Trekking towards the world's greatest view

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Booking tours is never a pleasant experience. Even booking a one day tour is a pain in the arse. So imagine trying to book the most important tour of your trip so far, where you are basically trusting a complete stranger to take you into the wilderness of the Andean mountains for four days - yeah imagine booking THAT tour, on your own, after you've slightly overstayed your welcome in an Irish pub the night before. Ouch, ouch indeed.
Everything really went belly up from the moment Sib said "Oh look, there's an Irish bar, I BET the grub's good in there!" It was our first afternoon in Cusco, and after recovering from our nightbus, we headed into the main square to get something to eat. That's when Paddy O'Flaherty's came into our life. We didn't need much encouragement to venture up the stairs of the "Highest Irish Pub in the World", and our initial motivation to go in (the food) proved to be an excellent one. It was bleedin delish man, and the portions were huuuuuuuge. Just what the doctor ordered. The doctor didn't order a bottle of Corona though, that was me, and as a result we ended up getting very comfy in Paddy's quarters, and didn't really feel the need to leave for the evening (why would we when the food was so good??). SEVERAL hours later, completely out of the blue, a bloke I used to know in Melbourne walked in (a Mayo legend, by the name of Tomas Mc Hale), and sure then there really was no hope of us going home at a respectable hour.
So it's clear to see why the next day I really wasn't in the best place to be booking a feckin Inca Trail. I say Inca Trail, but what I was really looking for was an alternative trek through the Lares Valley, as the traditional Inca Trail has been booked out for months. I woke up at a ridiculously early hour after our night in Mr O'Flaherty's, but, slightly delirious I think, I decided I'd hop to it, and book myself a trek. Yes sir. I think I left the hostel at about 10am, and I didn't return until 6.30PM, EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS later.
To cut a long, pitiful and strenous story short, after going to a million different tour companies (who knows which ones are good and which ones are the bad guys?) I finally picked one that I was happy with, and booked a trek that left the following morning. And I even managed to rent some equipment as well; a little rucksack, thermal sleeping bag, hideous mountain-type trousers (the sort that all those people in the YHA hostels wear EVERYday) and a giant illumious orange all-weather jacket, for the bargain basement price of 20 quid!! And if I was able to survive that day, surely the trek would be a piece of carrot cake.....
I didn't sleep a wink that night, so I was actually relieved when my alarm went the next morning - I hopped in the shower, donned my mountain attire, and waited for my pick up. My guide for the trek was a lovely Peruvian woman called Patricia (yes, I did tell her she had a fine Irish name), and I had already been told that I was going along with just two other people - both of whom were Dutch, and I was initially told they were a married couple, but it turned out they were brother and sister (or is that the same thing in Holland?) - 23 year old Eric and 18 year old Laura. Eric had been travelling in South America for six months, and his sister and their parents had come to visit him for four weeks, which is how they ended up on a trek with me. When I hopped into the truck that first morning I thought all of my Christmases had come at once, and immmediately started planning the opening chapters of my international best selling novel about finding love in the Andes.......but suffice to say that I quickly withdrew that book deal, as it turned out that Mr Dutch 2008 was a nice bloke, but definitely DEFINITELY not my type!
We were driven as far as Calca market, where we were told we should buy some sweets and presents for the children we would meet along the way, and from there it was on to the town of Lares itself. We bathed in hot springs (one man's hot spring is another man's muddy swimming pool, and I'm with the second guy) and had our first meal of the trek. I should explain that our team included our guide Patricia, a chef, his helper, a horseman (who was half-man, half mountain goat), and a few horses to carry our equipment. The food was obscenely plentiful, so much so that by day three I don't think I was even capable of getting hungry any more! So after our first (three course) lunch, it was finally time to start walking. Off we set, up through the moutains, with the horseman leading the way (although the horses were way ahead of us at that stage).
Our first hour or so wasn't over difficult terrain, but the altitude certainly does make it all more strenous, and you are out of breath much quicker than you would be at normal levels. We passed loads of llamas and met our first groups of local children (who put our sweet supplies to the test) and after less than three hours we were almost at our camp for the night. As we got closer the mist coming down from the moutains got denser and denser, and by the time we reached our tents the entire mountainside was shrowded. Our location for the night was stunning; just our two tents, plus the cooking tent, absolutely in the middle of nowhere. There was just one little stone cottage nearby and a few children running around.
