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Published: November 6th 2006
Crazy train ride
Passing through the rainbow.Well, it is billed as one of the highlights of South America and the Inca Trail has not disappointed at all. After a few days exploring Cuzco and the surrounding area we have braved (or luxuriated our way along) the original Inca Trail to the religious city of Machu Picchu and are now safely back in our hotel with hot water to ease our painful muscles.
To get to the Inca Trail you start at the ancient city of Cuzco which was the capital of the vast Inca empire. The draw of Machu Picchu means that the city is now a major tourist hub but despite the hundreds of hotels, bars and restaurants it is a beautiful city that doesn´t have the look or feel of a place ruined by tourism. The Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Inca palaces at the centre of Cuzco but the square and cathederal that they replaced them with are really beautiful and have a very European feel. It could just be that the local authorities have (joyfully) banned the beeping of car horns in the central square but it has a lovely serene feel to it. We stayed in an area called San Blas a
few minutes off the square, through narrow cobbled streets, banked by tall buildings built on the original Inca foundations.
On the first night here we experienced one of those weird travelling small world coincidences. In a small vegetarian restaurant well away from the main square we got chatting to an English couple sat at the next table. It turned out that they were none other than the parents of Susie George, one of Nosi´s friends from university, who was at our wedding recently. (Susie may be better known to some readers as the girl dressed as a green dragon at our Harry Potter fancy dress party back in March). It was a weird parallel as I had randomly first met Susie herself at a tiny campsite on the outskirts of Prague about 13 years ago. These coincidences are great fun when they occur and much wine was consumed in celebration. The momentum of the night made us decide to push our old folks behaviour to the side for a night and go on a pub crawl.
The competition between bars is quite fierce here and as a result all the bars offer you a free drink to get
Cuzco
One of the churches in the main square you in. Waking up the next morning I lamented the fact that they are so generous with the booze and after consuming every pain killer and hangover relief remedy known to man, vowed to never again consume a Cuba Libre that contains more than 90% rum.
Still, being the generous chap that I am, I decided to treat Nosi and my hangover to another South American football match. I think Nosi´s hangover must have been really bad because it seemed to have muted her enthusiasm completely. I was very excited because 2 years ago Cuzco had won the South American cup sparking the city to declare a 3 day public holiday so I was anticipating a good atmosphere and game. More excited was the guy who owned our hotel, who on hearing we wanted to go and watch the footy vowed to get us tickets and insisted we leave for the ground 1 1/2 hours before the game started. With that level of anticipation disappointment was almost inevitable and when we arrived at the ground 10 minutes later to find more street sellers that fans I began to suspect it may not prove to be one of the holiday
The streets of Cuzco
The Inca foundations of the walls, including the ever popular 12 sided stone! highlights. The next hour was spent with the other 500 people in the 60,000 capacity stadium entertaining ourselves by buying more and more crap from the guys selling sweets and merchandise. Nos was particular good at this reacting with the phrase "Í´m here because of you" whenever Mr Cheapskate raised concerns about the amount of money we were spending on rubbish. The game was duly naff with true Real Diablos standards of football enlivened only by the most incompetant refereeing and a big fight on the pitch, resulting in two players sent off and 8 yellow cards.
Feeling lazy, we then booked ourselves onto an all day tour around the Sacred Valley to look at some of the main Inca sites near to Cuzco. This tour had everything to remind us why we are not spending the whole holiday on a tour. The guide spoke the uniquely Peruvian form of guide´s English which is incomprehensible to the point that everyone listening gained a different version of what she said. The only common theme was that she was determined to shed our "obvious" belief that these sites could only have been constructed by aliens. Even then her claim that it
Victor can't believe it
A disturbing sign of things to come for Nos as the old belly gives its first rumble. took 150 men to lift a stone that you could only conceivably fit 20 around made us think that the alien stiory was more probable. Most of the group were weekend trippers from Lima and kept jumping into every market we passed to buy souveniers you would hope were joke presents but suspected weren´t.
