The Inca Trail !!!!!!!!!!!!
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2008
1
2
8
Trip End
Feb 01, 2008
Machu Picchu,
Peru
Saturday, January 19, 2008
From pouring rain, to excellent food, new friends to make and to seeing a tourist falling from the trail in front of us... this has been a more than wonderful experience!!! Thank God for letting me have it!!!
(dear all - sorry for the typing mistakes or the crazy order of my memories... too little time to write about this wonderfull experience and too many toughts passing through my brain... )
*****
It has been a while since I was planning to do it and asking for advice from all my friends... well... my time had come now :o).
I started it on the 19th of January, with a bus taking me from Cusco, passing to the hostels/hotels of the other people in the group... and taking us to km. 82 where the trail started.
We were 12 people in the group (actually were supposed to be 13, but one of the guys in the group could not continue because he had lost his ISIC card and they did not let him pass...
From this 12, 10 were Brazilians (Uhuuuuu!!! I could speak a lot of portuguese and share memories about Sao Paulo, Rio, and Brazil), me - Romanian and a girl from the United States - Amanda, with whom I shared the tent, the trekking experience, and the pain of the trip :) for the next days.
With us went 2 guides (Joana and Victor) - really really good professionals and people, 10 carriers and the cook (and in the same time coordinator of all the logistics and carriers) - Javier.
Before the trip... a little animal in a cafe
They were carrying up to 28kg on their back (I still don´t know how they managed!! I know training is everything... but it is umbelievable to see men of maximum 1,75 m, thin but muscular, carrying all those stuff with the steep stone stairs that were going up and down...). They were all the time going faster than us, in order to be before us to put the tents for the lunch, cook the lunch,and then wash everything, undo the tents and carry them again until the camping places where we were staying in the night, where they were installing all our tents and cooking dinner... uff... though job!!!
Every morning they were waking us 45 minutes before the breakfast, with a mate of Coca leaf, meant to heat us up, give us energy, and expand the capacity of our lungs, so that we could breath better at those altitudes, that reached 4200 m ...
In the first day I carried with me all my stuff (shit!!! that was hard!!!). We only trekked for about 3 hours, but I had my backpack of about 4-5 kg and the sleeping bag (of about 2-3 kg - but that saved me from the cold nights of the Inca Trail)... so...after just these 3 hours, my clothes were totally wet - both from my sweat and from the rain...
The difficulty of the trail, and the fact that the second and third day were announced as being the most difficult ones (the 2nd day because it had a lot of steep steps to go up and down, even if we were walking only for about 6 hours, and the 3rd day for its lenght, when we were supposed to walk for about 8 hours, up and down, up and down...) made me choose to pay a carrier to carry part of my stuff.
me and amanda
Joined with another girl from the group of Brazilians and put our stuff together in one bigger backpack and we payd 20 soles per day... really good deal... given the fact that I would not probably be able to carry all my stuff in those days, especially because everything I wore in one day was getting soaking wet by the end... and thus it was twice heavier...
I have suffered during the Inca Trail :((((.... I had with me only one pair of long trousers and the rest were shorts / bermudas... I was expecting to have some sun on the trail... but (duh!!!) we are now in the rainy season!! so guess what?!! almost no sun during the inca trail... just rain, rain, rain... and some moments of 'no rain but no sun'... There were moments when I felt so cold that my head started to hurt :((
But I tried my best not to loose my good humour... doing the Inca Trail is such a nice thing and challenging experience, the nature (when we could see it between the clouds and rain) was more than beautifull... the group was a very nice one... food was great!!!!! (I mean it!! it was really good), and I was about to see one of the 7 new wonders of the world :)))).
When the rain was falling without any sign that it wanted to stop, I was singing songs like Rihanna's - Umbrella (hehehe)... wishing to have a huge umbrella to protect us from the rain...
If my boots (made in Romania!!! Uhuuu!!) kept me warm and kept themselves dried the first three days of the trip, in the fourth day they could not resist my 'sabotage' and left my feet soaking wet, almost becoming pickles by the end of the day...
