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Published: December 17th 2006
Imagine yourself on a 10-hour overnight bus ride. You're sitting in a fully reclining lazy boy esque seat (which was lovely), you have your iPod tuned to a relaxing Louis Armstrong album, and your bottle of water is an arm's length away. Its about 10 pm, you finished hiking the Inca Trail the previous day and every muscle you've ever known, and even some you weren't aware existed, ache like never before...all you want is a nice quiet ride down to Arequipa, Peru. All seems to be going as planned. But then, out of nowhere the "first class" cabin door swings open, and in walks the bus stewardess. I wonder what she wants? Maybe pass out some more delicious looking bus food, that I without question, passed on a hour earlier. Maybe she wants to turn the lights off so we can get some sleep? Perhaps a movie with English subtitles? Nope! Its bus ride Bingo time. That's right folks, its time to play Bingo...at 12 pm on bus ride. She hands out the cards to the ridiculous people who want to partake in these midnight shenanigans and then disappears through the front of the cabin. The next 45 minutes were something out of a Seinfeld episode. "Beh Uno", "O Siete Nueve"...game after game of Spanish Bingo. I don't even know if anyone won any prizes. I never heard anyone yell "Bingo", and I can only imagine the sort of gifts you win on a bus ride. Probably something of the "thanks, but no thanks" variety. Anyways, all I wanted to do was fall asleep, but to be honest this was much more entertaining. I basically just sat in my seat, listening, fully amused by what was occurring. Craig was passed out in the seat next to me, hopped up on enough Imodium AD to halt the Amazon (I don't even think he knew playing Bingo was an option, perhaps he would have stayed up for it) Eventually the mayhem seized, I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew we arrived in Arequipa. That brings us to this morning. The days leading up to this were filled with our hike of the Inca Trail.
First and foremost, The Inca Trail, ain't for sissies. I don't know at which point in the planning of this trip, that I decided I was in good shape, but man was I sorely mistaking...literally. The past 3+ years I have lived in New York, eating amazing food, and getting exercise only by walking the city, or convincing my lazy friends to play football in the East River Park (Landun out of "spite" would always ruin it for the rest of us). Apparently this whole lack of physical activity will eventually catch-up with you idea, has some merit. The Inca Trail is where this lesson was etched into my conscience.
We met our guide the day before heading to the trail, and went around Cuzco gathering the required items. I tried to pack as little as possible, and thought I had my pack down to a manageable weight. I got in bed the night before and thought about what we were getting ready to experience. We awoke early Tuesday morning to board a 3 hour bus to the origin of the Inca Trail. Our group consisted of three very annoying bible-thumping Americans, three Irishmen, two Italian guys, a couple from Brazil, and an older fella from England (as well as the three of us, obviously). We headed out on our roughly 30 mile hike, with an "easy" 12 mile day one. Everyone had told us that the second day was the toughest, but to be honest, after day one, I was already starting to regret my weekly Coppola's Penne al Vodka (great Italian restaurant in NY about a block from my apt). I went to bed without really eating too much, and woke up to one of the ten porters (the local staff on the trip that ran ahead each day to set-up camp) offering us coca tea at the crack of dawn. Coca tea is just what it sounds like. Tea made from leaves which are the foundation of the recreational drug that earn people years in lovely state-run facilities. Coca tea is awful. Its supposed to help with the altitude, but it tastes like grass clippings. After breakfast, we packed up and headed out on the dreaded day number two. Everything I had heard about day two was accurate. Hiking seven hours with a 40 pound pack, straight uphill to the first pass of 13,000+ feet (the highest point on the trail), was no joke, the toughest physical day of activity I can remember in my 25 years. I hear the views were incredible, but since I was seeing spots when I reached the summit, I'll have to rely on my pictures to confirm. We hiked down for about another hour to our campsite, and I literally fell asleep from exhaustion at the lunch table. Luckily, day two was over at 3:00, and I spent the rest of that day lying in a tent trying to rest my abused body. Day three came, and I woke up feeling better, but we had the longest of the 4 day hike just ahead . We started again that morning, straight uphill. All I can think about is how much more we have to climb before we get to start heading down. We climbed for about an hour to the second pass. When we reached the top, we were literally above the clouds, completely surrounded by the towering Andes Mountains. A few thousand feet below we could see some Incan ruins, which I assumed we would get to see first-hand once we started our descent. Finally some down hill. We passed several other ruins, got some great pics, and I waddled like a 95 year old man down the 3,000+ stone stairs. I'm not sure who taught these Incans how to carve a trail, but hours and hours of uphill followed by thousands of stairs down is really not that funny. Amazingly, the record for the trail is something like 4 hours (there is an annual race), and I would really like to meet this person. After spending two nights in beautiful campsites surrounded by absolutely nothing but mountains, the third site, while still on the side of a cliff with an amazing view, had showers, a dinky little bar, and an indoor eating area. It is the meeting place where all of the hikers end-up before heading to Machu Piccu the next morning. We went to bed and woke up about 4am to start our last leg of the hike. We hiked for about an hour to the Sun Gate overlooking Machu Piccu. Unfortunately we couldn't see anything due to the morning fog, so we continued on for another 30 mins until we reached Machu Piccu.
Machu Piccu is absolutely one of the most incredible sites I have ever seen. It is a city built on a mountain top, thousands of feet up, completely surrounded by the Andes. It is a city that you really have to see to believe. The home of nearly 1,000 Incans during its hey days, the city is very, very big, and almost impossible to grasp the idea of the setting in which it resides. I have seen pictures, and I took tons myself, but I don't know if any will really do it justice. We toured the lost Incan city for about 2 hours and then had several more hours to wander around ourselves. After a brief rain shower and more fog, Craig, Scott and I, hiked back up a little to get the postcard shots, which luckily I completed just before my battery gave out. After spending the day looking around, we took the death row bus ride down from Machu Piccu, to a small village at the base of the mountain, and then boarded a train back to Cuzco. The entire experience, while difficult on the legs and back, was unquestionably worth every painful step.
We spent one more day in Cuzco (yesterday) and then told Scott goodbye (He heads back to LA tomorrow). Craig and I boarded our overnight aforementioned bus, and now find ourselves in some hostel in Arequipa. I'm sitting here waiting for the travel offices to open so we can figure out how to get down to Santiago, Chile to meet the man, the myth, the legend, Marc Centor.
Until then...
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Mrs. Henle
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Grammar Correction
Marc, in your second paragraph in the first line you should have wrote, "First and foremost, the Inca Traile is not for sissies." Please work on perfecting your grammar because hundreds of people are reading this blog and we wouldn't want them to think you are an idiot. Thank You, Mrs. Henle 7th Grade English Teacher Mountain Brooke High School