Rick was a little uncertain about this trip as well. He suffered from vertigo and was not very comfortable with the idea of camping in the wilderness for four days. Somehow I thought, "did all the great expeditions in history start out like this?"
Our group spent the next few days wandering around Cusco, getting used to the altitude and being hassled by street vendors selling postcards and sweaters. Sweaters? Yep, we were deep in the heart of alpaca wool country. If you could buy it in a store, sooner or later, someone would try to sell it to you on the street.
The next day, we visited Chinchero, a charming village set in the sacred valley, once the agricultural center of the Inca Empire. From there we saw the experimental Inca farming terraces at Moray, and took a slightly scary drive down a cliff-hugging dirt road to see the Salineras or Incan saltpans.
From the Salineras, we walked downhill for a little over an hour to a wonderful little restaurant. While eating, we joked that "if it is all this easy, we'll be happy hikers!"
Our home base for the next couple of days would be the cute not-yet-too-touristy Yucay. A place where people still smile and wave, if you do.
A Climb in Ollantaytambo
The following day, we drove to the Inca village of Ollantaytambo with its huge terraces and ruins. "Coy" was on the menu for lunch. Cattle and most other animals don't do well, high in the Andes mountains, so they found an easy grow source of protein. You would call them guinea pigs if you found them in a pet shop, but here, they're called "lunch."
This is one of the rare meals that did actually taste like chicken.
The Inca ruins at Ollantaytambo are beautiful and very interesting, but I kept looking across the valley at the ruins of an ancient Incan granary. Suddenly, I remembered seeing a photo of this same granary in National Geographic when I was a boy. I asked Dalmiro, our guide, if anyone ever goes up there. "No," he replied. "Do you want to go?"
There are times when I think I can actually see the words coming out of my mouth as the weaker reasoning portion of my brain tries to reach out and grab them. This was one of those times. "You bet!" I replied, before fully comprehending the situation. The ruins sat high up a rather steep mountain with no clear path leading up to it. My mouth, now running on its own, commented that I didn't see a path going up to the ruins. "That's because no one goes there" came the reply from our guide.
The rest of the group wandered around the village, happily shopping, while Rick and his wife joined Dalmiro and me, on our scramble up the mountain. We did actually start on a trail, well a small, steep one, that disappeared at a large rock outcropping. Rick remembered that he had a fear of heights about five feet up the rock and froze. I was behind him, waiting for our guide and his wife to lead him back down to the formerly-dangerous-but-now-comfortingly-wide path. Dalmiro looked at me from the top of rock, smiled and said, "let's go!"
Now, Jan and I live in Mexico City at 7,200 feet above sea level. Heck we even exercised regularly before leaving on this trip. Nevertheless, there was no way I was going to keep up with this guide-turned-mountain-goat, especially with fourteen pounds of camera gear on my back. Luckily for me, being completely out of breath, distracted me from looking down.
The process for climbing is pretty simple; look up, see where guide's hands and feet are going, and put your hands and feet in the same places. Even when that fails, it's still pretty simple going up. Look for places big enough for the tip of your shoe to fit, and cracks or ledges to grip with your hands. This is about all you think about going up. Then, lo and behold, the granary came into view! Untouched, original Inca buildings, still holding onto their 500-year-old yellow paint.
As it is with all great explorers, we took turns photographing each other; relishing the moment. Then, Dalmiro explained how he wanted to continue up the mountain to the small ruins out on a remote peak. I thought, "well, it hasn't been too bad so far" and agreed to continue up. However, as the way became significantly steeper with fewer and fewer places to put my toes, I made a fatal error. I looked down. Boy, were we up there! I'm from Chicago, we don't have mountains. What the hell was I doing??
Dalmiro noticed my hesitation and advised me to remain where I was, because it was getting "really tough" up where he was. Then, like all great explorers, Dalmiro asked me to take his photo, "when he gets there."
I waited for five minutes, maybe ten, standing on a small ledge above oblivion, wondering why the wise, ancient Incas didn't carve a little bench somewhere nearby. It also dawned on me that the Incas carried heavy baskets of grain all the way up here! What a bunch of lunatics.
Speaking of...Dalmiro sprang into view on a nearby peak. To get to the ruins, he was going to have to hug a wall, while walking along a ledge that was the width of his shoe. Dalmiro did not have a problem going out to the ruins. He raised his arms in triumph as I took his photo. But, he had to go back, and as he gingerly shuffled his feet on the tiny ledge, a tremendous blast of wind blew over the mountain causing his arms to flail and my heart to stop. "Great, our guide is dead and we haven't even started hiking the Inca Trail," I thought. But, like a real mountain goat, he regained his balance and made it to safety.