This is a common problem with all the tours and explanations about the Incas. They had no written language and not much in the way of artwork so really very little is known about them. As a result, all claims about how they lived are based upon pure hypothesis and most of the guides don´t even bat an eyelid as they explain to you the most unlikely, impractical reasons for things. In saying that, the ruins in the Sacred Valley were spectacular and because of the amazing Inca stonework are amazingly well preserved. We were able to wander round the extensive ruins pretty freely and despite cursing the Incas for always building towns on top of mountains, they make for amazing views.
Spending the day before setting off on the Inca Trail relaxing around Cuzco and looking around the cathederal we were treated to
one of the biggest storms of have ever seen. The rain lashed down as we cowered under cover, at the edge of the main square. It rained so hard you couldn´t even see the centre of the square. The loudest thunder I have ever heard shook all the buildings and massive cracks of fork lightning struck right down onto the metal flag poles in the square briefly illuminating the whole place. Lightening also hit the San Blas church near our hotel, dramatically knocking the cross from its roof. Not wanted to be outdone by the now abating storm my bowels decided to unleash yet another violent storm of their own. A desperate sprint back to my hotel maintained my dignity, but the resulting cramps and fever made the chances of trekking for the next 4 days look somewhat remote. Even Nos decided that this was beyond the normal realms of man-pooh and put me straight onto antibiotics and forced me to drink litres of the most rancid salty water. (Editor´s note - Gemma - I sympathise, as I now know how it must feel to stay up all night with a new born baby!)
You have to book onto
the Inca Trail about 2 months in advance as only 200 people are allowed to start it a day. We had also got on with the best company in town, SAS travel, and it costs a lot, so to just pull out of it would have been disappointing. It is supposed to be the highlight of South America so to drop out might mean to never come back and do it again. After 5 hours without a toilet trip and with the fever abating Nos managed to persuade me to take the bus ride to start point to see how it went. I needn´t have worried because after the 1st day I felt much better and was able to enjoy the whole trip.
To describe it as a trek overplays the roughing it side of things a little. We did walk 50 kilometers in 4 days and did hike over 3 very high passes but the camping side of things was more like a travelling luxury hotel. For every 200 tourists that do the trek there are 300 porters. These guys are incredible as they rush up the trail at twice or three times the speed of the rest
Temple of the sun
At the ruins of Pisac in the Sacred Valley. of us with tents, stoves and our gear loaded on their backs. By the time we arrived at our campsites all the tents were up, including the kitchen tent and the massive communual tent complete with table and plastic stools. We were immediately given a drink and either a large snack or a 3 course meal followed. The food was some of the best we have had in South America with loads of veggie options. Fresh water to refill our bottles was always provided and we were even bought a cup of tea in our tents in the morning to wake us up. Really every detail was catered for....I guess they could have carried me and we were told stories of tourists for whom they have to do just that.
Of course, every tour is only as good as its group and I think we were very lucky. Our guide was extremely good fun and an ex-Shining Path anti- government fighter to boot. 2 guys from Pakistan and a girl from India were some of our favourite fellow trekkers and what they lacked in fitness and speed they definately made up for in entertainment. One of the blokes had
Singing in the rain
the view from our nice dry vantage point as the storm hit. been struck by lightning the day before whilst the other had picked up some god-awful disease in the jungle (cutaneous leishmaniasis!!). Nos was strangely excited and became his personal physician giving him the daily intravenous injections he had been told to administer himself to prevent death within 8 months. There was also a very amusing Irish couple with Aiden at 6 foot 5 being a one man tourist attraction in Peru. A few Canadians and Americans made up the 15 including a Art, a 65 year old who put us all to shame by leading the trek from start to finish despite various knee operations in the past. It made for a good mix and was spiced up by the aggressive behaviour of one of the 2 female US airforce members on the tour, but even that was good natured.....I think. Lunch and dinner were always entertaining with lively conversation and a few games of cards. Having lights was also welcome so that we weren´t condemned to bed once the sun went down.
Along the way we stopped at mist covered Inca cities, walked through dense cloud forest and reached the top of mountain passes that provided spectacular views
Emergency Doctor
If your bug bite looks like this seek urgent medical attention! across the whole region. The weather was variable and on the day that offered the most spectacular views the whole trail was shrouded in cloud. Whilst this obscured the views it made for a spectacular atmosphere as we walked through the trees and bamboo, hanging heavy with moss and litchen. In many ways it heightened the enjoyment of seeing various ruins breifly appear across the valleys, through small breaks in the cloud.
