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Published: June 27th 2006
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After a dismal 30 minutes sleep with my toes sliding into the frozen tent canvas, we awoke to an icy but spectacular panorama.
After breakfast and a harrowing trip to the hole in the ground latrine we gathered our belongings and syked ourselves up for the hour and a half trek to reach the top of Dead Womans Pass, a small dip between two impossibly large Mountains on either side of us.
Although difficult with stiff legs and icy toes, the ascent was quite quick and made all the easier for the extended journey on Day 1. The spirit in the group was good and by the time we reached the highest point at 4200 Meters above sea level we felt we could acheive anything.
From Dead Womans Pass we were able to appreciate just how far we had come the previous day and also to realise just how different the landscape and climate can be on either side of a Peruvian Mountain. Ahead of us lay a skyline of many more majestic mountains but this time, they were covered from base to peak in much lusher tropical vegetation.
When you think about scaling mountains you assume
We made it!!
Our shadows at the top of Dead Women´s pass, with our group in the background. that coming down is like living the dream but although some including Claire found this to be the case, I and a few others found the descent a much harder proposition.
Not hard in the "I´m going to need to hold your hand" sense but hard because going down, your bones and muscles and particularly feet are subjected to so much more of a battering. Although in beautiful surroundings, the ever increasing heat and bone jarring steps had me cursing Gravity itself and noticing the first blisters of the trek.
Down at the very bottom of the mountain we had fought so hard to climb yesterday, we stopped for lunch at Pacaymayo and tried to prepare for the next ascent and our second pass of the trek.
On the way up again, we stopped at Runkuraqay another Inca ruin but this time a lookout as opposed to temple and named in recent times for its Fried egg layout. From here, we were able to gaze back at Dead Womans pass and appreciate just how good a military lookout this was.
Our guide insisted that he would tell us why Dead Womans Pass was so called after
Runkuraqay
Freddy explained this was an Inca military look-out as oppose to a temple. we had passed through so whilst we took in the view, Freddy explained that not so long ago the working conditions of the porters who work so hard to help us make the trek were very poor and there were no regulations for the Inca Trail. As a result there were no limits on the numbers of people allowed on the trek which meant many hundreds of porters had to camp out in freezing temperatures in advance of the approaching hoards of tourists.
Inevitably, several porters lost their lives to the elements so nowadays they restrict total numbers to 500 on the trek at any one time including porters in addition to improved pay and weight restrictions for their cargo. The woman part of the name purely comes from the vaque appearance of a womans face when viewing from this lookout although we all agreed you´d need many more coca leaves to appreciate this!
Around an hour after leaving the ruins we reached the peak of our second pass and again looked down upon an even more tropical vista. This time we would be descending into what is referred to as the eyebrow of the Amazon and the
Campsite No. 2
The porters provided us with bowls of hot water to wash our faces and soak our feet at the end of each trek. start of cloud forest.
As the heat increased along with the mosquitoes, we again trudged down the ancient Inca steps and stopped at Sayacmarca, an optional detour up a series of very steep steps and earning the name which means "inaccessible place". At these well preserved ruins it was apparent that the town was left unfinished owing to the onset of malaria and other diseases brought by summer mosquitoes.
Our final descent to camp was a magical descent through dense jungle and the rich smells and light piercing through the bamboo made it an experience we could never forget.
Our camp at Chaquiccocha was packed this time with many more groups but the views of sunset over the snow capped mountains were spectacular.
After another fine dinner with the group we again marvelled at the spectacular show of stars in the night sky before retiring at another embarrassingly early hour. Although I´m certain we´ll encounter many more incredible night sky´s on our journey, this was the first time I have ever been able to see the Milky Way streaming across the sky in a concentrated band of stars and space cloud. without a tripod I couldn´t
do it justice with the camera so this amazing sight will have to stay in our minds.
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