Advertisement
Published: June 24th 2010
Hello home!
So now I am in Huaraz, a city high up in the mountains, flanked by the Corillera Blanca and Negra. I'm staying with a great family, the Delgados, with four other volunteers. I'm teaching English at a local secondary school which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Finally have a few minutes spare in between teaching, spanish lessons and learning shakira songs to catch up on my blog a wee bit. I'll tell you a bit more about life in Huaraz next time, but for now...
.. the Inca Trail! I forewarn you of excessive use of hyperboles and cliches as this was quite possibly the best week of my life (see, I told you).
Even though I'd spent hours staring at postcard perfect photos of Macchu Picchu on google image from my desk in Hatfield,and spent many an hour daydreaming about following Ben Fogle's Bottom to the ancient city, nothing quite prepared me for my first glimpse of the city.
Day one we had an early start, difficult after a night of sambuca and dancing on the bar at Mythology followed by a salsa-stumble home). Our group headed out with our guide, ozzy, to the Sacred valley
where we visited the Inca ruins of Pisac and Ollantaytambo. We spent the night in Ollantaytambo and the next day we set of for our first leg of the inca trail.
Passports stamped, a face full of coca leaves and a rucksack stuffed with snickers bars we set of for an easy day of strolling. On the way we saw from above the impresssive Inca site, Q'entimarka. I was expecting the Inca trail to be bursting at the seams with tourists but we hardly passed any other trekkers, but surprisingly there were many entrepeneurial peruvians who had hiked their way up the path to sell gatorade and bananas at prices as steep as the steps. At lunchtime we arrived to such a warm welcome from our amazing porters who had set up camp, layed out bowls of warm water and soap for us to wash, greeted us with warm, but nevertheless refreshing orange squash and served us a delicious hot lunch.
The porters that work on the trail are astounding. For our group of 12 trekkers we had 16 porters. They each carry a heavy load the size of them, including our personal duffle bags and all that
is needed for our camp, including all our tents, chairs, food and cooking equipment. While we struggled on with our day packs, guzzling gatorade and wheezing up the inca steps, these guys flew past us to arrive hours ahead of us to set up camp and then clap for US as we arrive! Until recently an annual inca trail race was held for the porters and the record time in which a porter ran the 27 miles of steep ascending and descending steps winding round the mountains was 3 hours and 45 minutes! This distance we took four days to walk! Amazing. Our porters took so much care of us, the food was delicious and every night after we retired to our tents they would come round and make sure we were zipped in properly. Each morning we were woken up by the porters and one of the guides knocking on our tents to offer us a hot drink and leaving us a bowl of warm water to wash in.
We arrived at our first camp early in the afternoon and after buying a cold beer from the bar (a local woman with a bucket of water holding bottles
of Cusquena) a couple of us headed off to play football with the locals. I love that in South America you will find a football pitch in the most unlikley and in this case the most breathtaking of locations. I say I 'played' football, I kind of ran around a bit and got in the way of the boys.
Day two and time for more serious trekking. Today we tackled Dead Woman Pass, so called apparantly because of the shape of the mountains, however climbing these steep inca steps (how are the steps so high when the incas were so short!?) nearly left me for dead had it not been for Ozzy cheerfully chatting away to me all the way up and supplying me with plenty of wraps of coca. The feeling of elation when I finally reached the top was fantastic. We'd walked from 3,000 metres up to 4,200 metres. At the top it is traditional to make an offering to the earth mother, pachamama by placing a stone on the peak. These towers of rocks at the pass were so simple and beautiful, there's a picture here somewhere.
From then on, down hill all the way to
camp for dinner, a few healthy nips of scotch and a cold night battling with the combination of slippery sleeping bag and a slanted pitch which meant I kept waking up in a heap at the door of my tent and had to wiggle my way back to the top.
Day three had a hefty amount of uphill (bloody incas, bloody steps!) that took us into the cloud forest. I had the company of the lovely young guide Ever, who gave me an exhaustive history of the incas with boundless illustrative enthusiasm I hardly noticed how many hours had passed. We arrived into camp where an actual bar and hot (HOT!) showers awaited us. That night we had our last supper together on the trail, gave our thanks to the porters and guides and got an early night ready to wake up at 3.45 to make our final trek to Macchu Picchu. The destination almost seemed irrelevant at this point given the amazing adventure we'd had already (Please don't vomit at my vulgar use of cliche).
So we got up in the dark, packed up and had a quick breakfast and trotted down to the checkpoint which didn't
open for another hour but we were first in the queue. Here we sat in the dark and played a hilarious game of 'who am I' with one of our peruvian guides, Eduardo, whose dry humour (or obliviousness to the game, we were never really sure) had us in tears with laughter. The gates opened, hoorah, and we made our way on the path on the edge of the mountain looking out over the mist in the Urubamba valley. After about an hour we reached the last flight of inca stairs which were, no lie, vertical. After clambering up to the top I peeped out at the Sun gate and in the distance could see the city of Macchu Picchu. (p.s. you have to pronounce Macchu Picchu strongly, otherwise if said softly it means old willy).
We ate cheese sandwiches and watched the sunrise behind us and gradually fall over the city. Hands down one of the best moments of my life.(NB: The cheese sandwich was not a crucial component of this defining moment).
The rest of the day was spent exploring the city, relaxing in the hot springs in aguas calientes, a long journey back to cuzco and a fabulous sambuca-soaked post-trek party that lasted well into the next morning.
Thanks for reading! Hope all is good back home what with world cup fever, new PM and a whole summer of big brother. By the way, I have a rucksack full of postcards that I'll probably not get round to sending. The pictures are really nice, I'm sure you'd of been very happy to see them on your doormat. Never mind.
Lots of love from me, bye! xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.034s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rachel
non-member comment
Bloody fab blog love x
Loved reading your blog, really cheered up my Friday morning sat at my desk! Cant wait to hear more x