Inside our cooking tent there was hot drinks and popcorn awaiting - such bliss! After dinner there wasn't much to do other than head to bed (I was sharing my tent with Patricia), which wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. Why are tents so small? And if this is in fact FLEECE lining my sleeping bag, why oh why am I so cold? I even managed to go one better on the Bolivia-Layers stake - my giant orange jacket was added to my bedroom attire, but to no avail! So I lay with my bones chattering for the night, while Patricia (with her TWO sleeping bags, the feckin pro) snored blissfully beside me.
We were awoken the next morning at 6am, with a knock on the tent, and an hand proffering a steaming cup of hot coca tea. These people really know how to treat you when you are 4,200 metres above sea level in the Andes mountains. After brekkie we met more children, who at that stage were absolutely breaking my heart. To think of them living in these harsh condition with no modern amenities, in the freezing cold - one little mite in particular really made me want to start blubbing. He was only about two and a half, and he was caked in dirt and dressed in filthy rags of clothes. We were brought to meet the family who lived in the stone cottage we had camped beside. They gratefully accepted our gifts of coca leaves and showed us into their home; it had a dirt floor, no windows and a thatch roof. They had rudimentary electricity (although all they seemed to use if for was a small radio) with a fire smouldering in one corner, and a pile of llama hides stacked in the other. The couple had just one son, who despite the cold conditions was wearing a pair of open leather sandals - our guide explained that they believed it was better for the children to wear them, because they thought if they wore socks they would not become as resilient, and would pick up more illnesses.
After our fascinating encounter with Andean life, myself, Laura and Patricia set off walking, with Eric on one of the horses because he had a sore knee. We had only been going for about ten minutes when a clatter of kids came thundering across the hills. We were right beside the local school at the time, so I actually thought they were leggin it to their first class - that was until they came to a screechin halt in front of Laura and myself, eyes wide with the promise of sweets. Laura had all of our goodies, and she was completely ambushed when she opened her bag - they know what they are at these kids!
We spent the next three and a half hours doing some very tough uphill walking. The combination of the terrain and the altitude meant that you were out of breath every few minutes, and regular breaks were essential. We were making our way to the highest pass of our trek (which I think was about 4,500 metres above sea level), and Patirica pointed it out in the mountains ahead of us - I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not, cos for most of the time it really didn't feel like we were getting any closer! The scenery was absolutely breaktaking though; we saw farmers with huge herds of llamas, passed through tiny little villages and all the while the river winded through its perfectly carved path in the valley below us. We had been told that we would be having lunch beside a lake, so I was under the impression that once I reached the highest point, I would be greeted by the sight of a glistening pool of water on the other side of the valley. But when I finally got there (after several calf crushing hours) there was no sign of any feckin lake! It turned out it was another half hour away, but the walk at least was downhill.
After a relaxed lunch in a very windy spot, we set off towards our camp for the night. We kept up a very steady pace; Laura had since taken a turn on the horse - bad asthma apparently - so the Dutch contingent were fairly spritely. By the time we were finished for the evening I was fairly knackered (and that old Arequipa injury was giving regular twinges) so I was very happy to reach our camp for the night. This time it was a little less isolated, with one other group and several horses camped beside us. If the first night was Baltic the second night was Polar. Jaysus, I don't think I have ever been so cold. I even had my eyes covered, and my body contracted in hideous spasms for the night. Horrible!
When we got up on the third morning the grass was covered in ice; ice that didn't budge for at least two hours. Day three turned out to be a bit of a blow out, and it was the only element of the trek that I was dissappointed by. We were taken by car down a stretch of proper road, then hoped out and walked the rest of the way (only about an hour and a half) to Ollantaytambo. It is the only living Inca town, and it has been continually inhabited for the last 700 years. It was an interesting place, with the narrowest streets you could imagine, but it wasn't interesting enough to spend our entire afternoon there, which is what we ended up doing. We had to wait around after lunch to get the train to Aguas Calientes, the town that services Machu Picchu, and we didn't end up leaving til about 4pm.
When we finally did get on the train it was such an eye opener to the tourist trap that is Machu Picchu - our carraige was jam packed with middle aged French people, who it seemed has been teleported straight from Charles de Gaulle airport onto that very train. It may, in fact, have been their first time on a train. They took pictures of EVERYTHING. As the carraige trundled along (the journey is only 14km but it takes an hour and a half) local kids ran alongside it, and gleefully caught the boxes of free food that people threw out the window (must to the disgust of the train trolley operators).
