Inca Trail

This entry covers 13 - 16 November

Day 1:
In my excitement, I accidentally added hot milk to my cereal this morning…its not as bad as you may think! The 1st few songs on my ipod when departing Cusco for Ollaytantambo could not have been more polar:
1. Chariots of Fire
2. Children (Robert Miles)
3. Chop Suey (System of a Down)!

I picked up a simple walking stick (otherwise referred to by the others as ¨the wand¨) in Ollaytantambo and accordingly completed my hiking attire with no less than 5 colour coded items…shoes, shirt, cap, stick and of course my doondies all a brilliant green. We met up with Wilbert (the main guide), Oubert (Wilbert´s sidekick) and the 17 porters just outside Ollaytantambo and before we knew it we had started the infamous Inca Trail. Day 1 was a gentle affair affording the guides the opportunity to gauge the group´s ability. 3 hours later and we had reached our 1st campsite (already set up by the porters)…to applause from the porters and bowls of warm water at the base of our tents and stuffed trout for lunch…camping 1st class! The afternoon was spent hanging around and taking photos of our 1st Inca ruin…I tried to teach Jim the art of flicking stones to which a local gave us such a death stare we were left hands behind our backs in typical naughty schoolboy fashion. I didn´t realize how universal the game of shithead was…even Wilbert declined an explanation of the rules and so our inaugural Inca card game was played.

Nicknames so far for the trek:John - Phoenix / LP / Bomber
Alison - NaughtySylvia - PolishLynda - Pooh FootMe - Randolf / GrinchPeter - Peter Selles / the Meditator

Day 2:This was certainly the toughest day of the trek. While not the longest day on foot (5 hours), we climbed all day to the highest point of the trail at 4215m. Switch backs were the order of the day to help regulate potential runaway heart rates… mine peaked at 168 beats per minute and made numerous attempts to make the leap of faith into my mouth. The vibe at the peak was awesome with a crowd of hikers clapping each ¨finisher¨of the climb. Captain Pisco made a memorable appearance in a photo with Jim, Tracey and John before we turned to decend down the other side. Topics of conversation ranged from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter to Germany post WW2. John claimed to have been born in the wrong era and assured us that he would have made a great bomber pilot given the astute accuracy required when hovering over the ablutions...We also introduced the song game while traipsing through the wilderness: dudes have to come up with a song with the word called by the winner of the previous round, hence John´s nickname of LP as he continued to amaze us with songs from that era.

Day 3:

We got our firs taste of Amazonian territories spending the majority of the day walking through what can be best described as a wet bathroom feel. The vegetation was dense and light drizzle allowed me to proudly whip out my 15 year old poncho (handed down from my boet…it still had the price tag on the package written in ink…R15.39!)

Some arbitrary story about South Africa caught the attention of an innocent Irish lass called Laura…a teacher who managed to take the world chatting contest in 2004 and made a serious challenge to the Shait Talking Inca Trail contest. Her super company made the hours fly by and after stopping to soak up the vibe…600m drops into Jurassic Park like terrain, before long we had reached our tents which clung to the mountain slope like a plastic bags scragged to a bush. Finding our campsite proved to me more challenging than the day´s hike…abaho / arriva being the options to choose from. We managed to locate our homes and made a dash for the showers (3 days of hiking tends to make one somewhat shvitzy!). Wilbert held an ntroductory ceremony for the porters and Captain Sapo made yet another fantastic appearance with the current Inca Trail Marathon Champion….a 35 year old porter in our group holds the record for the fastest Traditional Inca Trail (42kms) in around 5 hours…Bruce Fordyce would be proud of this on the road and this guy did it on rough terrain at altitudes ranging between 3500m and 4200m and certainly not flat!!!

Day 4:

Up at 4am so that we could get to the front of the queue for the Machupicchu National Park…I thought we´d done well to down our breakfasts and pack up to reach the gates by 5am only to find at least 100 other mofo´s standing in line. Jim and I couldn´t contain our energy and proceeded to invent one of the greatest games ever to be invented with limited tools and lots of time on the Inca Trail…derived from the sport of sumo wrestling, the involved drawing a circle in the sand and trying to hit our own stones (using our walking stick) into the opposition´s stone and out of the ring in the sand. Before long, this simple game had drawn a substantial crowd who were obviously bored out of there skulls knowing what awaited then just 2 hours away. Bets were being tallied and fellow contenders made their challenges…clearly experience was the winner as Jim and I tended to hold our own against ¨wrestlers¨ from all corners of the globe.

We finally got through the park gates at a gentle sprint…the Sun Gate being the target…we were certainly not disappointed. Yet another cracker of a day and mist clearing the travel guide shot of Machupicchu (it wouldn´t be the same without the mist!). It has been estimated that the site was built over a 70 year period by the Inca´s from around 1380 by 250k workers. They occupied this mystical place until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1624 who ransacked as much as they could in an attempt to eliminate all non-Catholic beliefs only to be rediscovered by H. Bingham in 1911. Wilbert took us on a guided tour of the ruins which included the rock mines (where the Inca´s sourced their building material), the sacred plaza (priests abode, sun dial, sacrifice table, 3 temple windows and the diamond rock compass). Legend has it that the priests used all the above to predict the seasons and moon solstices although had to sacrifices and drink the blood of a llama for an accurate forecast…

We met up with the rest of the GAP group in Machupicchu and some had kindly organized tickets to climb Waynapicchu (the new mountain)…the one you see as the backdrop to the famous photo of Machupicchu. We had to be swift as the train was leaving Machupicchu in 2 hours so we hot footed it up the mountain. I would have to say that steep is an understatement and were only too relived to find out AFTERWWARDS that a French dude slipped off the narrow stairs and his body was only found a couple of months later! The view from the tops was simply breathtaking. Perched on top of the highest rock, Alain, Bair, Katrin and I took it all in for a good 20 minutes before making the cariest descent known to man. I knew those Inca´s were small people but making those stairs only a couple inches wide on an adrenalin pumping vertical cliff was a joke! Did I mention that they built a house (also made of stone) about 90% of the way to the top! Some would say they were inspired...I reckon the Inca Kings were nuts!

The return trip took longer than the way up (in aid of saving our lives) and we ended up sprinting through the Machupicchu Ruins which had turned into a giant maze trapping us at every tunr in our attempts to make the last bus to the train station...out of breath and sweaty we clambered onto the bus as it was pulling away...for some the train ride (in 1st class nog al) is a highlight with windows allowing close on 360 degrees viewing, but for me it was respite from 4 days of hiking and a gallop up and down a 500m cliff. Some crazy dude dressed in Inca kit jumped out of the ¨banos¨ and made a helleva racket while we tried to catch some shut eye.