As we climbed down, I was filled with a mix of euphoria, from getting away with something that "people my age" are normally advised against by their doctors, and the feeling of dread, caused by the view down into the valley….which was still a long way down. I amused myself by trying to find which tiny roof of the home where we had just had lunch. Somewhere along they way, I was faced with an unpleasant choice; die (which is never a good option) or drop my hand down (hopefully next to) a small cactus. As it is with many important choices in life, I did it in a big way, putting most of my weight down on the evil little plant. I spent the rest of the day picking needles out of my hand, with a dumb, "I did it!" smile on my face.
Four Days on the Inca Trail
The next morning we started hiking the Inca Trail. We began at kilometer 77. This gave us a nice day of walking, and two opportunities to wimp-out and take the train…if we needed it. We walked between houses, then between farm fields, and then the trail began to ascend. This gave us a great view of the valley and the cute little train…which I was starting to become terribly fond of.
After a few hours of this, I was getting tired. I mean, the mountains were cute, picture perfect. I wanted to ask our guide "how to you keep the snow so white at the top?" but thought better. I was getting tired, hungry. The thrill of walking was gone. Nobody in the group wanted to be the first to ask, "when is lunch?" So we continued. In short order, there it was; lunch under a tent, in the middle of nowhere. The porters had run (yes run) ahead, carrying the tent, stove, everything, even a nice little assortment of cookies.
As lunch concluded, Rick's wife Alison, reached for "just one more" cookie, and pulled a muscle in her back. Images of us using a makeshift stretcher to carry her out of the mountains in Eco-Challenge-style came into my head. But, luckily for us, Georgine is a doctor and within a half hour or so, Alison was back on her feet and walking the last hour to our first campsite.
Dinner was a great feast. We had one day behind us, and we were damned proud of it! However, by starting at kilometer 77, we were going to be trekking more than 56 kilometers (about 35 miles) to Machu Picchu. Lucky for us, nobody asked that question on our first night. Ignorance is, after all, bliss.
The second day began with our excited little group looking forward to the day on the trail. We packed our duffels and daypacks, had breakfast and were off. Little did we know that this would be our most difficult day, trekking about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) horizontally, but climbing over 4,000 feet up! (1,300 m)
I honestly don't remember lunch that day. I'm sure it was very nice, but I was a little distracted by every joint in my body loudly questioning why I was doing this. I remember laying on the grass, somewhere, panting, and thinking that "it can't be THAT much farther." But, I was wrong. We spent the entire day hiking, resting, hiking, panting, hiking, sweating, hiking, wheezing and constantly going higher. By the end of the day, we had walked two-thirds of the way around one mountain, and almost up to the peak of another.
I have never considered mountains as something to walk over, or around for that matter. Drive around? Sure. Fly over? You bet. But walk?
The view from our second campsite was amazing! Painting-perfect, snow-capped mountains, every time you unzipped your tent, what more could you ask for. The answer to that question came shortly after dinner, when we slid into frigid sleeping bags. It gets pretty darned cold at high altitudes once the sun goes down.
Each morning begins with the camp cook bringing coffee to your tent. Not a bad way to start the day. However, my body was slow to get started in the cold, and it loudly complained about yesterday's mistreatment while we packed and got ready for breakfast.
We only had 400 meters (1,300 ft.) more to go before reaching the highest point on the trail. There was no turning back now; off we went, slowly up the mountain.
It's windy at mountain passes. I guess the wind is also looking for the easiest way around these damned bumps in the landscape. After the mandatory group photo, we looked down the other side. Somewhere out there was another pass, nearly as high as this one. But, someone put a valley between us and it. We would have to go down, just to go back up. Something here was simply not fair.
Our group hiked down the mountain, then up the next, without missing a step. I guess you reach a point in a journey where you are facing no other options but moving forward, so without any further thought...that's what you do, walk over mountains. However, I will note that there were no ceremonial photos taken at the second mountain pass.
As we descended, another Inca ruin came into view. Our group rested while our guide told us the history of Sayacmarca. Dalmiro then pointed to a red tent, down in the valley below. "There is lunch" he said with a smile.
I have to admit, I have a tiny obsession with ruins of any sort. The group had elected to bypass these perfectly good ruins, for two reasons; first, the red lunch tent, and second, the long, handrail-less staircase some crazy Inca had cut into the side of a cliff as an entrance to the ruins. Dalmiro smiled and gave me permission to explore the ruins, then join the group for lunch.
Happily, I continued down the narrow trail, only to realize that my body was exactly the same width as the stairs. That did make things interesting. I mean, if you think about it, you don't fall down that often, do you? So, I made up my mind simply not to fall down while I ascended the stairs. Descending, however, did offer a rather remarkable view of the narrow stairs, most of the valley, and the tiny red lunch tent.
