The Inca Trail Continued..

So after making camp on night 1, with no shower, and not a real toilet in sight, i experienced my first real camping experience. However, it must be mentioned that the food was excellent, and the porters which carried our stuff for us were absolutely amazing. They carried at least 20-25 kgs on their backs, and pretty much ran all the way to each site.

Respect.

I found it hard to sleep on the ground and kept waking up in the middle of the night.

Day 2 brought us a 0530 wakeup call and at 0700 we left the campsite for dead womans pass, which would be the highest part of our hike, so for the next 2 hours, we climbed 400m to reach the pick where unfortunately the wind and fog picked up and we couldnt get a good view from the pass.

We took a quick snap on the pass, and headed down hill, where i discovered the joys of wet stone steps. Going up hill gives you burn in your muscles, but there is little mental concentration required. Going downhill however puts a lot of strain on your joints an requires you to concentrate intensely on each footstep. At this point i need to mention my trusty walking stick i bough for 3 soles. This stick saved me from serious injury on many occasions throughout theese 3 days and helped me pull my self up the steps on the uphill.

We have taken to naming our sticks 'excalibur', thats how good they were. Most likely they wont be able to come with us through customs, but we will carry them as long as we can, as they have now reached extreme sentimental value status.

So down the steps we went, slowly, painfully, slipping, getting rained on, really not a pleasant experience, and so it was for about 1.5 hours, not stop steps, it seemed taht the steps down would never end.

We reached camp for lunch and it was a 'easier' hike from that point on to the next camp site for the night, slight ups and downs, nothing as serious as the first day, but painful nonetheless. We reached camp for the 2nd night without incident, once again with me being the straggler at the end of the line. I learnt to not push as hard on this day, taking it slowly and trying to conserve my energy so that i would have something left at the end of the day and it seemed to work, i stopped much less to catch my breath and to ease the pain, and the rain cleared as the day went on, making for a much more pleasant hike.

At this point, i want to point out that at some points on this hike, the trail is usually about 1.5m wide with a sheer drop on the side and the mountain on the other. My fear of heights really didnt help in these situations. It wasnt a wide flat path, it was literally, a trail where if u were unlucky and slipped on something you could do some serious damage. Infact, a porter coming down to the lunch site on day 2 slipped and broke his kneee, and had to be carried back to the starting site on day 1.

Day 2 camp was also in a nice spot, when we arrived it was nice and warm, but the temperature quickly dropped and that night, not many people got much sleep due to the cold.

Day 3 was a more 'relaxing' day, with only about 6 hours of hiking and our group chose to take a more narrow flat path as opposed to another 2000 slippery stone steps. When the guide said narrow, i didnt realise that she actually meant NARROW. this path was like 1 m wider most of the time, and for parts it was barely a ditch in the ground. The path were a combinations of sections of mud and rock, and vegetation was barely cleared to form a walkway.

but we fought on, and even t hought it decided to rain as we approached lunch , which would also be the same place as dinner, we all made it without incident and prepared for our 0345 wake up call on day 4 and the sprint to the macchu pichu.

And so it was that on the 4th day, we woke up at night, and along with about 6 other groups waiting at the control point to be let through and pushed hard to the sun gate, which was of course at the top of the mountain. We set a blistering pace, a real powerwalk for the next 2 hours, where i really had to push my body to keep up, as our guide had said the night b4, 'dont let anyone pass you, do not stop, do not fall behind.' talk about pressure.

So at 0615 we reached teh sun gate, the and managed to not let anyone pass us, although io was practically dead when igot there. but macchu picchu was in sight and what a sight it was. The rest of the day was spent descending to the site and drinking the gatorade taht i had carried all the way from the starting point.

Heaps of pictures were taken, and macchu pichu was beautiful, but personally, more imporatnt was the achievment that i felt i had achieved in making it the whole 4 day 45 km inca trail. If you are reading this, you all know me, and you know im not the fittest person when i left, but somehow i made it, through the pain and with more than a littel help from above.

i am grateful for the experience, and i recommend anyone to do it, but i do suggest that some preparation is done before hand,just so you dont have to go through the pain and emabarassment of always being the last in line as i was. But i did make it there in the end and taht is what matters...

well that was a huge post, im signing off for now,

Miles