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Published: February 2nd 2007
The first steps...
The whole crew starting the trek at KM82NOTES: I am so behind on updating this blog, I know. It´s mainly because the pictures take a while to upload, so make sure to always scroll all the way down to the bottom to see all the pics!
Machu Picchu - Days 1 and 2
On January 17th I woke up at 5:30 so I would be ready to get picked up by a microbus to start our trek through the mountains to Machu Picchu. If you are reading this, then you probably know how cheerful I am in the morning and how much I love waking up before the sun rises, especially when there is no coffee waiting. hehe. Little did I know that I would begin to think of 5:30 as "sleeping in."
As we climbed aboard our microbus with about 13 other tourists, a couple guides and several "porters" (more on them later), I was a bit nervous yet excited to find that our group had both English and Spanish speakers. We had been told by several other travelers that they tend to group the hikers by not only language but also by nationality... so I thought we would be with only other Americans
Suckers....
... or smart people who took the train to MP. and maybe some Aussies or Brits. At first I felt sort of segregated because there were only 5 English speakers, divided into groups of 3 and 2, but after a while we all sort of blended together using my broken Spanish and several people´s broken English. More on the group later, but for now let´s talk about the first day...
That microbus took us first to the town of Ollantaytambo on the Urubamba river, about an hour and a half from Cuzco. As we drove through the hills and higher into the mountains, our anticipation rose with the altitude not knowing what lay ahead of us the next four days. We stopped briefly in Ollantaytambo to pick up a cook and several more porters. These guys are AMAZING. The porters are the guys who would carry our supplies (tents, food, packs, etc.) up the mountain. They would do the same trek we did but with over 50 pounds of weight on their backs. We learned later that they earned less than $40 for the whole trip. Most of these men were farmers who did this to earn extra money if a crop didn´t come in as expected, or just
needed to make extra money to feed their families. They would be our heroes for the next 4 days... we wouldn´t have been able to make the trek without them.
I got the feeling that the porters think of tourism like the people in my neighborhood in DC did about gentrification, sort of a love/hate relationship. It provided them with more jobs, but at the same time ruined a lot of the town that they knew by adding such a dramatically different element to the mix. The political signs on the walls were similar to those of a "growth" mayor bragging about bringing jobs to a city, but at the same time ignoring the fact that the increased cost of living would force many people out the city or into more than one job to support their families. Anyway, just a random thought, back to the trek.
Jay and I grabbed a quick breakfast there while our hostess/cook/owner would unknowingly scare us about the trip. She went on and on about how hard the Inca Trail was, how cold it was up there, how much it rained and basically that we were a bit insane to try it
First Incan Ruins of the trek
A small farming village that only housed a couple of families. at all. Didn´t really get us off to a great start. hehe.
After leaving Ollantaytambo, we drove another 2 hours to KM82, where most hikers start on the Inca Trail (Camina Inka) to MP. We drove there on this VERY narrow dirt road passing by homes and farms on the way. I mention this dirt road because SEVERAL times we would come bumper to fender with another VERY LARGE bus or truck and play chicken for a couple minutes before one of the drivers (usually not ours) would back down and back up a while into a field so the other could pass. At this point, I wasn´t worried about the hike, but thought I might not even make it to KM82! I did get a good chuckle at the 7 year old on top of a truck with about 20 other kids that kept flicking us off as his driver backed up. hehe.
Finally, we arrived at KM82 and started out the hike next to the Urubamba river... the river that actually feeds into the Amazon! We start to get acquainted with our guide, named Milu. She was really kick ass, spoke English very well and answered
First Toilet of the Trek
And I had the nerve to complain before! all of our questions no matter how silly they were. Her easy going manner and dry sense of humor really helped us make it through the next couple days.
The hike the first day wasn´t bad at all. It was mostly flat or at a slight incline. Let´s be honest though, I was huffing and puffing! No amount of jogging around the White House can prepare you for hiking through the mountains. Getting used to the altitude was the hardest part. Even though we finally got acclamated in Cuzco, we would continue going higher and higher, making it harder and harder to breathe.
We finally got to camp just as the sun was setting. Even though it is summer here, Peru does not practice Daylight Savings Time, so the sun set around 6 or 7 every night. This was something that didn´t really affect us in Lima or Cuzco, but once we were without electricity, we were at nature´s will. We ate a quick dinner and had no choice but to go to bed: both from exhaustration, preparation for the next day´s hike and for lack of anything else to do.
As you can imagine, I didn´t
Moving on up...
Milu told us a lot about the many plants and herbs we would see along the trek and what they were/are used for. sleep to well the first night... a hard ground, weird noises and a guides´ tale of black bears still going through my head.
On Thursday, January 18th we were awoken at dawn by the sound of a rooster crowing... and crowing.... crowing... and crowing. You know in the movies where it just goes "cockle-doodle-doo" and then shuts up? Yeah, that´s another Hollywood myth. That thing would not shut up! I thought I would lose my mind, but realized I had to wake up shortly afterwards at 6am anyway to begin the second day´s trek.
We would start hiking at 7am and go almost entirely uphill for 5 hours, followed by 1.5 hours downhill before reaching our campsite for lunch.
This was probably the hardest physical thing I have ever done in my life. The first hour or so was only slightly uphill and I was thinking "sure, I can do this, no problem." HA! I was tricked. We climbed and climbed and climbed. It got to the point where I had to hike for 15 minutes and then break for five. Although usually the 15 minutes was more like 10 and the 5 more like 10 also.
hehe. I started singing to myself so I wouldn´t think about it. I must have gone through about half of my CD collection.
But it was worth it. When we got up to 4215 meters I felt like an olympian! The surge of adreneline was almost enough to make me keep going! Ok, just kidding, not even close. But getting to the top and completing the hardest part of the journey felt amazing. Felt worth it. Of course, the whole time I was climbing up I kept thinking, "I actually PAID for this?!?!?!?" but once I was at the top I felt great. I even beat the time I told myself it would take by about 7 minutes... which felt like the greatest accomplishment ever at this point.
We took a long break at the top of mountain, took pictures, gazed at the snow peak of Mount Victoria through the clouds and just felt happy to be done.
Then, we started the hike down for another 1.5 hours. I really didn´t think my legs would hold up, but they did and I was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery, the wild animals, my trek-mates and singing quietly
to myself as we approached the flat ground of the camp.
And it was only 2pm! I couldn´t believe how much I accomplished by a time that I sometimes slept until on the weekends. We ate a quick lunch and promptly PASSED OUT in our tents for a couple of hours. We then had tea while dinner was prepared by the cook and then we stayed in the tent talking for like two hours, which was a blast. And once everyone knew that I understood Spanish, I felt way more included in the group. We traded stories and once the sun set, the guides began sharing ghost stories about the trail! Ahh!
I also think the shared experience of climbing all that way together really bonded all of us, no matter what language we spoke. There was a shared sense of accomlishment, like we couldn´t have done it without the encouraging words of our fellow travelers... both those in our group and complete strangers we wouldn´t see again until MP.
Amazing.... I took a Tylenol PM that night and slept like a baby from about 9pm until about 5am waking up to the sound of the porters
Incan Cave
Inside this cave they found the bones of the priest from the nearby village... offering us Coca tea in our tents...
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