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Dead Woman´s Pass
Walking in the cloudsWe had a few days to relax and acclimatise in Cusco before we were due to start the Inca Trail. Luckily we didn´t have any real problems with altitude sickness but noticed that we were quickly out of breath when walking up stairs. We explored the Sacsayhuaman ruins, from which there are great views looking over Cusco.
Before we were scheduled to start the Inca Trail I was up half the night with a gastro bug. I felt terrible in the morning and was considering cancelling the trek, but Caleb drugged me up and persuaded me to get onto the bus to Ollantaytambo to see how I felt when I got to the starting point. On the bus I found that another kiwi girl in the group had also been up all night crook and I ended up deciding to do the trek.
The first day of the trek was the so-called ¨easy day¨. We walked for about 12km, from the starting point at about 2600m above sea level. The 2nd day is called the ¨hard day¨, where you walk about 9km from about 3000m to the first and highest pass, ¨Dead Woman´s Pass¨at 4200m and then back down to the
camp at 3700m. (For comparison Mount Cook is approximately 3,750m). The stair work was extremely hard work given my knees are still slightly gammy after being barely able to walk up stairs a couple of years ago, so it felt like quite an achievement to reach that point and the views were spectacular. It was absolutely freezing and I had another rough night (particularly after I was freaked out from the guide telling us ghost stories and being very serious about instructing us not to go to the toilet block at night, which I had to do several times). Day 3 (¨the long day¨) saw us climbing up to 4000m again, and exploring a few Inca sites on the way for our 15km walk. It was also amazing scenery walking along the top of the mountains for most of that day, and then down the thousands of stairs to the final camp site at about 2700m - which left everyone´s legs shaking and knees tired. Finally day 4 began at 3:30am for the 2 hour walk to Machu Picchu. Clouds had not lifted when we reached the sun gate but further down the track we got great views over the
Inca city. Machu Picchu is an awesome site perched on a hill with great views in all directions and llamas/alpacas that randomly walk around the city. It is puzzling to think about how the Incas got those massive big stones into position to build the city. As buses of tourists arrived from the 3 hour train/bus ride from Cusco (apparently MP gets about 2000 visitors a day) I couldn´t help but feel that they´d cheated!!
The chaskis for the group would make breakfast, pack up our tents, run ahead of us with 20kg or so of stuff on their back, set up the tent and make us lunch, pack the lunch stuff away, run ahead of us with the stuff, set up our tents to sleep in and get dinner ready... what really cracked me up was that they would then cheer when we arrived at the tent site!
Overall it was a challenging but satisfying experience with some of the best scenery in the world (but the disgusting toilets, lack of showers, poor sleep on hard ground etc has reminded us exactly why we don´t like camping!!!)
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Well done!
So pleased you didn't have to cancel after all the planning!! :-) Great photos. The 821 steps at Whangarei Heads pale into insignificance now!