It was about 5am when the drugs kicked in. “The problem is…”, he said pausing theatrically for breath, “…is you two are just too lovely!” The formalities out of the way, he danced off to hail a passing taxi on the Plaza de Armas clapping all the while to a tune only he could hear. This guy had clearly spent a long night with South America’s most famous export.
He could best be described as a young Austin Powers, complete with Cockney accent, wearing a huge woolly helmet. It was an interesting and surreal introduction to Cusco.
Our plan was to spend three days acclimatising and exploring Cusco before our Inka Trail trek began. We managed to start our preparations off on the worst possible foot by having a bottle of wine while watching an obscure German movie in a pub about a man who wants to bring opera to the Peruvian jungle.
We fully intended to head back to the hostel for an early night when we happened upon “The World’s Highest Irish Owned Pub” and it seemed wrong at some fundamental level to just walk on past…
Any manual dealing with altitude sickness will carry dire warnings about drinking any alcohol when at altitude, something we were well aware of and yet still roundly ignored to our cost. Never, never again.
The world’s most expensive Guinness at the world’s highest Irish owned pub
Dee poses with locals and lambs
Al and his guinea pig or “Cuy” as they call it in Peru
The Inca Trail
Three days later we had pulled off a miraculous recovery when we hopped into a van in the early hours of the morning for the drive out towards “Kilometer 82″, the start of the Inka Trail.
It quickly became apparent that Al should have read the small print when he booked the Inka Trail online. For example, our guide Hugo seemed to be exclusively assigned to us while the twelve other people in the group were sharing a single guide between them.
We were seperated from the others at first which wasn’t exactly helping us integrate with the rest of the group. The situation was not entirely helped by Hugo referring to us loudly as “My King and Queen” at every opportunity.
A quiet word in Hugo’s ear at our first break resolved the issue – we agreed that we should join the big group and share the guides around. We thought everything was sorted out and started to chat to the others until Hugo popped his head inside our lunch tent to call Al outside.
Our porter was standing beside our backpack looking pretty disturbed – things did not look good. The porter explained through our guide that something bad was inside our bag and he couldn’t carry it. We all turned and stared balefully at the offending piece of luggage.
Al rather fearfully opened up the bag to try discover what “bad thing” was causing the issue… The porter took an involuntary step backwards as the wash bag was pulled out into the open emitting a low moaning sound. Guffaws exploded from both guide and porter as Al pulled out Dee’s electric toothbrush and switched it off.
Explaining the cause of the hilarity outside to the rest of the group turned into a fantastic icebreaker and we were now a single unified group.
Al and our guide Hugo at the start of the trail
The start of the Inca Trail – Kilometer 82
Old Quechuan lady drinking her brew of alcoholic Chicha
The scenery unfolding before us was simply majestic. Rolling hills and mountains flowing into green valleys with orchids dotting the trail made the first day of easy trekking a delight. We were well aware that the next day we would be facing our sternest test on the trek – “Dead Woman’s Pass”. At a shade over 4200m above sea level it would be a new altitude record for both of us, and was touted as a pretty hard day of trekking.
With this in mind we turned in for the night – there really isn’t much to do after 8pm when the sun goes down and the light disappears…
Incan terraced ruins
Snow capped peak towering above our campsite on the first night
Beer o’clock on day one
Dead Woman’s Pass
Setting out early on day two we tried to prepare ourselves mentally for the whole day of uphill climbing. Dead Woman’s Pass is named for it’s shape and as the mountains hove into view we could see our destination – her neck forming the pass between the imposing chin and breast.
Our guides had advised that we would be breaking the ascent into three segments of roughly two hours each, and that the second segment was the hardest. The guides are notorious liars as we’ve discovered in South America – the final segment was a killer. The cobbled Inca trail turned into knee breaking steps for the last two hours of ascent, although this didn’t seem to bother Dee who was in fine mountain goat form.
Al on the other hand was starting to take strain as altitude and a bullish dash up the trail five hours earlier started to take their toll… Dee gallantly waited for the slow coach to catch up and only sped on ahead when we were within a stone’s throw of the top.
The view from the top was worth every aching step up the final stretch – as was the sense of accomplishment.
Dee sitting smugly at the top of Dead Woman’s Pass
Al two steps from the top of Dead Woman’s Pass
Team Houston punching the rather thin air at 4215m on Dead Woman’s Pass
The little walk…
Dee, apparently not satisfied with crushing the pass decided that we’d be taking a little stroll to the top of the next pass while everyone else in the group lay in their tents recuperating.
