The road paved with horse(ahem)

Day 16: Currently in Cusco, Peru. Just returned last night from the 5-day Salkantay Trek. I realize now my original post made the trek out to be far easier than it actually is. For one thing, the vertical climb was from 2800m to 4600m (in less than 2 days) with a final climb up to Machu Picchu itself. Hard. More on that later... We will be leaving tonight via night bus (Cruz Del Sur) to Arequipa, Peru to hike Colca Canyon (2x deeper than the Grand Canyon).

But now on to recapping the Salkantay Trek:

Day 1 of trek (Day 11 of trip): We wake up on January 13th at 4am to go to the bus station where we will travel with the rest of our group to the starting point of the Salkantay Trek. The bus ride is slow and uncomfortable with tons of passengers standing and getting all up in your business (public, non-tourist busses are like this). Finally, a few hours later, we are in the town of Mollepata. We finally start our first day of trekking at 9am.

My thoughts while trekking on this day:

¨Everyone only talks about how great these treks are. No one mentioned
they´d make you want to jump off the side of the cliff.¨

¨This must be what it feels like to be on one of those
death marches.¨

¨I hate this. What am I doing here?¨

Five more effin days. Eden and Bill pretty much felt the same way. You see, when you´re not accustomed to altitude, you literally cannot breathe when climbing. You have to stop every few steps to rest while your heart is beating through your chest and your pulse is thumping in your neck. To make matters worse, everyone else on the trek are like freaking superstars.

Allow me to introduce:

The Germans (Christine and Mattias). They recently did a 10 day trek in Nepal.
The Swiss (Alexa and Sascha). They hike all the time in the Alps.
The Americans (Doris and Leslie). They take trips all over the world for the sole purpose of hiking. Next stop for them, Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Everest base camp.
The Other American (Robert). He´s the only one without extreme hiking experience, but he has run a marathon.
The Guide (Julio). He´s a superman guide. Duh.

As you can imagine, Eden, Bill and I rounded up the rear, probably a whole 5 miles behind everyone else.

On this first day, we climbed from 2800m to 3500m. We hiked from 9am to 5pm with a one hour lunch break. We camped on this first wet, cold night at the base of the Salkantay Pass, another 1100m above. Aside from uncomfortable, extremely difficult climbing, the lodging (crappy tents that Bill, Eden, and I had to share even though we were promised 2 to a tent) and bathroom facilities (beyond nasty hole in the ground with a dirty toilet sans rim) and our soaking wet selves (it rained non-stop in the afternoon whereupon I discovered my waterproof Patagonia jacket is not actually waterproof) left very much to be desired. We are told at dinner that Day 2 will be even harder still (the hardest day, in fact).


Photo from Day 1. I don´t have many photos because I was too busy trying to catch up to everyone else. No time to pull out the old camera.

We are almost about to reach our campsite for Day 1. You can sort of see the snowy peaks of mountains behind the clouds.

Day 2 of trek (Day 12 of trip): We wake up at 5am in order to get an early start hiking up to the Pass. We are expected to have this 1100m climb done in about 3 hours. Julio, fearing Eden, Bill, and I won´t be able to make it, hires a horse to walk at the rear in case we faint while climbing up.

Going up was just one of the most miserable experiences of my life. It was freezing cold, windy with icy rain falling. To make matters worse, you couldn´t even enjoy the view because it was so cloudy.

Eden and Bill seemed to improve significantly on this day and I am literally miles behind everyone else, slowly putting one foot in front of the other as I climb to the Pass. It never seems to end. Once you clear one cliff, there´s another one even higher up. Somewhere along this climb, Julio is waiting for me. He and I continue slowly up together for the final meters. Thank goodness, because I was about to die of loneliness and misery. I make it to the pass in about 3.30 hours, which is far better than I was expecting. Nonetheless, everyone else is already long gone.

Climbing up. Julio waits as I drag myself up there.

At the Pass. I am seriously miserable. And look how nasty and muddy the ground is. Non-stop rain I tells ya! Thank goodness for my poncho. Plus, the clouds and fog made it impossible to see the top of Salkantay Mountain :(

Once we clear the Pass, I find Eden, Bill, and Robert waiting. We are a group again and begin the neverending descent. The lot of us assumed we´d be having lunch just after the Pass. Instead, we hiked non-stop from 7am to 3pm before finally getting a break and lunch. 8 freaking hours. We slogged through disgusting muddy, horse and donkey dung filled roads. Literally every other step was a pile of dung. Our shoes and socks and everything got soaked. Walking with wet feet is just awful. After lunch, it was another 1.5hr hike to our final campsite. The worst was over. We made it, without using a horse!!! HOOORAYYY!

I sleep well but we wake up to a wet tent and damp sleeping bag. Rain from the night had seeped into our tent from the ground. Eden took the brunt of the wetness. We are pissed. But it´s a new day. There are hot springs on Day 3! Maybe a shower!

Day 3 of trek (Day 13 of trip): This day is mostly downhill. Going down is far easier on the lungs and heart. I had no problems with keeping up although that much downhill climbing is really hard on the knees. There are two hot springs (one in the morning and one near our campsite at night). Some of us decide to enjoy the first one while the rest continue on ahead (including Eden and myself). We walk with Julio and learn about the flora and fauna. Now that our altitude is a lot lower, the plantlife is jungle as opposed to barren, snow and ice from the day prior. There are tons of orchids and butterflies and other wildlife. No monkeys though--not low enough.