Our final campsite for the trek was literally above the clouds. We arrived an hour or so before sunset (a misnomer really, here in the mountains, it just gets dim for a few hours, then goes dark). This was the last night. We congratulated ourselves over dinner. Tomorrow, we would say "goodbye" to the porters and make our way to Machu Picchu. It was all, literally, downhill from here. Jan & I slid into our sleeping bags, smiling.
The final day on the trail began with our formerly merry group descending over 2,000 stairs, into the not-so-sacred-if-you-ask-me Sacred Valley. Really, honestly, the first hundred stairs or so, were no problem. But, after the first thousand, the faint whistle of the train that takes wimps to Machu Picchu was sounding awfully sweet!
We stopped from time-to-time, to let our running, carefree, porters pass. I honestly don't know how they do it. These guys were laughing and talking while carrying kitchen stoves and luggage on their back, going along the same trail that I was slowly limping down. The only guy who wasn't part of the happy-porter club, was the poor guy who got elected to carry the LP tank for the stove. This guy had the trail all to himself.
We stopped at Wiñay Wayna, a set of complimenting convex and concave Inca ruins, set one above another on the side of a mountain. To fully explore these beautiful ruins required climbing yet more stairs, but for me, it was worth it. It was a nice break from the trail.
Machu Picchu
We knew that our first glimpse of Machu Picchu would be at the Sun Gate. What we didn't know was that we had to climb a heck of a lot of stairs to get up to that gate. Still, it was a singularly spectacular moment, seeing Machu Picchu for the first time, on the trail that so many Incas must have traversed when this was the largest empire in the hemisphere I call home.
Of course, more ceremonial photos were in order!
As we got closer to our goal, that beautiful, ruined, city on the top of a mountain, we noticed people walking towards us. This is strange, since the entire Inca Trail is entirely one-way. And, they were good looking people. As they passed, I noticed how nice they smelled. It had been four days since any of us had bathed properly. Sure, the porters would put a nice dog food bowl of hot water outside your tent each day….but, there's only so much cleaning you can do with 12 ounces of warm water. Instantly, unanimously, we came to dislike these strangers, these clean people. What right had they to be here, on our earthy-smelling trail? They took the train. They looked HAPPY. I concluded that there must be something terribly wrong with every last one of them.
The Machu Picchu ruins are terribly photogenic in a way that's normally reserved for smiling babies. That's why the ruins have been photographed from every mathematically possible angle, under every possible lighting condition. My plan was to photograph the ruins at night, by the light of the moon and stars. That would be new. Jan & I stayed at the only hotel near the ruins, the way-over-priced Sanctuary Lodge. That evening, after our first bath in four days, I dragged my aching bones out to the ruins…to encounter more stairs.
I don't know if it is for economic or aesthetic reasons, but there are no lights in the ruins. Once the light from the sun is gone, well, it is really dark. So dark that the images my camera was capturing were, well, black. So much for the image nobody else has, I was going back to the lodge for dinner!
We requested a wake-up call for 5:30 the next morning. O.k., I requested the call. Jan wanted nothing to do with it. I dressed in the morning dark, grabbed my camera gear and headed out into the…rain. Wait, there wasn't supposed to be rain in my fantasy sunrise photographic expedition. But, there it was. Without question. I went back to the room for my raincoat and a plastic bag to put over my camera.
I was the first one through the gates that morning. Machu Picchu was mine. I could go anywhere; photograph anything. Without pesky people in the background.
On entering the ruins, my first thought was to capture an image from an angle I had seen once in a magazine. As I came through the little guardhouse, I discovered that I was at the wrong altitude for the photo I wanted. "Where was that Inca escalator?" I wondered, as I convinced my aching legs to carry me up about four dozen stairs, to the right vantage point.
There is a special group of people, who wake up before sunrise to take photos. I share a sort of kinship with them. We smile and wave, knowing that the rest of the tourists are still sleeping. I talked with a man from France and another from San Francisco, while a wonderful fog came to cover the ruins. It was quiet and peaceful, as it has been at Machu Picchu for hundreds of years.
Then, the small hairs on the back of my neck rose, as I the first bus of the morning arrived. I heard the tourists long before I ever saw them. The spell was broken. Machu Picchu was, once again, transformed into a crowded, tourist playground.
The rest of our group arrived a couple of hours later, for our official tour.
- Aguas Calientes
- Chinchero
- Cusco
- Cusco - The Parade
- Inca Trail
- Inti Raymi Festival
- Lima
- Machu Picchu
- Moray
- Ollantaytambo
- Phuyupatamarca
- Pukapukara
- Salineras
- Saqsayhuamán
- Sayacmarca
- Tambomachay
- Wiñay Wayna
- Yucay