Our walk gave us the opportunity to have the trail all to ourselves, and almost immediately we started to see the animals that melted away into the bush when all the trekkers were using the trail. Climbing up towards the next pass we spotted some Andean Deer and coming back down we came face to face with a very large and surprised fox. We stared at each other for a few seconds before he magically ghosted away into the mist.
Dee stops for a quick photo break on some ancient Inca stairs
We took a walk on day two while everyone lay far below in the campsite, crushed by the day’s trek.
With our new Irish friends way above the clouds
Nearly there
The third day lived up to it’s reputation as the most beautiful on the trek with ruins, valleys and andean mist forests. We were aware that the camp site at the end of the day held the two holy grails of the trek: hot showers and cold beer for weary walkers.
The highlight of the day was coming out of the forest to see huge Incan terraces overlooking the majestic Ollantaytambo valley. They also provided the laugh of the day as one of our new Irish friends had to crab down the steep stairs as his mates fell over laughing at the bottom.
Goofing around in the ancient and very sacred Inca ruins
Dee towering over the Incan terraces
Pretty steep steps apparently require special precautions while descending
Machu Picchu
At 04h15 we were all assembled and in line to enter the final stretch of trail to the “Sun Gate”, the pass overlooking Machu Picchu. Some people assumed that the trail etiquette could be thrown out of the window as they tried to shoulder through the groups who had queued patiently since the early hours of the morning.
Several blocking tactics were successfully deployed and we managed to be among the first to arrive at the Sun Gate, only to be greeted by a solid wall of grey mist… Machu Picchu was out there, we all knew it, we just couldn’t see it.
The mists did finally part for a few seconds to give us a tantalising glimpse of our destination for the day. Thankfully the sun burned through the mists fairly quickly and we arrived at the Incan Watchtower an hour later under a flawlessly blue sky – we had made it !
The mists at the Sun Gate clear enough to catch a tiny glimpse of Machu Picchu (it’s the lightish bit on the left hand side)
Yay – we made it !
The mists clear and we are greeted by Machu Picchu in all its considerable glory
Our tour of the ruins was a little more info than we strictly needed. Our guide would regularly punctuate his flow of information with “Chichos, preguntas hmmm ?” (Guys, questions ?), and we quickly learned that questions simply lead to even longer explanations so that shut us all up quite quickly.
The only disappointment was not climbing Huayna Picchu, the little mountain overlooking the ruins, but we were honestly just bone tired and dehydrated after not filling up our water supply in the rush of the morning. You can’t win them all.
Dee and Machu Picchu
Al and Suzy not exactly loving the tour guide so far. Preguntas Chicos ? I think not sir !
Al offers up Duckee to a somewhat malevolent llama
Group shot at the Sun Gate
Probably our best shot of Machu Picchu
Posing in front of the ruins for our new friends from Atlanta
Aguas Callientes
Another misunderstanding in our purchase of the trek online was that the five day tour we had purchased was simply the normal four day trek with a night in the nearby town of Aguas Callientes tagged onto the end. There is not a lot to do in Aguas Callientes…
We quickly discovered that the local wildlife could and would draw blood at regular intervals. We started out calling the midgies that seemed to be everywhere “little buggers”, but the blood sucking spawn of the devil soon received a far less flattering moniker that we cannot write here for fear of causing offence.
Our guide kindly organised an upgrade for our train journey back to Cusco – we would be travelling in a glass topped train to enjoy the view ! Which wasn’t very useful in the dark ! Oh well…
Our next stop is to head towards Puno on Lake Titicaca, more on that later.
Dee models the latest Peruvian fashion – the wooly helmet.
We called these “little buggers” although the blood sucking spawn of the devil got a far less complementary name later
What the hell is going on here ?! Duckee is ours but the rest defies rational explanation.
Duckee just can’t help trying on something in his size
Sad looking Quechuan woman is happy to pose with Duckee in Cusco
Dee posing with Bob
Way jealous…would a porter carry Justin do you think?
Of course boerewors! In fact we have a picture somewhere of a little kid riding one of the porters and whipping him with a stick. It actually sounds a little weird now that I write it, but both of them were grinning like maniacs so it wasn’t as bad as all that
wow, what a great trip, I love the photos and the witty blog too very entertaining.
Wow! What an amazing experience you guys are having!!! Brilliant story telling Dee and loving the photos too! Can’t wait for the next installment! Where to next?
Brilliant story. I am sitting in a hostel in Colombia and people are looking at me as if I am mad while I chuckled away picturing the guide petrified of your bag. Dressed in his local clothes, rabbitting on in Quecha. I walked Huaymapichu and it was tough. It was steep up and steep down. I see you had some of the same train entertainment as we did. Random.