing. Up until about a year ago, I would call hiking by the “h” word. It was a curse word in my mind, sounds so cruel and pointy. Long nature walk(even if it was 10-14 miles) would have been preferable to me. So doing some more proper hiking like this was a big deal to me, even if it’s the luxury hiking with multiple course meals and other people carrying most of the gear.
Anyway, by the time I reached the top of dead woman’s pass, the fog had rolled in, and i unfortunately couldn’t see any of what’s meant to be gorgeous lookouts, only fog and rain. Instead of resting for a while. I got someone to take my picture and was off!
The last 45 minutes or so of the day was going back down in elevation…not exactly what I wanted to do if it meant more uphill the following day. Though I am pretty good at downhill(mostly because my knees are going to hurt anyway despite the braces or ibuprofen, so why not just go for it?). Anyway, Ryan and I darted ahead a bit. Him because he’s good at stepping on wet rocks, me because I’m not afraid of falling, and had some sweet hike poles to help me catch myself. I think after the third or fourth I’m fine that he heard from me, he wouldn’t even turn around on hearing my slips…that is, until we were almost there, and the slip was followed by a thunk. Ooops? Not hurt, and bouncing back up, we were soon at a fork in the road trying to figure out where our campsite was, since there was no guy with a flag as promised. A couple of minutes later, we strolled into our campsite much to the surprise of the porters. Wiz and Claire had beat us in by 5 minutes, but apparently they hadn’t been expecting us for at least another hour and a half. So instead of the embarrassing applause we had received the day before, it was what I can only assume was cursing in Quetchua followed by a guy running out with the flag for the remaining 6 of our group who wandered in following hour and forty-five minutes.
It was a relatively easy afternoon, we had tea as we waited for lunch, played card games, and chatted with one another about how it really wasn’t as bad as any of us were expecting. If day 2 was the hardest, the next two days should be a cinch, right? That night, after dinner, our awesome chef brought out a delicious orange chocolate cake he had made on the fires to celebrate Rachael’s birthday. Pretty amazing the things they can do carrying all their own equipment!
Next day, we started out in a big clump again with some uphill bits. We stopped about 20 minutes in for some medical issues. Gemma was having a hard time breathing and was able to get some oxygen from the tanks our guides were carrying and Daisy had some massive blisters that Ryan doctored up.
The rest of the morning was another plethora of ups and downs, and stairs…lots of stairs. Well, stairs and ruins. The first hour or so after lunch was probably my favorite portion. It was both ups, and downs, but because of the heavy fog/drizzles, it looked like we were walking along this magical fog swamp. Really cool. Not to mention the hiking bits were easier. 🙂
That afternoon my knees started to fail me a bit more. It was like any endorphins that had been masking the pain failed me all at once, and I was a bit slower going downhill than previously. Whomp whaa, but on the bright side did add to the challenge!
Just before reaching the campsite, there’s a split. Go straight for 30 minutes straight downhill to the camp, or go left for an hour long journey that brings you through ruins and then to the camp. The pains weren’t quite bad enough to make me choose the shorter one, so Sarah and I separated from Wiz and Claire to do the longer route. First set of ruins we camp upon were basically nothing, and Sarah and I both decided to take lots of pictures to make it seem worth it….then five minutes later, the real ruins camp upon us. GORGEOUS! We had seen little peaks of them through the rainclouds at varying portions, but it’s like the sky decided to clear just when we got there. Pretty cool.
That night was also relatively easy, did some stretches, had tea time, quickly followed by another glorious dinner. After dinner, all the porters went around introducing themselves to us, with ages, what they carried, duties, etc. It was a pretty large array of folks ranging from 19 to over 60(my memory is failing at an exact age here), but it was nice to have some small information about these people who were doing so much for us on our hike!
Next morning, we woke up pretty early(3:30), had our tea in bed, and then had to set off for the last check point of the day, and by had to set off for the checkpoint, I mean, we had to wait there until it opened at 5:30. Yay? Nope. While we were among the first to get to the checkpoint, it took us abut an hour and a half to get through sungate and to the actual ruins of Machu Picchu. It was once again foggy, and my knees were in an incredibly amount of pain. I was pretty grateful for my walking poles to lean on, and was slightly disappointed we had no real view from sungate. By the time we got to the ruins, it was already crowded with the tourists that had just arrived via train. That’s right…by 7 AM, it was crowded with people that didn’t even do the hike. 😦 While I was slightly bitter by that pill, it was pretty cool to have RIchard and Shi-pali greeting us as we ended.
We posed for some foggy pictures before getting kicked out since we didn’t have the right entrance ticket. Yup, that’s right, despite doing the hike, the security folks kicked us out and down to the main entrance so we could provided proper documentation…though to be honest, by that point I was so psyched to be at the ruins, and to see a proper toilet at the entrance that it really didn’t matter.
Since this post has already been ridiculous long, I’ll end for now. To be continued….
Belated Gap Year 