Of course, the last day felt like the main event as we got up at a remarkably unpainful 4am to make the final push to Machu Picchu. The final climb was pretty steep and Nos tried to kill me by making me twist and pose on the narrowist of ledges with a mere 400 meter drop inches away to my left. Arriving at the Sun Gate above Machu Picchu, we were unfortunately not greeted by sun but a brief glimpse of something through the cloud. As we walked down, the site became marginally more clear but was still largely shrouded in cloud. We did eventually get a few views without cloud but it didn´t last for long and by the time we were walking through the ruins
Dead Womans Pass
The highest pass on the treck named after its apperant resemblance to a woman lying down. I suspect it was named by a man. the rain had started to fall quite heavily. To be fair I think everyone was struggling to stay awake through the tour after the early start and by the end of it when we had some free time to explore everyone was so wet that there was a mass exodus down to the town close by where we were to have lunch. That's not to say the ruins were not amazing, they were, and the jagged forest covered mountains, that surround the site, really do take your breath away, but I think we all agreed that the trek itself was the highlight.
Saying goodbye to the rest of the group we stayed the night at the local town of Agua Calientes which we had booked in advance just in case the weather was bad for Machu Picchu on the 1st day. The town is basically a collection of hotels and restaurants for tourists wanting to go up to Machu Picchu without doing the trek. The town, as the name suggests, does have one other attraction of its own, the hot springs. We wandered up there with a few other people who had stayed the extra day from other treks
Our porters
All of these guys for 15 of us. They are total legends and damned strong. to be greeted by a collection of the most filthy looking pools you could imagine. They looked to have been filled from the river which was a shade of brown that could only have been achieved through one means. If it were not for the fact that we were slightly pissed from the celebratory lunch time drinking, we would never have ventured in. How the locals must laugh as the tourists swill about in the water, that they have polluted whilst feasting and trekking at the top of the mountains, while trying to convince themselves that the pungent aroma really is sulphur. Sulphur it definately was not, and after some stupid German bombed into my pool sending the brown sludge over my head we all decided enough was enough and headed to the bar for a very entertaining evening.
Luckily for us the next day (another 5 am start) saw sunshine break out over Machu Picchu. We were able to climb the mountain beside it (called Huayna Picchu) which was very steep indeed. We got there very early so were 2 of four people up there when we finally made it to the top. It was really great watching
Slumming it!
Our dinner, lunch, breakfast tent that even went up for snack breaks. the clouds clear and to get a clear sunny view of the whole site. The climb down was a bit hairy to say the least but was well worth it. Walking round the ruins in the sun gave the whole place a totally different feel and I guess we got to see how miserable it must have been to live there in the wet and how spectacular in the sun.
By midday the cloud and rain returned so we headed back for one of the most spectacular yet weird train journies I have ever been on. The train was glass roofed so you could see up to all the mountains, waterfalls and rainbows that the train passed by. On top of this natural entertainment the train staff also performed a bizarre dance with a toy llama before the foxy stewardess and, a supposedly, hunky steward performed a fashion show. It was very amusing indeed as the reluctant steward couldn´t have looked more uncomfortable as he unzipped his llama cardigan to reveal his Peru Rail tie, which only encouraged the passangers to cheer all the more. All very peculiar......
Back in Cuzco we have been recuperating with plenty of
Made it!
Art at the top of Dead Woman´s Pass, looking back to where we started from. sleep and a very nice massage, during which I definately did not begin to snore loudly. I have begun to get used to Nos lecturing the local drug dealers, in her best Spanish, on the health consequences of taking cocaine. I was also pleased to see that Charlton had finally won a game but less pleased to see that they are still rooted to the foot of the table....
Hello to all at home
adios
joe and nos
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Jamie
non-member comment
Dead Woman's Pass
For a dead woman her breasts are surprisingly pert! Did the Incas invent the breast implant? Good to see that you're having a wonderful time. Jamie