Inca Trails - April 2007

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I was rudely awoken just outside Cusco by a guy on the bus leaning over me, presumably reaching for my bag. A startled, loud, "Wooooah" soon sent him shuffling away to pester someone else.
Cusco is the former political centre of the Inca empire. Although calling it the Inca empire is slightly misleading. "Inca" was solely the name given to the single supreme ruler at any one time, and there were only ever 12 Inca's. The population themselves were the Quechuans and the Quechua language is still widely spoken across Peru.
Like any established city worth its salt, Cusco has its own flag. A rainbow flag. Indeed, very similar to the flag of the Gay community. Too similar in fact for many of the conservative residents who seek to have it re-designed, and now refuse to fly the flag above their houses or shops, in fear of sending out the wrong message. The Incas regarded the rainbow as a gift from God, and until recently it remained a symbol of pride. Now it represents a whole other type of Pride.
The prime reason I came to Cusco was to book my trail to Machu Picchu. The traditional Inca Trail was sold out for the next 3 months, but the alternative routes are just as spectacular. I spent the whole day playing agencies off against other, putting my "Level 2 Negotiation Skills" training to some practical use, and ended up paying a rock bottom $150 for a 4 day bike-hike. To reward my efforts, I lazed about for most of the next day watching England v West Indies in perhaps the only place in Peru that shows cricket - an Indian restaurant that had the live feed from the internet. I became friendly with Samir, the owner, who was expanding the restaurant into a Sports Bar. So in return for some curry and beers, I helped out in the best way I could - which basically meant setting up the pool table and darts boards and putting them through vigorous user-testing. Then to the English Bar to watch Spurs v Arsenal, where I swapped my remaining iPod accessories for a plate of Nachos Grande and a jug of Pisco sour - the local cocktail made from Pisco, the Pervian brandy, mixed with egg-white, lime and bitters. Both Peru and Chile claim to hold the origins of the Pisco grape, though all I know is it's tastily cheap.
5 a.m. Sunday morning, and my alarm goes off to let me know I have 4 days trailing to Machu Picchu ahead of me. At this point, the curries, the spicy nachos, the booze, from the day before all seemed an unnecessary over-indulgence. The first day was the mountain bike part of the bike-hike. We were trucked up to 5,000m altitude and had the rest of the day to let gravity assist our descent of the dirt tracks down to 1,200m.
I got kitted up (safety first, and all that) and was ready in anticipation to get going. Just time enough for our guide to instruct: "Please remember, this is not a race, as there are trucks on the track". All I heard was "Please remember.... race.... the trucks".
The descent was a lot of fun, made more so by the unpredictable nature of the clapped out bikes we were lent to navigate the course.
The second day was the main hike, through the Salkantay pass, following lesser-trampled yet original Inca paths. At one point our path was blocked by rocks, which had fallen from an avalanche 2 days previously. We had to climb and clamber across these, though we were made to cross the rocks in pairs. At the time I thought this was likely to reduce vibrations that could trigger further avalanches, but I later found out it was so that if the rocks did fall and crush us, only 2 tourists would perish - which would probably make a paragraph on page 7 of the papers, instead of front page news.
The third day we pretty much followed the railway line all the way to Aguas Calientes. It was like a (very long) scene from the film Stand By Me, as we ambled along the infrequently used line. We never found the dead body either.
That evening we stayed in the town of Agua Calientes - or Machu Picchu pueblo (Town of Machu Picchu) located beside the Urubamba river in the valley beneath Macchu Picchu. It sounds idyllic, but is a soulless tourist trap with all the trimmings - street sellers hassling you at every turn, $5 bottles of water, women parading baby llamas and alpaca so you can pay to take that authentic Peruvian snap.
The fourth morning we hiked the final 8km climb, with the intention of arriving in Machu Picchu in time for sunrise. The time was not a problem, but the sun was. Daybreak is a better way of describing it, as the sun was clouded throughout that morning. However, being shrouded in clouds made the scene quite mystical.
Machu Picchu is currently vying for its place in the "New 7 Wonders of the World" list. There is a shortlist of 20 candidates, and in the next couple of months the final 7 will be decided (see www.new7wonders.com for full details and the complete list of candidates). The Peruvians are taking this all very seriously, in the same way the Eastern Europeans take Eurovision very seriously - and I'm sure the final list will be similarly politically driven. There are some strange entries. Britain's sole representative is Stonehenge, and whilst this is undoubtably the world's finest Henge, it's no more modern than most of the Ancient Wonders. There are some gimme's, like the Taj Mahal and the Wall in China, but I'd say the rest is up for grabs. I'm not sure how much noise all this is making back home.
