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Published: September 19th 2007
cold, wet and ridiculous
daft ponchos at the top of Dead Womans PassThe day was here at last! I was going to be hiking to Machu Picchu on the four-day Inca Trail. Machu Picchu has now been awarded the status as one of the "New Seven Wonders Of The World" by worldwide public vote. I personally voted for Stonehenge, which incidentally got nowhere! Admittedly, Stonehenge is somewhat rubbish, but I thought it would be nice for Britain to have something.
Due to erosion of the Inca Trail, only 500 permits are issued each day, and this includes porters and guides (you cannot hike the trail alone now, you have to use the local porters and guides). When I had first enquired in April, permits had sold out as far as mid-August! Our trekking group consisted of 15 people, two guides, two chefs and TWENTY-ONE porters!! At first I was disgusted by the number of porters, and thought I had booked some overly-pampered easy tourist hike. This was only partly true. We WERE pampered in an extraordinary manner, but whilst not difficult, the trail wasn't exactly easy either. And after 7 hours of hiking, you are glad of some pampering!
I have so much respect for the porters. They must be superhuman
the Superhuman porters
carrying half their weight at the speed of sound to do what they do. Listen to what these people do each day! Each of them are carrying a 25-kilo load on their backs. While all the tourists are huffing and puffing along the trail with their posh walking boots, walking poles and light daysacks, the porters are RUNNING past you with their 25-kilo load. And only wearing skimpy-strap sandals! By the time you reach the campsite late afternoon, all our individual sleeping tents are set up, along with a large kitchen tent and our "dining" tent. We change into warm, clean clothes and the porters bring us a bowl of hot water to soak our feet in. Then we head to the dining tent for hot tea/coffee, biscuits and fresh popcorn. A couple of hours later we have an amazing 3-course meal prepared by the chefs. Throughout all this, the porters are outside in the cold. They don´t have their own tents, and sleep huddled together in our dining tent once we have gone to sleep. In the morning at 5:30am, they wake us up with a hot drink, plus soap and another bowl of hot water to wash our faces. Then after a two-course "power breakfast" in the
pampered
soaking my feet after a hard days hiking dining tent, we all set off hiking. The porters pack up all the tents and are soon running past us, to get ahead so they can set up the dining tent for lunch. So they are up before us, they go to bed after us, carry more than us, and have virtually no rest throughout the day. Superhumans! Plus I can appreciate why we had twenty-one of them, when they are carrying our extra luggage, tents, cooking pans, gas bottles, dining table, stools, food etc
The Inca Trail itself is beautiful and rugged, and is a manmade marvel. I had assumed that the trail would be a long dirtpath, but it is 70% paved with chunky rocks and giant stone staircases, dating back over five centuries. This famous section of the "Inca Trail" is only 49 km long, but is part of a much bigger trail system which has a total length of 22,000km!! The Incas are an absolute wonder. As a people they had been around for a number of centuries, and stayed small and localised for much of this time. But over a period of one century (starting 1420 AD), they began an aggressive program of expansion
Steep Steps
70% of the Inca Trail is paved and conquering. At it's peak, the Incan Empire stretched from Colombia in the North, down through Ecuador and Peru, and into Bolivia and Chile. All this was achieved in only one century! The Incas were keen astronomers, and all of their cities had astronomical observatories. They were masters of stonemasonry, building vast temples and cities that clung to the sides of mountains. They built agricultural terraces on impossible hillsides, to guard against erosion. Some of these terraces were for agricultural experimentation, and they developed new strains of lowland crops which could be grown at high altitude. Then along came the Spanish, with their fancy armour and superior weapons, riding strange beasts which the Incas had never seen before (horses). They gave the Incas a sound thrashing, destroyed many of their cities and looted their tombs and temples. The Spanish conquestadors soon had the whole of South America in their grip. This is, of course, the simplified version. But they never found Machu Picchu! Some think that Machu Picchu was the last Inca stronghold, built away from the conquestadors reach.