I had already been told that I would be staying in a different hostel to Eric and Laura (basically because their parents booked the trek through a big operator in Holland and probably paid a fortune for it), so after leaving them off at their sparkly residence, it was with a familiar feeling of dread that I followed Patricia down the street, with the pavement becoming progressively more cracked as we went...
But slap my thigh and called me shocked, it turned out to be perfect! I had my own little room, with a pipping hot ensuite. Absolute bliss. I slipped under the covers at 9 bells and slept a perfect sleep until dawn. Or a bit before it actually. My wake up call was at 4.45am the next morn, as we wanted to get to Machu Picchu first thing. We had breakfast together in an adjoining hotel - and it turned out to be an amazing buffet of eggs, fruit and pancakes.
I was so excited as we queued for our bus to Machu Picchu, however my glee was slightly misguided as I was under the impression that we would be there in time to see the sunrise, but it turns out the sun gets up before the complex even opens, and all the ruins are covered in mist for the first few hours of the day anyway, so even if you were there you wouldn't be able to see anything!
Patirica took us on a tour of the ruins for about an hour or so, giving us a brief run down of Inca history. Then we bid goodbye to our guide and headed for Wayna Picchu, which is the mountain you climb to get that classic view of the ruins. Despite fussing about getting there on time (there is a limit of 400 people per day who can climb it) when we got to the base Eric and Laura decided they wouldn't climb it because of Eric's knee......don't get me started on that one. So I set off on my own, for what turned out to be the toughest hour of my life! You scale the mountain on a series of steps that are carved directly into the rock...steps that are so steep, so precarious, and at times so dangerous, that I'm sure everyone must have several near death experiences on the way up. As well as the treat of falling into the great abyss, it was an extremely difficult ascent, and I was sweating bucketlaods in no time. On the way up I met Agusto, a tiny little man in his 60s who worked there, and he became my buddy for the morning, giving me words of encouragement (in Spanish) on the way up. It took at least an hour to get close to the top, and from there things got even dodgier. You had to pass through a kind of cave/tunnel, which was so narrow I had to take my backpack off to get through (all that trek food was clearly taking its toll), and then climb up a rickety wooden ladder to emerge at the top. And the top was little more than a series of jagged ledges. I scrambled to a perch at the edge and waited. Waited for the mist to clear. There was an amazing sense of achievement up there, and I was determined that I would not be moved until the view was visible. Even by the time I got there the mist was still very thick (they call this area the Cloud Forest for a bloody good reason), but gradually it began to lift, and every few seconds I couldn't help gasping as the ruins came into view.
So there I was, sitting at the top of the world, having a bit of a moment, when whose head appears only Tomas, the Mayo man! He had been off doing the traditional Inca Trail with a big group while I was doing my trek. After satisfying myself that I had gotten enough out of the view (and taking about a million photos) I headed back down with Tomas and one of his friends. And of course, getting back down was even more of an ordeal than getting up. Several people looked close to tears. By the time we hit level ground the sun was splitting the stones and the entire complex of Machu Picchu was visible, with more people than you can imagine walking through the incredible stone Inca terrraces. We headed to the exit, and took a half hour break in the coffee shop. Then myself and Tomas (clearly looking for more punishment) headed back in and started the climb to the Sun Gate, which is really just another vantage point. The climb this time was much easier; it's just really a long, steep stone pathway, but the sun made sure it was relatively hard work. Yet again though, it was worth it, and we were well and truely rewarded by the view.
We were back out and finished by about 2 o'clock, which gave me an hour before I was due to meet back up with Eric and Laura to get the train back to Cusco.
I am so delighted that I did my trek, and the final day in Machu Picchu was really and truely fantastic. It feels very symbolic as well, as it is definitely the last major thing that I will see or do this year. The end is getting ever closer!
After a bus, a train and a taxi, I got back to Cusco at about 8.30pm, where the two girls were waiting in our (new) hostel. After talking about three thousand words to the minute (four days is a long time to be separated), for about an hour, I hopped into the shower and we were all in Paddy Flaherty's before half 10. Good going. But not as good at this.....I managed to keep going for about 23 and a half hours straight, and partied with the girls, Tomas, and some of the saner members of his tour group til 4am. Machu Picchu 2008 - whooooo hooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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