Writing this now, from a cozy internet cafe with a cafe con leche and cigarette in one hand, poking away at the computer with the other, my belly full of cheeseburgers and chocolate cake from Jack´s Cafe and my muscles loose from the hour-and-a-half massage I just got, Bob Marley playing in the background, it feels like life could be divided into Before Inca Trail and After Inca Trail. Might not be able to tell by the previous post, but I was totally panicky about this whole Inca Trail business. Anxiety attacks about my rain ponchos not being waterproof, about breaking an ankle on Day 2, the whole thing. The closest my family ever came to camping was roasting marshmallows in our backyard, and the last time I slept in a tent was when we had a kegger in the woods for Mark Witte´s 17th birthday party. Add that up to the fact that I am absolutely terrified of any and all bugs, and we have ourselves a real fun weekend!
Picked up in the van on Friday at sunrise by our guide, our cook, a German girl from our school also doing the trail, a couple my parents´ age from Wisconsin, and Rachel, my beloved dirty dutchie. And thus the adventure began.
Right off the bat, our van was stopped at a police checkpoint for leaving Cusco and going up the mountain. The driver did not have enough insurance (need at least $2,000 worth) to carry tourists. So we had to call another van to pick us up. Fell asleep in the second van, until we pulled onto a dirt road and the holes and jumps were so big I actually got air. Finally we reached the small town of Ollaytatambo, where I bought a walking stick, which basically became part of my body for the next 4 days.
Got t
o Kilometer 82, the starting point, around 10 am and starting walking. First thing I noticed was that I was going to be concentrating so hard on dodging the mule shit paving the road that I hardly noticed the walking bit. Second thing I noticed was that the German girl walks like she has a rocket up her butt. Both things held true to the end.
First day was a real piece of cake. Got used to being the object of all mosquitoes´affection, and adjusted to my rented hiking boots no problem. Didn´t really get out of breath, enjoyed the vistas, the changing scenery as we went from river valley to lush tropical mountains. I remember thinking our tent was so cute and quaint and how fun it was to play Hiking Barbie for a day. We had a good dinner, we met our other 6 porters that carried the tents and the food and stuff, and I bought a beer
from a local village woman that hiked around selling them to campers. Rachel had to kill like 7 moths of various sizes in our tent, and I had to go pee in an outhouse, but it was all Jolly Good Fun! 
The second day was slightly less "fun" and slightly more... intense? sharp? Painful. We woke up at sunrise, and our guide, Juvenal, said, "We´re going to climb that mountain." And pointed at an actual mountain, in all its steep jagged Andean glory. And that´s what I did. I don´t know how, as it was literally all up hill for hours and hours and sometimes the steps were like 3 feet tall and straight up. It was even made even more awesome by the fact that I decided to be really hardcore and teach everyone back home a lesson by being the only person to carry my own pack, even though I had the biggest pack and am the biggest wimp. There were a few times when I thought I might lose my balance and go tipping backward and create a huge domino effect on the other 200 people climbing the same mountain behind me. At these times I stopped and ate chocolate and got a grip. 
We finally reached the top of the mountain, conveniently called Dead Woman´s Pass, at around noon. The view behind was specfuckingtacular, sunny and clear and I could see the camp where I started out as a little blip a million miles away. Then the guide informed us that lunch was waiting at the base of the mountain, on the other side, invisible under a layer of thick fog and rain. You might be thinking, Oh but isn´t it easier to go downhill? And I will answer, Ummm... NO. I was wearing a poncho that was basically a black plastic garbage bag with a slit and hood for my head. And rocks that are rainy and slippery wet and have really sharp edges, and are so steep that with short legs you have to sit down sometimes to ease over the edge, are not fun to fall on. What the hell were the Incas thinking?! Let´s build rock steps that go right over the Andes instead of around them to a place that´s in the middle of nowhere and totally inconvenient, and then let´s build a town there on the side of the mountain, just to abandon it for the next 1000 years until some Yale prof named Hiram Bingham comes and digs it out. And you should have seen these porters! Local guys carrying bundles on their backs that were bigger than they were, literally RUNNING down the steps in the driving rain with only these rubber sandals and a t-shirt and shorts on. By the time I reached the bottom, I had translated the entire Johnny Cash collection into Spanish to keep myself from going crazy and was soaking wet. ...And I just pitted out my shirt writing that paragraph. Sweet.