Back to the trek.... Although only 49km long, it is planned as a four-day trek, because some of the hills
cold weather calls for desperate measures
the silly hats were invaluable at night inside our cold dining tent are steep and unrelenting, and also because some of the stone steps are built for giants, and short-arses such as myself find them tricky. The second day was the hardest, seven hours of walking to reach the top of "Dead Woman´s Pass", at an altitude of 4215m. Unfortunately it rained on us for most of this day, and we had to wear ridiculous and brightly-coloured ponchos to cover our backpacks. The worst part was probably the cold, with driving rain and a chilling wind. It was bloody freezing at the top, but luckily I had good company and good conversation to take my mind off my numb fingers. With seven hours of walking, you cover a lot of topics. After exhausting history, politics and religion, we moved onto a very serious debate which kept us occupied for the next hour. Namely, "Chocolate Digestives - which side is the top?" Steve´s view was that the bare biscuit side is the top, a radical and daring view. Whereas Theresa and I thought the chocolate side was the top. Steve´s argument was that with normal digestives, the side with the McVities logo is the top, and therefore the same side is the top
Machu Picchu
in all it´s majestic glory! for chocolate digestives. My argument was that yes, normally the writing/logo side is the top, but when you add chocolate to a digestive, that side BECOMES the top. Surely, I argued, you put the biscuit into your mouth top-side up, ie. you eat the biscuit chocolate-side up.
"I don't" said Steve, "I eat the biscuit chocolate-side down, so the chocolate touches your tongue"
"You eat it upside down?" I exclaimed
Steve replied "No, I eat it the right way up. The biscuit side is the top, remember?"
My next argument, which I thought would be a clincher, was - if you serve them on a plate, which side up do you place them?" Steve replied "I don't know, I´ve never served them on a plate"
This debate has yet to be fully resolved...
As a group, we made excellent ime on the trail and pushed forward further than our planned schedule each day. As a result we reached Machu Picchu on the afternoon of the third day, instead of the morning of the fourth. This may have been due to our consumption of an Inca Supercrop called Quinoa. This is a type of grain which was
more machu
the upper levels cultivated by the Incas, and contains an incredible amount of protein within it's tiny husk. 20kg of quinoa contains as much protein as a the meat from a whole cow! NASA apparently use Quinoa as part of their food for astronauts. So we had quinoa in our meals some days. One of our power breakfasts was quinoa porridge, a gloopy slop like wallpaper paste, but not bad! So, we arrived at Machu Picchu a day early, and what a breathtaking experience the first view was. You´ve all seen the standard postcard picture, but it´s much bigger than that, covering every hillside with it´s Incan magnificence. We sat on a ledge and watched the sunset. While we were sitting, we heard someone say what should be voted as one of the "seven dumbest comments in the world". An American woman asked her guide "So, is this all Aztec then?" INCAN you stupid woman!!
We came back the next morning for sunset, and had to queue from 5am before the "gates" opened. This was the gates for the lazy people who can´t manage the Inca Trail. There were women selling bread and alpaca hats while we queued, but no-one was buying. I thought there was defintely a niche in the market here. It´s 5am, you´re cold and probably hungry. You´re sick of plain bread for breakfast. If you were selling hot bacon sandwiches, you would make a killing. You could give it a special twist by calling it a "Bacon Picchu" or something. The potential is staggering. 500 people start the trail each day, but up to 2,500 lazy people just visit the site directly. Sell to just a fraction of those people and you could be Peru´s first Bacon Millionaire. Anyway, I digress. Whilst drooling with thoughts of bacon, we made our way back to Machu Picchu. It was surrounded in cloud this time, but this soon cleared, and we wandered around it's vast, mazelike structure. Steve commented that Machu Picchu would make the world's best paintballing venue. It would, but I can't see the Peruvian government agreeing!
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Marty
non-member comment
You would not.....
Believe the discussion you have started around the office - the great chocolate digestive debate, its been raging for some days now. Perhaps we should call the UN.....