Before the trip... a little animal in a cafe
but it was my fault unfortunately - as I left their upper part opened to give me more freedom to move, I did not think that the water from my poncho (rain coat - more than necessary if you are doing the Inca Trail during the rainy season) will be slipping from my legs straight into my boots (duh!!!)... so... by the end of the trail, my footfingers were already learning how to swim :((...One thing that happened in the last day and made all of us scared was that an Argentinean fell from the trail... Yes... it just fell... he was so in a hurry to surpass us, to get maybe faster to the Machu Picchu, that he had not taken into account that it had rained so much time before... The young bastard (yes, he was a bastard, for being so reckless, not realizing that he could actually die, and for scaring the shit out of us) was also very lucky: there was a lot of vegetation on the exterior part of the trail, so he did not fall in the emptiness.. he could hold on to the dense plants and grass and a friend of his helped him out...
But thing is that he was exactly in front of a friend of ours from the group, Suzana, that panicked totally when she saw him falling... she was already totally scared with getting down on the stones, as the emptiness to our right was just half a meter away... now imagine having somebody falling from the trail exactly in front of you!!... she started to cry convulsively, she could not walk any more... and her entire body was shaking... poor her...
Again now, we could see how valuable a good guide is...
Before the trip... a little animal in a cafe
Victor, that was behind all of us, stayed with her for the rest of the trail in that day, holding her hand, tranquilizing her and walking at the exterior part, letting her walk close to the 'wall'... it helped her a lot... but still... not a very nice experience...One thing that you will be able to notice from the pictures (when I'll be able to upload them) is that the trail had a lot of flowers :)) hehe... and the ones that know me, know about my fixation on taking pictures of flowers... so... gues what... I took a lot of those :)). I was lucky that Amanda had a lot of patience and stayed with me always when I was stopping for the pictures. In a way, I know that every break was a blessing for both of us, as sometime the trek was becoming way to heavy...
I think the two of us made a good team, we complemented each other very well (this is what between us we concluded). I had some things that she needed and she had others that I needed and did not have :).
Well... the arrival at Machu Picchu was a blessing... even if at the beginning it was still raining, in the end, when we actually did the tour, the rain stopped, and even if there was no real sun, the light was beautiful. Machu Picchu is a place that is worth seeing when you have time, with sun if possible... it is incredible and shows a culture that was very much developed from a lot of points of view... its constructed started in the time of the 9th Inca, Pacha Cuteh, that governed between 1437-1470 (hehehe... the only names and dates that I remember from all of the ones that our guides told us) and continued for about 100 years...
Me and Amanda (USA)
once you see the entire structures you can realize why it must have taken so long time...Many people (as far as I heard) cry when they see it, or they can feel its energy... well... I almost got to tears but I held myself strong... and about energy.. hmm... I don't know if it was because we were so tired (we woke up at 3:45 in this last day of the trail), or because I was so wet... or because I was tired of so much rain... but... I did not feel anything 'in the air', except for the respect for such a great civilization...
After the Trail we stayed together in Aguas Calientes, so we could rest and tell stories over a piece of 'Forret Noir' cake and a glass of well deserved wine... that... after a whole afternoon of shopping, eating (I ate alpaca meat - an animal very similar with llama).
But coming back to the trip, I would really like to recommend the agency I used for the trip: Amazin Adventure Peru (address: Av. Collasuyo n. 517, Urb. Miravalle), Contact person: Marisol Hanco - Cel: 9721899 (need to put area codes before), e-mail: marisolic@yahoo.com. I paid for the Inca Trail, with ISIC card, USD 235 (adult price = USD 265), that included all the tickets to enter the Trail, food, train and bus back to Cusco. But the prices are like this only if you make the reserve direct with the agency in Cusco... arranging everything with agencies outside Cusco will cost you more... Prices are probable to grow in the future, as the cost of the entry in Machu Picchu will also grow, now that it is one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World... Nevertheless, it is always a good and challenging experience.
