The Inca Trail

My Cusco odyssey has now lasted three weeks, and looks set to last a little longer, as the tiresome roadblocks and strikes have resumed with renewed vigour. Myself and new travel sidekick Raj were due to head off to Puno (on Lake Titicaca) tomorrow but it appears in Cuzco we will remain. I started off saying I didn´t want to leave this town, now it seems I actually can´t. Someone I know attempted the six hour journey to Puno, which due to disruptions ended up taking a marathon 36 hours. No. Thanks.

The main event over the last week or so has been the world famous Inca Trail. Warren and Claudia arrived a couple of days prior so they could acclimatise to the murderous altitude, but tragically Warren was a food-poisoned zombie for the first day or so, and could barely see straight. Luckily he recovered in time for what I had been led to believe from certain friends was going to be a bit of an ordeal. An ordeal with tents, plummeting night-time temperatures, Biblical rain, torturous uphill trudges at 4,000 metres through clouds and, as a result, lungs the size of cashew nuts. Like Glastonbury, without the altitude. Or 125,000 people from Shoreditch all wearing jester´s hats.

I was almost disappointed rather than relieved to discover that it wasn´t anywhere near as punishing as I thought it was going to be. Day one began with pounding rain as we walked, smothered in ponchos, through failrly flat terrain for about five hours, stopping off at a couple of Inca ruins. Our guides, Cesar and Ricardo, were great. Cesar in particular had unquenchable enthusiasm for all things Inca, and gave us great insight into how the worlds largest empire lived until they were demolished in about a day by the Spanish, in 1532 I believe. The story of the Incan rout is depressingly predictable - the Spanish had already discovered Central America before they arrived on the Peruvian coast a few years later. Several things went their way. They had allowed enough time for lots of Renaissance Europe´s diseases to reach South America, thus decimating a population with no prior exposure to such exotic maladies. Moreover, Incan society seems to have been in civil war when the Spanish arrived. Plus, the invaders had gunpowder and horses, and were able to scythe down an army many times bigger than theirs with horrific alacrity. They looted all the gold, awarded themselves the best spots to live out their days as colonial overlords and enslaved a population that has never recovered from such brutal colonization, certainly economically and surely culturally too. The only place the Spanish didnt get their mitts on was Machu Picchu, a citadel in the high jungle to the north of Cuzco, as the Incas were shrewd enough to keep it a secret. It was eventually discovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911 (I think), who cut it out of the undergrowth and allegedly looted all the gold for himself, a suspicion that Cesar certainly has. It is now firmly established as a new wonder of the world, and is an absolute must-see for every South American traveller.

Anyway, back to the trek. We had a good group of people, about 15 of us, mainly Aussies, plus a couple from Chelsea and two Norwegian girls. Each day we had breakfast, lunch and dinner in a marquee, our tents were put up for us, and we had porters carrying some of our stuff. The porters were incredible. They cantered up the mountains, most of them in sandals, laden with baggage, so that they could beat us to the campsite in order to have all the tents up and the food cooked before we arrived. It was chastening to witness. Each day, when someone from the group made it to the campsite, the porters gave them a round of applause. And it wasn´t the ironic slow hand-clap that football fans emplot to take exception to deliberate timewasting. It seemed perfectly genuine. It was impossible not to respond to this with anything but a sheepish grin and a bowed head.

Day two was supposed to be the killer. It involved a five hour walk uphill to ´Dead Woman´s Pass´at 4,200, the highest point in the trek. And then an equivalent walk downhill to the campsite. We passed two shellshocked British women on mules, who had tasted defeat and given up. "Wait until Dead Woman´s Pass" they warned as they passed us. Don´t know what all the fuss was about, a sentiment that pretty much everyone on our group agreed with, and none of us were exactly Olympians.

Day three was the best. We walked through amazing jungle terrain, where the weather changed in seconds and within minutes you could be swamped in fast-moving clouds. There were more Inca ruins along the way too. Day three was also probably the hardest as a lot of it was downhill and taxing on the calves. Plus the cumulative effect of the first two days also took their toll a bit. We were happy to get to the campsite, where there was also a restaurant, a bar and hot showers. Claudia, who wasn´t exactly her usually effervescent self after the day´s trekking, spent an hour or so arguing wearily under the swiftly-darkening sky with some obnoxious Peruvian schoolgirls who tried to jump the shower queue.

Winay Wayna, the day three campsite, is only a two hour walk from Machu Picchu, so on the final day we got to the site by sunrise. The first glimpse of it is from Intipunku (the Sun Gate) which is a tiny gap on the last pass. It was still 45 minutes walk to the site itself, where the classic photos can be taken. It is one of those places, like Uluru, that leaves you awestruck despite the nagging fear that the countless photos you see of it beforehand will numb your appreciation of it. The design of the place is amazing enough, but its location is what staggered me most of all. The whole place is balanced precariously on a razor´s edge, in the cradle of Huayna Picchu mountain which towers overhead. Below is a daunting vertical drop in all directions, and a tentative glance over the precipice reveals the Urubamba river far below, snaking between equally impressive jungle-covered mountains, all at right angles to the ground. I can´t imagine a more dramatic place to build your house. Machu Picchu truly is prime Incan real estate.

After a day spend killing time in the tourist-trap town of Aguas Calientes, which had about as much charm as London Gateway Services, we were delivered back to Cuzco, and had a much-coveted lie in on a proper bed. Warren and Claudia left the next day for the northern beach town of Mancora, but a few days later I was joined by Raj, who, despite a bit of altitude sickness was in fine form. Hopefully he will be allowed to see a bit more of Peru than Cuzco in the coming few weeks...

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