Camino de Inca

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Trip Start May 21, 2007 Previous
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  Machu Picchu, Peru
Thursday, August 9, 2007

We did it! We managed to cram a 45 km trek, visits to more Inca Ruins than you can shake a stick at, loads of food, plenty of sweating and oodles of oohing and aahing into 4 days...all in the build up to watch the sun come up across Machu Picchu, one of the new seven wonders of the world. All in all, it was extraordinary.....and here's how it happened.

The night before we were to head off, Marge and I turned up for our pre-trek briefing, one of those things where they get you to sign the usual disclaimers limiting the tour companies liability if you fall of the side of a mountain / are set upon by cannibals / get bored....and then run you through what to expect over the next four days. What we didn't expect was to be told that they'd be picking us up at 4.30 the next morning, and that we'd be looking down the barrel of 8 hours hard hiking a day. After much gulping, and reading of the small print, we realised we were in this deeper than we had imagined, and hardly slept that night as we replayed stories we'd heard from friends who had done the trail before...

'the toughest thing I've ever done'....'we had to stop after each step to take a breath'....'didn't think I could finish it'....

We obviously have some very unfit friends. You know who you are.

Sure enough, at 4.30 the next morning, a tiny little Peruvian guy named Julian appeared at our hostel, and packed us into a bus filled with red-jacketed porters. There were only two other people in our group, so guess how many porters they deemed necessary for the 4 of us? Eight. 8 teeny tiny little Peruvians who were going to carry food, tents and all manner of everything else over the mountains for us for the next 4 days.

After a 2 hour drive (with a stop for a bit of breakfast) we arrived at the starting point, and we all piled out of the van to get our gear in order. Marge and I had decided we'd carry our own backpacks, to which we attached our sleeping mattresses, and I reckon we looked like hardcore trekkers with our fancy rented walking poles in hand. The other two had decided to use a porter to carry their gear, so the porters slung bags of up to 25kg onto their backs and we all prepped themselves for the off.

We walked up to the first checkpoint, had our passports stamped and took off on the start of the trail. Our travelling companions were a thirty something English couple, both history teachers, and between them, they must have accounted for around 35% of the worlds supply of boring. I will insult them more later on, donīt worry. It quickly became obvious that Marge and I had an edge on these guys in terms of average walking speed (theirs being stuck somewhere between 'arthritic' and 'comatose'), and we took off up the trail like our shoes were on fire. The weather was perfect, we were starting off the walk at the bottom of the beautiful sacred valley, and we were walking along chatting and looking at the scenery up to the first stop point in a tiny little community with goats and chickens wandering around. After a bit of a snack (very important to keep the fuel supplies up, don't you know) we all marched on to the first Incan ruins where we stopped for a bit of a lecture from Julian, our guide, and then mooched on for another few hours through beautiful countryside to the first lunch stop.

Now, when I think of putting 'lunch' and 'trekking' in the same sentence, a small sambo and a piece of fruit springs to mind. Maybe a little chocolate to keep the wolf from the door....But boy was I in for a surprise. The porters had scooched on ahead of us and set up a dining tent, complete with table and chairs for us. Basins of warm water with soap and towels sat outside so we could freshen up. Cooled boiled water was ready for us to refill our water bottles. And a round of applause from each of the porters, with high fives all round as we walked into this little Eden....we thought we were sufficiently shell shocked until they produced the food. First off, a little salad plate for each us, followed by freshly made soup (not out of a can...social death), then onto a full meal of chicken, pasta, vegetables....and on and on. Coffee and tea finished things off nicely, and after sitting around digesting for 20 minutes, we took off on the afternoon hike.

We felt fully fuelled and ready, and had been told that the next stop was our campsite for the night, 4 hours away. Well, carried on a wind of boring conversation from the English pair, Marge and I decided to up the tempo.....and arrived in the campsite 2 hours later, 20 minutes ahead of the porters and more than an hour ahead of the Clumps. After much rejoicing and applauding the porters as they appeared (much to their amusement) we relaxed in our tent as our afternoon snack was prepared. Naturally.

A bit of coffee, some popcorn, some crackers, and a bit of conversation with the Clumps and Julian (who turned out to be great craic) gave us just enough time to freshen up some more and get ready for dinner. And yet again, more food then we knew what to do with was produced. I can honestly say that in the four days on the trail we ate better food with more variety than we had in the previous 4 weeks. It was fantastic, and because we were so active I had the perfect excuse for seconds. And thirds.

After our first day, we were all a little nervous about what day 2 was supposed to bring. Apparently, its the toughest with a 2.5 hour hike up to 'Dead Womans Pass' at 4200metres and a 3 hour trek down into the valley before lunch, followed by another 2 hour 'stroll' up another mountain (only 4000 metres this time) and another 2 hour descent.