After the trek was over I returned to Cusco to allow myself a couple of days of complete R&R - however I've never had much staying power at either R. To keep me occupied, I was tasked with finding 12 replica shirts of the Deportivo Wanka strip. Deportivo Wanka is a local second division football club, based in the city of Huancayo in the Peruvian Andes - the equivalent of Barnsley, maybe. It is formed by the Huanca or Wanka people, who are a historic Quechua people living in and around the Mantaro Valley, and after whom the city of Huancayo is named. Deportive Wanka strips are the most sought after Peruvian shirts worldwide, though I'm sure the majority of these are for British based teams looking for a cult kit, like ourselves. The demand within Peru itself is next to zero. So trying to find a complete squad was like trying to find 12 Barnsley shirts in Winchester. But I was determined not to fail. After speaking to my people on the inside, I was sent to an outer suburb of Cusco, where resided a small sports shop run by a genuine Wanka. He had a few of the shirts on display, and ordered in the rest for next day delivery. Bingo. The guy had a big grin on his face, pointed at the logo and said, "¿Masturbato, si?". Si señor.
I soon discovered that the team is not popular round these parts, as when they were threatened with relegation from the top flight a few years back, they moved their stadium to an almost unplayable altitude in an attempt to exhaust the away teams. It failed and they were relegated. Dirty, cheating Wankas.
Later, I settled down at Samir's curry house to watch the Cricket World Cup Final. The whole tournament had been a bit farcical - too long, badly organised, over-priced ticketting- and it probably got the calamatous final is rightly deserved.
I had taken these days off to decide if I was going to take a second Inca trail to the lesser visited lost Inca city of Choquequirao. This "sister" of the over-trailed Machu Picchu attracts far fewer tourists but is no less impressive. After visiting around a dozen agencies in Cusco, I decided I had enough information to hand to be able to go the 75 km round trail alone and saving on the $250 tour price. I hired an excessively large amount of camping gear, stocked up on tins of tuna and pasta, and even bought a map (OK, so I traced the route on the back of a table mat, but it was a decent replica). I quickly concluded this was the best idea I'd ever had and jumped on the local bus to the junction 5km from the starting town, Cachora. On the bus, we had a lady with a big slab of cooked alpaca in a sling under one arm, a meat cleaver in the other hand, carving up wedges of meat for any takers. As the bus swung round the sharp mountain passes, she'd stumble from left to right, cleaver and all. But no-one else seemed in the slightest concerned, so I went with the flow and took a chunk.
The bus stopped at the junction around dusk, I hopped off, put on my unnecessarily heavy backpack, and set off for Cachora. Unfortunately my map did not have this part of the route marked, and as night fell, I was properly lost, made worse by the fact I was literally walking in a cloud, so my torch was pretty useless beyond 10 feet away. After comng out unscathed the last 2 times, it was third time unlucky and suddenly this was becoming the worst idea I'd ever had. But I did have camping gear on my back, so I looked for the flattest piece of land and pitched up for the night - the flattest piece of land in this particular area was at about 30 degrees from the horizontal, but it meant my feet got planty of bloodflow in preparation for 3 days hard trekking.
In the morning, the clouds had cleared and I could see where I needed to begin the trail. That first day I stormed along the first 30km, covering it in what felt like record pace. That was until a 12 year old local schoolgirl in sandals came bounding past me, mule in tow. She even bore me the indignity of offering to help carry some of my kit. Thanks Heidi, but I'm as stubborn as the mule I refused. The trail was stunning and it once again became the best idea I'd ever had. I set up camp that night a couple of km's short of Choquequirao and visited the ancient Inca city the next morning. After a self-guided tour of the site I hiked back to Cachora in another day and half, stopping only to camp out and nurse the giant blisters I call my feet.
My hiking for this part of the trip was almost done. But I found time to pay a passing visit to Cañon del Cotahuasi. In my last blog entry, whilst in nearby Cañon del Colca, I referred to it as "along with neighbouring Cañon del Cotahuasi, the deepest canyon's in the world", which was a roundabouts way of saying I was in the SECOND deepest canyon at that point. So I took the opportunity to tick off that box too, before returning to Cusco to catch the bus to Puno on Lake Titicaca, and onwards to Bolivia.
In my spare time I have taken to reading Che Guevarra's Motorcycle Diaries - in Spanish. I've not truly understood a single sentence, but there are some amazing pictures of the places I've visited, as he pretty much copied my exact trip, only in reverse.

Vote the Henge!

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Photos

Stand by Me
Standing by a bridge on the Inca Trail

Stonehenge
Truly wonderous?