After being diagnosed with the travel bug, it only made sense to try and cure it by visiting on of the Seven Wonders of the World; Machu Picchu. After absolutely no deliberation, the first thing I booked for the itinerary of the South American Struggler was a tour to hike the Inca Trail all the way to Machu Picchu.
Starting in Cuzco meeting with our guide Elias, we visited the Sacred Valley on the Sacred Bus and took a few Sacred Photographs before having to start Incan-pooping in a very unsacred like manner.
Having a squigereedidge at Ollantaytambo and having a nine hour snooze in a local hotel, the freshly dubbed name for our group, Elias’ Eagles (I wanted to call us the Incan Idiots), headed to a local village to meet the local women to learn the process of textiles -the machines they use look like a big bloody mess. Because this South American Struggler failed to find out the weather conditions and didn’t learn it was the rainy season until he was over here, he had to buy an alpaca jumper from the ladies to stay warm – I got to pick which alpaca I wanted my jumper made from and I chose the one with the poor eating habits and oral hygiene. As he was about to try one on, he looked for the tag to see where the front was and the back was and couldn’t find one, very quickly realising what a derrek he was as it was a homemade jumper and if there was a tag it probably would have been the most difficult process as it would have been the most unnatural part of the garment. I went to pay for it and asked the non-English speaker if she took MasterCard. She looked at me and tilted her head like a pup in which I took that confused look as a no.
Onto the hike of the Inca Trail and the first day was bloody toasty. Starting at Kilometre 82 (82kms from Cuzco) we had to get out passports checked by a type of customs that allowed us to enter the Trail. It is protected by UNESCO and so there were guards there patrolling and everything, pretty hectic for a bush walk. I got weird looks from the other eleven people in the Incan Idiots as I layered up zinc all over my face. It’s ‘invisible zinc’ and because none of the non-Australians didn’t know what zinc was, the assumption was I was wearing foundation. It wasn’t until day two when it was raining alpacas and lamas that somebody asked me what my deal was with the foundation.
Day two hiking up Dead Woman’s Pass at just under 13 800ft, the nipple shaped mountain provides not much joy to most as they struggled with the altitude. I had no issue with altitude sickness and not sure if it’s due to the shape of the mountain or because I’m accustomed to it. I’d presume the latter. That afternoon we had free time at our camping spot next to a river that was torrenting water at a million miles per hour from the waterfall above, I jumped in the (I’m guessing) single digit degree water for about a minute before jumping out and wrapping up to avoid hyperthermia. I have been swimming in the Andes mountain range.
A 5am wake up to start hiking, I ungracefully stretched my soaking wet socks on my trench feet and forced them into my drenched hiking boots – welcome to day three ! Day three provided more and more alpacas and lamas falling from the clouds as we pressed on and perksisted towards Sun Gate for a last night camping before reaching the big guy. As many may or may not know, I’m definitely not a ruins kind of guy but these Incan sites were something else. Especially this one we visited before arriving to our third night camping. Took a few cheeky snaps trying to be a little bit creative as we all marveled at the ridiculously incredible vista.
A short sleep as a result of a 3am wake up to get to Machu Piccachu nice and early – probably a tad too eager to beat the other fourteen groups through the checkpoint – and with a whole lot of perkserverance, we reached Sun Gate at 630am. We had made it. I made it. After forty-five kilometres of pretty challenging terrain that put several on the back foot in terms of health, we had all reached one of the Seventh Wonders of the World – Machu Picchu.
I couldn’t stop taking photos and selfies (not as shameless when your backpacking solo) of the rocks and stones that have caused such a fuss. After the effort I put in both at home and over the past four days to get here, and even after I had completely taken it all in and taken well over 600 photos (that will all probably end up looking the same), it was really hard to leave. But reality set in and due to the Inca-pacity to stay there forever, I got the choo choo train back to Ollantaytambo.
These are a couple of observations of a whole heap made throughout the hike:
The Spanish destroyed most of the Incan sites but never found Machu Picchu until it was discover not long ago after being lost for such a long period of time. Why the hell didn’t the Spanish just continue to follow the river as the other destroyed Incan sites were along this same river. Seems like a case of the lazies to me.
Another thing is that the steps the Incan’s built are those annoying steps where you can’t do single steps but have to take one and a half steps to get to the next one. The reason this doesn’t make sense is because the Incan’s were so short. The only thing I can think of is that the Incan’s had really short torsos and really long legs. Regardless, they’re bloody Incan-siderate.
In all seriousness, I would recommend this hike to anybody and it should be something that is not Inca-complete on your bucket list. If someone like me who dislikes ruins, becomes Inca-consolable over the magic of the Inca’s, that should be a good enough indication as to the spectacular experience.
The next stop is the Peruvian side of the Amazon !