Cusco and The Inca Trail

The Inca Trail is a 4 day trek through the green hills and valleys of the Andes, following a route that the Incas made a long time ago. I met up with my group the night before and they seemed a friendly bunch, Gilly & Jennie (Eng / Kiwi friends), Dav & Katie (Eng / Aus couple) and Henry and Jane (both English). Not to forget Enrique, our tour guide. I was the only solo traveller, which was great as I got a tent to myself. The main thing was that we were all very similar standard of walking (except maybe Dav who was very fit), so we made a good team.

The 1st day we met in Cusco at 6am and got a bus into a town to faff about buying bamboo walking sticks and rain gear. We started walking at km82 around 10am. The first day wasn’t too hard, with only a gradual climb over 6 hours. All of us were accustomed to the altitude already which apparently causes the most problems.

The second day was much harder, climbing up to 4200m above sea level, our highest point. This was through an alarmingly-sounding Dead Woman’s pass, but we soon found out that it was named because the mountain looked like a woman lying down (it was quite amusing trekking all day towards a huge pair of breasts), not because anyone had died there.

Everyone says the second day is the hardest, but for me the third day was much harder. I was absolutely exhausted from the climb the previous day, and it didn´t help that I managed to whack my knee hard on a stone by falling down a hole covered in a clump of grass. Not the best thing to do when I was about to climb up a huge flight of steps. The others were great though, carrying my rucksack for me and offering me lots of potions and lotions for my knee. That day we walked for 10 hours, it was a long day and I was ready to collapse at the end. It was an organised camp-site at the end of it though, and the sight of a cold beer waiting for me when I finished was heavenly.

We were so lucky on the trail - it is the rainy season and the weather could have easily been worse, but it was gorgeous and clear skies meant spectacular views. The week before, Enrique had told us, it had rained constantly. For us it only rained when we were in our tents. There wasn´t a single point on the trail that we didn´t have amazing scenery, even at the campsites. We also had a lot of Inca towns to explore along the way.

Enrique, our tour guide, was good fun, informative and helpful. Along with Alex the salsa-dancing professional chef, Clever who attended to our every need, and the 12 other porters, we ate and camped in luxury (albeit no hot showers, I was very smelly at the end). The best thing was getting a cup of tea delivered to us in our sleeping bags, even if it was 5 or 4am in the morning.

The 4th day we set off early (5am) to get to Machupicchu early. I have seen lots of pictures of MP by now, but even so the first sight of it as we arrived through the sun gate took my breath away. Its not just amazing architecture but the location itself, in lush green valleys and mountains everywhere, is just incredible. The Incas really knew how to build in style. I could have easily spent all day on the hill overlooking the town. I had the same feeling that I got at Lake Titicaca, very spiritual and peaceful.

Luckily I was still in a peaceful mind when it transpired that it would take me a while to get back to Cusco. There are no roads to Machhupichhu, the only way to get there and back is to either walk or take the train. Unfortunately there had been a landslide across the tracks, and there was only 1 train at the time on the Aguas Callientes (the town where MP is sited) side of the rails, and hundreds of people wanting to get on it. After about 6-7 hours waiting at the train station, chatting to the other tourists and just chilling out, I was still even very un-stressed when I eventually managed to get on the train. Its amazing what travelling does to your stress levels. Even when the train was so packed many people had to sit on the floor, we all had a laugh.

My company met me with a mini-bus on the other side of the landslide. As I was the only one travelling back with them (the rest of the group had opted to stay at Aguas Callientes), the company gave a lift to the some of the hundreds of people stranded there with no transport. About half-way back, late at night, with me extremely tired, an argument broke out on the bus with most of the passengers fighting with the bus conductor. It transpired that the company was asking them for a small contribution as a bus fare. It was only about a fiver, but the bus driver stopped in the middle of no-where and refused to move until it had been sorted out. After about ½ an hour the many disgruntled passengers agreed to pay and we eventually got back to Cusco late at night.

I had a few days in Cusco to relax, and it was a beautiful place to end my trip. It has some great architecture, views, winding little back streets and a good atmosphere, which is what most people would want from a city. There are lots of Inca stones everywhere but it has a very Spanish feel (people say Cusco would have been far greater than Macchupichu if the Spanish hadn’t plundered it).

I met Mark and his friend Rob here, I hadn’t met them before but he was a friend of a friend and more importantly, he had my replacement bank card! They turned out to be really nice though and good drinking partners. With them, I explored Sacsayhuaman (known to the locals as ‘sexy woman’ as this is what it sounds like in a Peruvian accent). This was an Inca site just above Cusco (not very far but up a hill which was hard work!). It was just a pile of huge stones, an amusing ‘slide down the stones’ and giant seats. Good fun.

In Cusco I had managed to acquire a very dodgy 100 sol note, which wasn’t fake but was old. In Peru the banks don’t accept old and damaged notes, and it seemed that neither did any shopkeepers. I had tried to get rid of it several times and had arguments with people, even if I had no other form of payment. At sexy woman, I managed to buy a ticket with the note, but unfortunately Mark & I were stupid enough to hang around the ticket office talking, and after a few minutes the ticket-seller came to give me my note back. We learnt from this experience and I finally managed to get rid of the note by paying for a meal in a restaurant and us legging it down the street before they could refuse my money! That was funny, and it set the scene for last night madness which was fantastic fun.