44km, 13 gringos, 17 incredibly fit porters, 4 days of rain, 3 summits and a whole lotta fun!!!

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Well, we survived it!! There were a few times that we thought we might not make it all the way up, but Lauren, Mike, and I and our 10 new friends (4 entertaining Aussies, 3 Irish blokes, 2 British girls who were in love with 2 of the said Irish and one poor American who was the brunt of many jokes) succeeded in climbing the 4 day Inca Trail. What fun, what lack of oxygen and what a great group of people (self-proclaimed BEST group EVER!!!!)...
Day 1: Early wake-up, lots of driving and trying to get the massive sleeping bags and bedrolls into our backpacks. Highlights of this include: Mike carried my sleeping roll, Lauren´s backpack was so horrible that it was being held together with random straps and her bag looked bigger than the porters´... (not really funny, but a little bit amusing, right L?) and starting off on the trail with a great attitude, awesome weather and visions of reaching numerous summits at breakneck speeds. How confident we were!!!
It was only 12km that day - no summits but lots of ruins, ups and downs and even a little bit of rain (that if we hadn´t had our 1 sol ponchos - about 40cents - we would have gotten washed away!)... when we finally made it to camp we were all feeling pretty good - nothing could have got us down, not the ´toilets´ with the holes in the floor and nothing else, not the downpouring rain, and definitely not that we all smelled like we´d rolled in something nasty and then ran around for 4 hours sweating right through our clothes!!!

Day 2: Bright and early were woken up by Ceasar and a hot cup of coca tea - wow, I could get used to that! A super healthy breakfast of liquid porridge and some fruit and bread and on the road again. Ouch. If I had to give you one word to explain day 2 it would be PAIN. and lots of it!!! We were treated to a wonderful surprise of starting the first summit of the trip at about 7:30am up to about 4200m by noon-ish. We started at about 2600m above sea level, and walked over 12km that day. Mike and I pushed each other pretty damn hard (well, I think he just kept me motivated with his ridiculously good looks and boyish charm) and ended up being the first ones in our group up the hill - but just so you don´t think it´s not a big deal - this was a REALLY REALLY big hill!! It was so difficult that many people were using 2 ski poles to propel them upwards, other people took up to an hour or an hour and a half longer than we did, and I was so incredibly exhausted by the top I couldn´t even hold my camera steady to take a picture! While walking the only way I could keep moving was to take one breath in and one breath out for EVERY step!! Even the porters were stopping every few minutes to try and start breathing again - Mike and I were playing leap frog with a group of them they would stop and rest and we´d plod by... and a few minutes later their muscular legs would launch them up the hill from us while we kept methodically placing one foot infront of the other... and then they would stop again and we´d pass again. We did beat them up the hill, but it mayyyy have been that we were carrying 15kg each and they were packing about 25kg... a little bit of an advantage on our parts!!! The lack of oxygen and the steep slope were killing us! When the whole group had made it up we took some victory pictures (little did we know that we had JUST started the difficulties!) and then started down the hill to camp. Now usually the downhill is the easy part, but those crazy Incas sure knew how to build steep, slippery and much too narrow steps that our big waterski feet had more than a little trouble handling. The number of times we almost fell was noooot entertaining and heaven only knows how we made it down in one piece!
Camp that night was unfortunately in a large mud puddle. We had to jump from rock to rock to get down to the eating tent without falling into the sinkholes and our tent stunk like a wet dog (which I maintain that it was Mike who smelled, not me!)

Day 3: Starting to think that the guides and porters enjoy seeing us suffer. Lots. We started out the day AGAIN climbing up a mountain. While this one wasn´t quiiiite as hard, it sure as heck wasn´t easy! We had the pleasure of stopping off to see an old Incan ruin of a messenger house where the letter carriers used to stop on their way between major cities to spend the night or stock up on food...
The rest of the day was spent climbing minor summits (that we all laughed about ´cause they were NOTHING like the others), exploring a few more Incan sites, eating a delicious lunch (dont remember if it was the teriyaki salmon that day or the sweet and sour chicken?) and arriving to find yet another campsite drenched with the rain - we didn´t exactly get lucky with the weather, but when you have amazing gear it´s pretty hard to complain. My new Soloman Gorex boots were lifesavers and the ONLY time my feet got wet was when I stepped in a puddle and the water somehow managed to come up and ovvver my boots - highly recommended footwear, AND they have draw-string laces so my cold fingers never had to do any tying! Oooh, and it gets better, before I left Vancouver I ended up buying 2 pairs of 15$ socks - thinking that I was a sucker (I hear there´s one born every minute... or something like that), but except for the fact that I had some stinky feet by the end of the 4 days I didnt have a single blister and they started out nice and dry each morning... which is more than I can say for Mikey´s crappy cotton socks!! Hurray for SmartWool!!!!

Day 4: Last day was more than difficult enough, if not for the last push up the mountain to the Sun Gate, then it was for the fact that we were woken up at 4am WITHOUT tea! The injustice! No time for leisure as we had to make it through the check-point before the other groups ... it was a race to the Sun Gate! Unfortunately we didnt win - a little too long spent at breakfast and one of the poor Aussie girls rolled her ankle... she was pretty tough and actually made it all the way up with very little complaint - what a trooper!!!
When we made it to the top it was a little bit anti-climactic... clouds were completely covering the ruins and except for the rain we couldn´t see anything! A little bit disappointed we headed down to the ruins and had a retaliatory nap on the lawn after our tour. The Sun Gods saw how upset we were and happily opened the skies for a bright and beautiful day with picture-perfect lighting and lots of llamas. Oh how happy we were and how many GBs of memory we used on our cameras! Success!!!!! I even got to chase a baby llama with my camera and a few gawking tourists in tow - we felt pretty indestructable after the massive trek we went on and no one was taking away our glory of finally making it to MP, especially those slackers who took the train and bus up!!

Well, that was the little trip we took to one of the future 7 man-made Wonders of the World - unfortunately something is seriously wrong with my luck and I STILL can´t put up pictures on this site... so Mike and I leave for our Galapagos Island cruise on Monday (yep, in 2 days) and everyone will have to wait for some serious picture updates until after the 18th when we get back to dry land. For now, think of us strolling the Malecon in Guayaquil, Ecuador, eating deliciously inexpensive seafood (well, Mikey´s eating pork), sharing a beautifully decorated room in a colonial mansion and resting up for our week of hard cruising. Tough life we have! Am I ever happy to have Mike here... for some reason or another I kinda missed him over the last few months! Wonder why?

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Comments

[Sarah]

YOHANSEN...
Hey Callie Callie... I read your last lil'blog about your hike. It sounds absolutely amazing and Mike he's sounds great! I can't wait until you get home b/c well i'm still in Vancouver bored! haha jk, but I want to see your pictures and I also think that Trevor and I should come downtown and party!!!!! Miss you...you should be a writer too by the way...