Day 1
My birthday! At 5:00am, a bus rounded us up for the drive to Kilometer 82, the start of the Inca Trail trek. Our group consisted of mostly couples, ages 26-37, with representatives from Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, England, Scotland, Australia, Germany, and the U.S. Plus our guide, William, the assistant guide, Agosto, and 21 porters.
We set out under blue skies, embarking on what promised to be an unforgettable four-day hike to majestic Machu Picchu. Not a bad way to turn 26.
To begin the trek, we crossed a recently rebuilt bridge -- one of the casualties of January’s
devastating mudslides. In fact, the Inca Trail itself had only reopened to tourists April 1st, after being shut down for all of February and March.
We hiked above the river along a path that averaged three people wide, entering what became a high, steep canyon. It might generously be called a valley, but if so, the valley floor was a mere sliver; a thin, green ribbon pressed between walls of earth so steep that we were in the shade by 3:30.
That night we camped at Wayllabamba, on the outskirts of a small village full of barking dogs. Elevation: 9,800 feet.
Day 2
At 5:30am, Agosto came around to our tents with hot tea and coffee. We were then to pack our stuff and report to the dining tent for breakfast at 6:00am.
Day 2 would involve a climb of 4,000 feet to Dead Woman’s Pass, at 13,800 feet, the highest point on the trek. My upper-right back had felt whacked out for the past week ("Doctor says I need a backiotomy!"), so I hired an unofficial porter for the day, the best 70
soles I’ve ever spent.
The first two hours of the 4.5-hour climb followed a rushing stream through an Alice-n-Wonderland tunnel of shade.
When we emerged from the trees, the mountain smelled like Jenny Crick: grasses under a hot sun and running freshwater. The blazing high-altitude sun, combined with a relentless incline, made the going tough. Just when I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for myself, a group of porters put us all to shame. These guys carry 50-pound loads, often just tied up in old rice sacks fastened around their collarbones. And they would
run up (and down!) the mountain. In sandals! Unbelievable. William introduced the porters on the second day at lunch: they ranged from 18-47 years old, and many spoke only Quechua.
The summit!
After a glorious rest, our knees endured a 1.5-hour stone staircase down the other side to our campsite, Pacamayo, elevation 11,350 feet. At that altitude, after we lost the sun behind the hills, it got frickin' freezing. Everyone busted out their alpaca earflap hats.
Day 3
An hour into the third day, we reached some circular ruins that had served as a lookout point for the Incas, with commanding views all the way down the valley and back up the trail to Dead Woman’s Pass.
From the circular ruins, the rock formations at the top of the pass look like the profile of a woman lying down. Hence: Dead Woman's Pass. (Frankly, I don't see it.) I’d been imagining some kind of dramatic,
Last-of-the-Mohicans-style flinging of oneself off a cliff, but no.
Anyway, from the lookout, Incas signaled the other lookouts with highly polished silver or gold discs in the sun, torches at night, and conch shells in the fog. This site, they think, also served as a resting point for messengers, who ran the entire length of the empire.
Forty-five minutes farther on, we arrived at the second pass, with stunning views down into the jungle below. This pass divided the dryer (though still quite green) microclimate of the first days from the more humid, lush vegetation approaching the jungle.
After about an hour’s descent, we came to the aptly named ruins Sayamarca, or Inaccessible Town. These ruins were beautiful and fairly extensive, but no one knows their purpose.
Then the trail descends into a magnificent cloudforest, bursting with orchids, ferns, mosses, and other increasingly jungly plants. We passed through a tunnel the Incas had carved into the stone mountainside. Somewhere along the way, bugs started to make the Smoke Monster noise from
Lost, and I became briefly, irrationally unnerved.
Shortly after the third pass, we arrived at the ruins of Phuyupatamarca, or Town in the Clouds. I was pretty tired by this point, so I don’t remember much of what the guide said.
After Phuyupatamarca came a 1.5-hour descent down a section of calf-high stone stairs, nicknamed "The Gringo Killer." That sucked. But as we dropped in altitude, the air became warmer and more humid, new flowers appeared, and we heard more and louder bird calls.
The final hour on the approach to the Wiñay Wayna campsite was my favorite. All of a sudden the air filled, oddly, with smells of the Pacific Northwest: damp, mossy stones. Ferns. Mud, leaves, and grass crushed underfoot. All evoking powerful scent memories of Lithia Park and Canton Creek.
Then just before Wiñay Wayna, we passed through a series of beautiful terraces, topped with tiny wildflowers and new shoots of grass. It was dusk, and I was alone on the trail, so it had that Oh-my-God-how-can-something-this-beautiful-exist feeling.
The Wiñay Wayna campsite is equipped with a small restaurant, so a bunch of us promptly went there to knock back some
cuba libres in honor of the day’s accomplishment. On the way out, I noticed this Sagehen shout-out:
Day 3 was by far the most exhausting. A 5:30am wake-up call, 5:30pm arrival at camp, just over nine miles of hiking, the longest of the trek. We went to bed at 8:00pm.
At 12:30am I awoke to the sound of fat raindrops pelting our tent. The merciless pounding continued for an hour, during which everyone in our camp lay awake thinking "Oh shit."
Day 4
By the time our 3:45am wake-up call rolled around, the rain had dissipated to a fine drizzle. We ate a quick breakfast and succeeded in being first in line at the checkpoint by 4:20am. Unfortunately, the checkpoint doesn’t open till 5:30, so we sat around playing cards by the light of our headlamps.
At 5:30 we burst through the checkpoint and set a punishing pace for the Sun Gate, three miles away. The going was difficult, up and down stone staircases at a rapid clip. But I’m an athlete; I can take it.
I chased the faint circle of light cast by my headlamp, moving quickly down the narrow, wet stone path. A thick fog obscured the Urubamba River valley below -- a fog so substantial it looked like you could step out onto it. A fog that both amplified and muffled noise, so that in addition to the sound of labored breathing, footsteps, walking sticks clacking and sliding over stones, birds calling, and insects buzzing, we could hear the mournful horn of the train far below.
After a half hour, the weak dawn sun filtered through the mist enough to merit turning off my headlamp, but I didn’t even pause to remove it. Twenty minutes later, slick with the sticky sweat born of humidity and exertion, our group arrived first at the Sun Gate, Intipunku.
Sun Gate! More like
borophyll Fog Gate! Alas, the fog cloaked the ruins and what was supposed to be an impressive view of Machu Picchu. So we caught our breath and let some sweat evaporate, then made our way slowly down to Machu Picchu.
The fog actually turned out to be kind of cool, lending the ruins a mysterious atmosphere, and the illusion that we'd transcended time.
While we waited for the fog to burn off, William gave us a tour of the ruins. The Incas constructed some impressive stuff, considering they didn't have the use of the wheel. For sacred buildings, they fit stones together so tightly that I couldn't even push a thumbnail between them.
Frank Gehry has nothing on the Incas.
The Incas also built the first known Ultimate Frisbee field.
Finally, the fog cleared, and ... Jesus. There are no words. Click to enlarge; it's worth it.