Over the past two months, we'd been dreading this part of the hike and had been trying to gradually build up a certain level of fitness so we wouldn't die on the 2nd day. But we must have done something right, because Marge and I just took off. We did the first ascent to 4200 meters in less than an hour, overtaking countless other trekkers and again beating the porters to the top. We sat down and waited almost an hour for the other two, drinking in the most amazing views from the top of the mountain, and looking down over the descent and ascent we faced for the rest of the day. We both felt like machines flying up the mountain, and again we took off down the mountain, managing to get down in less than 40 minutes (its supposed to take 3 hours). We arrived into camp, found the porters just setting up and took ourselves off to a little stream where we soaked our feet to cool down.

And what do you think happened that afternoon? We got faster....we managed the next ascent of around 400 meters in 45 minutes, and by the time the day was finished had only walked for around 3hours. We were absolutely fired up, and the two of us were goading each other on to go up the mountain faster and faster. No joke - there were times we were running up the steps on particular stretches - and this is from a guy who used to get out of breath running upstairs.

So not only had we survived the second supposedly toughest day, but we felt like we had beaten it black and blue.

Day three had a bundle of stops at Inca ruins built in, but we still took to timing ourselves up each stretch. The ruins we stopped at were extraordinary, and they really started to get us excited about what lay ahead at Machu Picchu. Its amazing to think that all of the ruins on the trail - and the trail itself - lay hidden in the jungle for almost 400 years until they were discovered one after the other by an American archaeologist, Hiram Bingham, in 1915. Most of the 'ruins' are almost 100% intact, and all of them are perched on outcrops that have fabulous views over the surrounding valleys. Some of them have hundreds of agricultural and ornamental terraces cut into the mountains, others have huge temples built with rocks weighing up to 30 tonnes each, and in all of them we were overwhelmed with the feeling that this was a very smart race of people that built a fabulous system of citadels and fortresses.

After a 5 hour hike in the early part of day 3, we arrived at our camp for the night, and sat around waiting for the 430am start to Machu Picchu the following morning. More food, a side trip to more ruins, and a great laugh with the porters 'tipping ceremony' that night kept us occupied, and we all went to bed early to prepare for the final push in the morning.

The following morning, we were woken up (as always by the porter tapping on the outside of the tent with our morning cup of tea or coffee) at 4.30, and rolled out for a final breakfast before donning our headtorches and marching off in the dark to the final checkpoint, 10 minutes from our camp. It was hilarious to watch all of the Inca Trekkers bobbing along in the dark with their head torches as we walked the 1.5 hours to the Sun Gate where we would get our first view of the big MP. We left the Clumps to their own devices, and arrived just as the light was coming up over Matthew PinchYou - still around 2km away. Yowzers....it was incredible, stretched tightly across the top of a mountain with terraces flowing down the side and sheltered by the Wanay Picchu mountain behind it.

We took off like bullets after soaking up the view for 15 minutes in an effort to be there just as the sun actually hit the site (its surrounded by mountains on all sides, so the sun takes around 30 minutes more to reach it) and passed by loads of people coming the other way, who arrived at MP by bus early in the morning and were walking up to the Sun Gate. And oh, the sweet laundered smell of them....after 3.5 days without a shower and working up quite a sweat, our noses were finely tuned to the wafts of shampoo and soap that each of them gave off.

Once we arrived at the site, we stood there soaking it all up, and taking the customary 200 photos that you tend to do when confronted by something on this scale. I wasn't prepared for how big it all was, and as we stood there I couldn't help but think 'this is Machu f-ing Picchu' and felt incredibly privileged that I had been given the opportunity to see it. It was truly spectacular from a distance, and once we'd gone through the final checkpoint, it got even better again. We had a specialist guide for a few hours on the site, and he talked us through each of the main areas - the Cemetery, Temple of the Sun, Incan Rulers Palace, Sacrificial Altar, Hitching Post of the Sun....the list went on. Each part of the site served a purpose, and the whole thing was extraordinarily detailed and well preserved. We loved it.

And as if we weren't exhausted enough, Marge and I figured we'd like to try our hand at climbing Wanay Picchu, the mountain that rises around 450 meters behind MP. The trouble was, only 400 people a day are allowed up it, so we got in the queue and finally got through as entrants no's 391 and 392. By the time we got through the gate, we realised we only had 1.5 hours until our bus to the train station left....and it's supposed to be a 3 hour round trip up and down the mountain.

So we took off like looney hares, made it to the top in 35 minutes, soaked up the view for 20 minutes (which was incredible....and well worth the effort of the hike) and tore back down in 20 minutes....and guess what... we made our bus! Which in itself was comical, because everyone else on the bus was a day tripper, and looked neatly pressed and washed. We leapt on the bus covered in a lather of sweat, with grime baked into our clothes and faces, and probably a small cloud of insects hovering around us. Quite a few windows were opened in our vicinity.....

By the time we arrived back in Cusco last night our legs had started to stiffen up, and we lay motionless in a clean bed after a LOOONNNG shower and fell asleep looking forward to the 1 hour massages we had booked ourselves into this morning....mmm.

Want some photos? Have a look at http://picasaweb.google.com/richard.mcguinness/TheIncaTrail

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