Group photo! Right after this photo, it started to rain again (as you can see, the clouds are rolling in). Can we have one freaking day without rain????

From L to R: Me, Eden, Bill, Leslie, Doris, Robert, Alexa, Sasha, Christa, Matias

Day 3 also had lots of rickety, dangerous bridges that needed crossing. Looking awful. 3 days no showers and only 1 pair of pants.

The rain meant once again, the roads are muddy and awful. I managed to keep my socks mostly dry for most of the day until we came upon one area of the path where a landslide had wiped out a crossing right over the roaring river. We need to scale a rock wall to get to the other side. Julio gets right into the water with shoes and all trying to figure out a way for the rest of us to pass and to brace our falls should we have fallen. If someone had fallen in and landed in a bad way, it was very possible to have gotten pulled by the river into the rapids. Apparently, this had happened before on one of Julio´s tours.

One by one, we cross. I am fourth in line. Two of the people who had gone ahead of me fell into the water because the rock ledges they were clinging on to were not as secure as expected. Alexa is soaked from her navel down and Matias´s pants are drenched. I manage to get across with only a soaked foot.

I couldn´t take any photos because once we had passed, we were urged to continue on ahead in case another landslide or rockslide hit the area where we were standing.

Thankfully, everyone made it across more or less all right. That night, we arrive outside of Santa Teresa. Some of us go to the hot springs (HUGE pools!) in order to somewhat clean ourselves. The hot springs feel grrrrrrrrrreat. Also, for the first time since departing, our campsite on this night actually has a real bathroom instead of a filthy hole in the ground. There´s no electricity so it´s pitch black, but at least there´s a clean-ish toilet! Finally! Bowel movements! Hah.

We also set up a campfire and sit around drinking beer and trying to sing along to Julio´s guitar playing. He´s great at it, but none of us know the lyrics to anything. We couldn´t even muster a complete ¨Hey Jude¨ or ¨Let it Be¨.

Day 4 of trek (Day 14 of trip): We hike out of Santa Teresa and head for Aguas Calientes--the primary tourist city outside of Machu Picchu. It´s a fairly uneventful (though long) hike. Most of it was along a railroad. One interesting experience was crossing the river on one of these rickety old cable cars.

Uh. Yeah. No mechanics. Just man power.

We make it to Aguas Calientes without falling into the river and all is well. This night, we actually get to stay in a hostel with hot showers and a real bed!!!!! Omg, omg. Awesome.

Day 5 of trek (Day 15 of trip): We wake up at 3:30am in order to start up towards Machu Picchu by 4:30am. It´s a miracle, but we still all have energy to hike up from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu. No one wusses out to take the bus. It´s quite a far walk and 500m climb from AG to MP but we made it in great time! Even Julio, who had such little faith before, was proud at our time of 1h20min.

We make it in time to see the sun rise but alas, there is no sun rise because it´s too foggy. That´s what you get in the rainy season. Ah well. We take our tour of the city with a crappy guide and finish around 9am. In MP, there is another mountain available for climbing called Waynapicchu (max 400 ppl per day can climb it) that is supposed to offer specatular views. I am freaking tired so I decide to opt out--not to mention, I lost the rest of the group when I had to leave the tour to use the bathroom (only 1!! and it´s outside of MP!!!). So yeah, no WP for me this time. Next time maybe. But, congrats to Eden & Bill for doing it!

I end up finding the Swiss who also opted out of the WP climb and toured the lost Incan city some more.

That´s a sheer cliff we´re sitting on, by the way.

A classic shot from the guard tower. There´s Waynapicchu in the back.

And there you go. That´s pretty much it. Overall, the trek was definitely awesome--even in the rainy season! It started out miserable and I felt suicidal (and also homicidal) but it was such a great experience. The people in our group are also just fantastic, and hopefully we´ll have made some lasting friendships.

TRAVEL TIPS (for trekking):

- Lots of socks. Lots and lots of socks. We only brought 3 pairs each due to some lack of communication (that´s a whole other story). Thank goodness there was a place to buy socks in Santa Teresa because man, that woulda sucked having to put on wet socks again.

- Bring lots of cash. Lots and lots of cash. Even though everything is supposedly included, you´d be amazed how much you spend. Also, bring soles--not dollars. I don´t know why I only brought dollars. Most people will not take them or exchange them. Mostly you´ll use the cash on the pricey waters along the way. Also, tips for porters and cooks and guides total up to be quite a hefty sum (you can always tip in dollars, at least).

- Waterproof things are usually not actually waterproof. I guess Goretex jackets are the way to go (or a cheapo poncho). Definitely, if you´re going in the rainy season, get truly waterproof shoes. Go to a specialty store for best products. Shoes and jackets are mucho important! Even if it doesn´t seem to rain much in Cusco, it rained a whole damn lot on our trek.

- Unless you definitely want to do the Classic Inca Trail, definitely always book your trek once you are in Cusco. It´s about half the price. Also, shop around. It turns out most of the tour companies just collaborate and end up grouping various people together. Some of the others on the trip paid less than we did, for instance.

OTHER TRAVEL TIPS:

- Highly, highly, highly recommend Hostal Marani in Cusco. The Swiss told us about it. We stayed there last night. For $15 a night, you get such a clean, nice room and great shower. Sooo worth it.