Inca Trail - Day 2
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2008
1
17
77
Trip End
Mar 22, 2009
Sacred Valley,
Peru
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
First stop was another checkpoint, about half an hour up the trail. From there the trail began its steep climb upwards, so Bobby advised us to all go at our own pace, and he would meet us at the next stop. I seemed to find the walk the easiest out of the group, and was soon sitting down at the next stop with Bobby. From there he said we could keep going up, all the way to the highest pass of the trail - Dead Woman's Pass (4215m).
The trail passed through thick forest, but always the trail was easily identifiable by the solid stone steps. I kept climbing, mainly by myself, up to the next campsite that had Llamas wandering around. The fog was rolling across the mountains by this stage, and the walk across the campsite to the toilets was quite creepy.
Further upwards the trail climbed, getting steeper and steeper. It got harder and harder to breath, but by carefully choosing the easiest way up the stone stairway, I gradually made my way up to the top. I reached Dead Woman's Pass around 10am and quickly rugged up and settled down to wait for the rest of the group.
I didn't have to wait too long as Sonja arrived about 10 mins later. We cheered as each of the group gradually arrived. By 10.50am eight of the group were at the peak of the trail. I'd been told to wait for Bobby, but the others had been told to keep going if it started to rain.
Bridge on the Inca trail
It was just beginning to rain, and my hands had gone pretty numb during the waiting, so we decided to plough on. As soon as we began our descent the rain and wind lashed at our faces and drenched us completely. Torrents of water cascaded down the white granite steps, making the downhill dash even more dangerous. I didn't want to hang around in the rain too long,so hurtled down the steps towards the warm lunch tent as quickly as possible. I was extremely glad to have good hiking boots and a long walking pole to help with the long descent.
We had been told it was only 30mins down to the campsite, but it was actually supposed to be 1.5 hours. I think I made it in about 1 hour, which was lucky because it had dried out a bit on the way down, and not long after we arrived at camp it started pouring again. Bobby arrived soon after us and advised that he had sent the other two from our group back, because they were really struggling with the trek.
After lunch we started off to good weather, but by the time we reached the first Inca site about 30 mins later, it was bucketing down again. We kept on up to the second pass. On the way we had brilliant views back to the Dead Woman's pass and out over beautiful mountain tarns.
Despite the weather we decided to explore one of the Inca sites up near our campsite. Normally there would be a great view of the campsite from the site, but the fog rolled in and I couldn''t see a thing. We were all soaking wet by the time we reached camp and were grateful to change into dry clothes and eat a huge bowl of popcorn. I started teaching some of the porters some origami, and one of them, who was deaf, made me a T-shirt out of a tea bag wrapper.
It was an extremely long day of walking, and we happily snuggled into our sleeping bags in the hope of a good sleep.