I crawled into my smelly sleeping bag at 7:30 more tired than I can ever remember being since exiting the birth canal, shivering in wet clothes and zipped up like a cocoon with only my nose sticking out, feeling every single rock and pebble in the ground beneath me. It started to rain again maybe 3.2 seconds later. At this point I started thinking and I started crying, and laying in the darkness talking to Rachel -- who at 26 has the wiseness of your favorite grandma -- I acknowledged heavinesses that I hadn´t realized (or didn´t want to realize) were inside of me, and by the time the rain stopped, I was different. Lighter. I felt like I was able to see my life in a weird way, more like a movie or a history book with beginnings and endings and stories and sub-plots and character flaws and cause-and-effect and fate. Maybe it was the tests of nature, maybe it was the rainforest fresh air, maybe I was just fucking delirious, but I had a sort of clarity, like when clouds part and you can see the stars that were always there but hidden. It was probably only 1/2 an hour before I fell asleep, but I fell asleep a little bit older.
The third day was actually the hardest day physically; the cold intensified, the rain persisted, and the walking increased to 10 full hours straight up and straight down the last mountain. Rachel and I took our time and did the entire thing together, both of us carrying our own packs this time, keeping each other going with games like, "If I were Madonna right now....(ex. I´d have porters carrying me down this mountain; I´d have a cosmo in my hand instead of a walking stick; etc.)" and divulging our juiciest stories, our most embarrassing stories, details of our favorite vacations and our favorite flings, broken hearts and farts. If it weren´t for my choice of company I would have had no one to tell me someone was coming down the trail when I was mid-pee, no one to keep me going with dreams of Jack´s Cafe chocolate cake and cheeseburgers when I got home.
When we saw our guide up ahead, we laughed and high-fived ... and then the guide said, "Venticinco minutos mas." Buzzkill. I felt my face get hot and tears start to come up, but then for the first time all day the rain stopped, clouds parted, and a double rainbow formed. No shit. Reached the camp an hour later (he always lied about how long things took. or we´re just really slow) and went, not to the hot showers offered, but to the BAR with actual drinks and electricity and boys. Civilization felt funny and unfamiliar and beautiful. Went to bed, drunk off one beer, to the sounds of the German girl getting action in the tent 6 inches from ours and someone puking in the distance, and woke up under the stars at 4 am to tea being shoved in my face by the porters with a flashlight to get a move on. Awesome. But in the end, the third day -- the day that my BO probably killed all the pretty orchids along the way and the day that my Achilles tendon decided to no longer play along with the rest of my body -- that day was the best day.
Everyone made a mad dash Monday morning, the legendary Day 4 when we would reach the ruins, strikingly similar to the droves of people exiting the subway for the office in Chicago rush hour somewhere a million worlds away, knowing that we only had 1 hour of relatively easy trail before we reached the Sun Gate and got our prize.
We were not disappointed. 
When we reached the Sun Gate, itself nothing more than a pile of rocks and ruins overlooking like 9 mountains (one of which held our treasure), it was the most beautiful mixture of man and nature that I have ever laid eyes on. It was worth it, and it was made worth it by the walk there. And then it all clicked, and the Incas made more sense. The sun rose around us slowly, and ray by ray lit upon another facet of the face of Machu Picchu exposing a small town built on top of the most beautiful mountain in heaven. We walked 1/2 an hour more, and then we were there, bloodshot eyes feasting upon alpacas grazing green lawns and tourists in brightly colored clean clothes and temples to the sun constructed out of psychotically perfect architecture out of rocks that must have weighed 3 tons and outlasted at least 30 earthquakes. And the day went like that, shoes off, laying on the grass watching hummingbirds and funny colored flies and admiring life (until French tour guides yelled at for basically looking ugly when people were trying to take pictures) and Good God, we were happy.
Hey girlie -- loved reading your post. My aunt and uncle will actually be in Macchu Picchu in a couple of weeks. Safe travels home!
Posted by: Cathy Spicer | December 11, 2006 at 10:42 AM